American-style service stymies Japanese-style eateries.

Two of Japan's most successful restaurant chains, using Los Angeles as the testing ground for its expansion plans, are finding that some things are indeed lost in translation.

Reins International Co. and Global-Dining Inc., which both grew during Japan's decade-long recession but have suffered dwindling profits, are establishing operations here in an effort to woo American diners to their contemporary Japanese fare and vaunted service.

Global-Dining has purchased the former Ed Debevec's site on La Cienega Boulevard on Beverly Hills' Restaurant Row and plans to debut the American version of its Gonpachi restaurant there next fall.

The company, with U.S. operations based in West Hollywood, intends to follow with several Gonpachis in major cities over the next few years.

Its earlier forays have not fared as well as expected. The company also owns Monsoon Cafe on Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade and La Boheme Cafe in West Hollywood, and has stumbled in those efforts to export its brand of quality service.

"The service is very good in Japan. Over here it's not. We want to bring a whole team effort concept over," said Nile Park, chief operating officer of Global-Dining Inc. USA.

Park said the problem is exacerbated in Los Angeles, where many restaurant employees are looking for jobs in the movie and television business and don't buy into the Japanese team concept.

"That's difficult to translate. There are too many out-of-work actors who want to do other things and don't take it as seriously," he said.

Such things are, of course, relative.

An L.A. Times reviewer wrote in 2000 that service at La Boheme was "too attentive."

"Someone wanted to pour more water into untouched water glasses every few minutes. Our wine was assiduously topped up in haft-inch increments," the reviewer wrote. "And we must have been asked a dozen times how we liked the meal, or if everything was prepared to our liking."

The restaurant's disappointing performance, the reviewer suggested, had more to do with overzealous service and its frequent changes in chefs.

At Gonpachi, a giant tavern serving sushi and Japanese meat and noodle dishes, Global-Dining will try to emphasize the strict management style and high level of service it has used in Japan.

There is no tipping in Japan, where the salaries of its restaurant managers are tied to food sales and colleagues decide promotions. Global-Dining plans to bring chefs in from Japan on short-term visas to help solve the service problem here.

Reins, too, has struggled with service.

Founded in 1995, the company grew rapidly to operate 700 Gyu-Kaku barbeque restaurants in Japan. It established its U.S. flagship Gyu-Kaku in West Los Angeles in 2001.

It has had to address Americans' unfamiliarity with its "yakiniku" fare, a Korean-style cuisine where customers cook their own bite-sized pieces of meat on tabletop grills and dip them in sauces. To accommodate this, it has adopted a more familiar and instructive style of service than in Japan, where servers are taught to be quick and attentive with little personal interaction.

The result has been slower service.

"The productivity of American waiters is a little less than Japanese because they are not familiar with the concept. The Japanese service level is very high," said Aki Yamaguchi, a supervisor at VR Partners Inc., the L.A.-based joint venture between Reins and Japanese restaurant consulting firm Venture Link

International Inc.

Yamaguchi said the company's labor costs are 3 percent higher in U.S. stores than in Japan.

Overcoming the service issue will be a component of Rein's aggressive expansion plans in the United States.

It has opened two more GyuKakus in L.A. County this year, one on La Cienega Boulevard across the street from the Gonpachi site and the other in Torrance.

The company, which operates more than 1,000 restaurants in Japan, wants to add another 1,000 in the United States by 2013. It plans to open three more in Newport Beach, Las Vegas and San Francisco next year.

Reins and Global-Dining are following the lead of Japan's Yoshinoya D&C Co., an operator of beef-bowl fast food restaurants that has operated in California for 20 years and now has 80 restaurants in the state. Yoshinoya has succeeded because it focuses on food quality and keeping distribution costs low, said Robert Brasch, president of Pacific Partners Inc., a Beverly Hills consulting firm.

But the premium on service of Reins and Global-Dining's restaurants makes the transition more complicated.

"The service will never be what they have in Japan but the expectation of the clientele will be lower anyway so it shouldn't make a difference," said Brasch.