When Baekjeong Korean BBQ opened its first Bay Area location at Westfield Valley Fair shopping center in in August 2023, waits reportedly were up to 4 hours to snag a table.

No way was I going to deal with that.

So, I bided my time, and happily waited until this month to try the restaurant that’s created a sensation everywhere it’s opened.

Baekjeong Korean BBQ started in 2003 in Korea by Kang Ho Dong, a former professional wrestler and South Korean TV personality. In 2012, he joined forces with Michael Chon, CEO of Kijung Hospitality Group, to expand the restaurants to the United States, the first of which opened in Los Angeles, where the late-great, Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold hailed it as one of that city’s top restaurants.

Of its eight locations now, the 220-seat San Jose restaurant is one of only two that offers reservations. So, if you plan at least a week or two in advance, you can be assured of a prime-time reservation.

Or you can do what I did, which is just walk in on the spur of the moment on the early side of 5:45 p.m. on a Tuesday to get seated right away.

The restaurant is located outside on the mall’s Dining Terrace. Enter the restaurant doors, then head upstairs, where you’ll find a bar, along with an expansive dining room with red, white, and green-illuminated “Baekjeong” signs stretching across the ceiling.

“Baekjeong” is the Korean word for “butcher.” It’s meant to exemplify the quality and care that goes into preparing the prime beef and premium pork.

Each table is outfitted with a circular grill with a hood that can be lowered to suck up all the smoke. There’s no worry that you’ll walk out of there, smelling like a forest fire.

To enjoy alongside the spicy food to come, order a Ccool Citron ($14), a refreshing, easy-breezy tall sip of citro soju, yu-jo citron honey, lemon, lime, and agave nectar.

Baekjeong is not one of those Korean barbecue joints that’s all-you-can-eat. It’s also not one of those places where you cook your own food. Instead, the server does all that for you, freeing you up to concentrate on the eating.

When you sit down, the table is already set with an array of banchan, including cabbage kimchi, large circles of pickled daikon, and spicy pickled cucumbers. There’s a dish of salt, and another of a soy dipping sauce with circles of jalapenos in it. Additionally, there are two salads: a simple, crisp and clean tasting iceberg one, along with a cabbage slaw with a dollop of gochujang on it.

My husband and I ordered the Marinated Meats Combo, which was $85 for a small (serves 2 to 3). It is a mountain of food that includes beef belly, bulgogi, marinated hangar steak, marinated pork, and spicy pork belly. It also comes with rice, and your choice of soybean or kimchi stew. We went with the latter.

Your server will fire up the grill, and grease it with a piece of fat to prep it for the cooking. There are two channel compartments built into the rim of the grill. A beaten egg mixture gets poured into one, while corn kernels topped with cheese go into the other.

As the meal progresses, the heat from the grill will turn the raw eggs into a fluffy omelet with lacy edges and melt the cheese delectably over the corn for you to help yourself to enjoy.

As the thin slices of beef belly get fanned across the grill, you can hear the sizzle and smell the delicious fat caramelizing. Your server will flip the slices and let you know when they’re ready to eat.

Use your chopsticks to grab a piece to devour. This was probably my favorite cut of the night because the grill renders the edges of the belly as crisp as bacon.

The boneless bulgogi gets cooked next until the deeply beefy tasting meat is juicy and tender. The last meat on the grill is the thicker-cut hanger steak with slightly more toothsomeness and a beefy richness.

Marinated pork with sliced green onions and spicy pork belly with a flourish of shredded green onions arrive on platters already cooked. Both meats were thin and tender, with the belly being the belly more unctuous tasting. Although billed as spicy, it was fairly mild with more sweetness to it than heat.

The kimchi stew, however, packed more of a punch, as well as the acidic funkiness of plenty of kimchi, along with cubes of tofu and pieces of pork belly.

The only other item we added was the kimchi pancake ($20). The size of a personal pizza, it was exceedingly crisp without being greasy, and crackled with sauteed kimchi, squid, and serrano chili.

We ended up with enough leftovers to take home for dinner the next day.

While there’s no dessert offered at Baekjeong, Salt & Straw is just a few steps away, as are any number of other places in the mall that serve up a range of sweets.