“When you only have two things on the menu, you can’t hide them if they’re bad,” said Amir Karkouti, vice president of Surf Brothers Teriyaki, which opened a store at 13483 Poway Road in the Creekside Shopping Center on Jan. 23.

The quick-serve eatery’s menu choices are chicken and steak, each grilled and served as plates with rice and salad. The meats are prepared with a Karkouti family recipe for homemade teriyaki sauce. For under $8, each plate delivers plenty of meat: 10 ounces of chicken or 8 ounces of steak. Customers can also choose a combination plate with both.

The teriyaki sauce – also sold in bottles – and the food are prepared “the same way my mom would have cooked it at home,” said Karkouti. “That’s what’s keeping us opening more restaurants and being successful, the fact that we kept to our roots.”

On top of its core menu, Surf Brothers recently started selling shredded chicken sliders on a combination plate for $3.79, to target students and those looking to spend less in this recession.

Surf Brothers aims to be healthy and fresh, with meats delivered daily, which is unusual for quick-serve restaurants, according to Karkouti.

“Our stuff is never frozen. We don’t have microwaves,” he said.

It’s this formula of a unique teriyaki recipe and an aim for quality and freshness that has brought success to the restaurant, which opened its first location in Encinitas in November 1992 under the name Tokyo’s Teriyaki. The business was started by Reza Karkouti, Amir’s older brother. The siblings – whose love of surfing led to the present restaurant name – currently own and operate the business with their father Ahad Karkouti, managing 56 employees across seven San Diego County storefronts and a warehouse, and catering events for 20 to 500 people.

At present, each Surf Brothers location serves around 120 customers daily, Karkouti said, compared to six on the first day in Encinitas. Each store is decorated with a tropical theme, with a different surfside mural painted by local artists like Clayton Parker of Oceanside.

The Poway location is the sixth location, and a Mission Valley store is slated to open mid-February. This is the first year the business has opened two locations at once, and the company aims to have over a dozen locations all over San Diego County before eventually expanding to Orange County, Amir Karkouti said.

It’s big progress for a business with humble roots. The company’s founder, Reza Karkouti, had to help support the family at a young age. Starting a restaurant was a way to build financial security for the family. The first restaurant was pulled together with a business loan, credit cards, and borrowing over $30,000 from family and friends.

The Karkouti parents are immigrants from Iran and Afghanistan. The mother, Merhnegar Karkouti, who invented the restaurant’s teriyaki recipe, is a hairdresser. Prior to helping to open the restaurant, the father worked various jobs, from flipping homes and selling cars, just to put food on the table, Amir Karkouti said.

“We had to come up with something to support the family. It was by choice and circumstance that we (started a restaurant),” said Amir Karkouti.