INLAND • GAJA Korean BBQ

Dining: Inland

THE OSIDER SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2022

GAJA KOREAN BBQ WORDS: AARON SCHMIDT PHOTOS: ZACH CORDNER

Opened last June in the El Camino North shopping center, Oceanside’s newest Korean BBQ is like taking a step into a futuristic world of dining. The sights and sounds of dining at Gaja will leave you mesmerized as you gaze at the cat Bella Bot robot servers delivering the portions, all while they’re merrily singing as they make their way to each table. It’s quite a sight and is a very fun place to take the entire family out to dinner. With an “all you can eat” buffet (11am-3pm lunch, and 4 to 10pm dinner), you’ve got a two-hour time limit to chow down on all the delicious menu items they serve. When you get to your table, you place your food order from an iPad as it lets you choose 6 dish selections. There’re also human servers there to assist in firing up the grill and dividing up the portions for each customer as the Bella Bot brings it in—each one being assigned its own table with human back up support.

“First, you order from the iPad. You’re allowed to get six dishes from the meal selection, and the sides are unlimited. Customers cook everything on the grill themselves, making for a hands-on interactive experience. We try to make our food traditional, but right now we are more Asian fusion,” said General Manager Alex Li. “When you sit down, we light up the fire for you, so when the food is coming, the grill should already be hot enough to cook it. For the steak, it all depends on how people like it. For the shrimp, it’s best to cook it less than three minutes. For the pork, and chicken, it takes longer. Veggies are cooked at five to ten minutes.”

With reservations that include up to six people, the most popular menu items include the rib-eye steak, short ribs, spicy beef bulgogi, Cajun shrimp, beef brisket, and the cheese corn—just to name a few. “We have a lot of space and we can have big parties of over 30 people.”

Gaja also features a full bar and so far they only serve beer, but they will offer hot sake very soon. The end-of-meal treat comes in the form of Haagen Daas ice cream in strawberry, vanilla, coffee, and chocolate flavors. What a great way to end a meal.

By the way, the word “gaja” means “let’s go!” in Korean, so it’d be a good idea to go over there and see what the fuss is all about. There’s nothing like it in all of North County.

Gaja Korean BBQ 2693 Vista Way (760) 231-1195 gajakbbq.com @gajakbbq