A little bit of a cheat in that this is about Gyudon that is not in London but the zero tag feels appropriate - this being more like a prequel but made afterwards. This may involve a little retconning but I will try not to. I visited Japan at the tail end of 2019 (after a particularly disappointing set of electoral results) for a fairly short time. It was a simple trip for me and allowed me to wallow in a bit of nostalgia by visiting Shinjuku, Akihabara and other places in Tokyo while also having a trip to less familiar places using the exceptionally good JR EAST and South Hokkaido rail pass. It was a great opportunity to eat some very nice food around the country[1] of which gyudon was definitely one to go for.
The important thing about gyudon in these conditions is that it is pretty much everywhere and so I did not actively search them out - I happened to come across these visits. In fact, these were not the only times to Yoshinoya (also had breakfast one) or Matsuya (Hamburg steak, kalbi beef etc) but they were the only times I had gyudon.
In my time, there were two apparent behemoths of the gyudon scene: Yoshinoya and Matsuya so those were the ones I wanted to go to. Actually, Sukiya is a huge chain but I am not sure that I ever went there.
Yoshinoya
I was staying in a hotel nearby and decided to pop out to the Yoshinoya that was nearby as a quick and convenient meal. As I entered, I looked around and was asked to sit down - which I did at the bar. I was struck by the fact that the person asking me to do this from behind the counter was not (ethnically) Japanese although she did interact with me fully in Japanese. I was given a menu to peruse and I decided on a Gyudon set which had many options. Yoshinoya seems to have loads of variations - a little like how Burger King advertise the “your way” burgers. I went for a set that was a standard size bowl along with a lettuce salad, clam soup and a raw egg.
I waited and the food arrived not long after and the first thing that I noticed was that the salad dressing came in a packet rather than given bottles to add. I wonder if this is to make the delivery and take away portions of their business even simpler but I do not remember this from before. It was a little disappointing in all honesty and did result in the salad being very plain. “Plain” is an apt word and I found the beef to be a little flat tasting. This was clearly a cheap beef, I do not question that (or mind) but it did not have much flavour. I probably had not had a “Yoshigyu” for a decade or more but it was a fairly quick reminder of why I did not like it so much. I added the whisked raw egg on top and sprinkled quite a bit of ginger on top in order to give it a little spikiness but it was not a meal that could be properly rescued. The pickled ginger was tasty and added some verve to it but I was left unsatisfied. The soup, which was not a standard side was fairly good - I did enjoy it and the mussels were of a decent enough level - though nothing special of course.
You will have noticed that I did not pay before the meal and the point when I chose the meal from a menu, that did involve interaction so it isn’t quite the anonymous experience that you get from Matsuya (and I sort of prefer). The bill came quickly upon request and the food was quick and suitable to fill you up but I was not left sated when I left. I hoped Matsuya was not a false memory. This ended up being a reminder of why I did not have Yoshinoya[2] much at all.
Yoshinoya Otsukaeki
2 Chome-46-3 Minamiotsuka, Toshima City, Tokyo 170-0005, Japan
〒170-0005 東京都豊島区南大塚２丁目４６−3
Cost of gyudon: 352円(＋税) (approx 140 yen was £1 at the time)
Matsuya
This was my personal favourite chain of fast food places in Japan but I did actually have other food more often than the gyudon and I liked the basic salad as an accompaniment (to the dressing!). I went to Nakano and it was raining hard but the visit seemed a good use of my time.
Entering, I was not asked to sit down or given a menu - instead, I went over to the vending machine and made my choices. There are quite a lot of places in Japan where you pay by vending machine first and I think that this means that the staff do not have to handle cash (and food) which is a wise thing to do from a hygiene perspective. It also means that you have paid before you get any food[3] which is a fast-food convenience. In the past, these machines were tall multi-button machines that had all the different menu items written (in Japanese) and would spit out tickets for each of the items that you would then give to the staff. The process is the same now but the machines are now touch-screen and available in different languages to assist visitors. They still print out tickets (rather than sending the order to the kitchen) so it is basically the same. I ordered a classic combination of gyudon, salad, soup and a raw egg.
Matsuya is usually a mixture of bar seating and a few tables and I usually went for the bar seating as a solo diner. My food arrived quickly and I went to the condiment selection available on the counter. I added some sesame dressing to the salad, schimi spice to the soup and some pickled ginger to the gyudon along with the raw egg.
As always, I started with the salad and soup - both items that I would normally describe as unremarkable but hitting all the right notes. The salad is very basic with a sprinkling of sweetcorn[4] but with a selection of dressings, it could be varied easily and I added sesame. And the dressing is moreish enough to make the salad something to add to all meals. The soup is always included with the gyudon and would, therefore, be fairly basic but it was warm and had the umami that I wanted. The gyudon itself was exactly what I wanted - a Greatest Hits of all of the gyudons I had had in London. Salty and sweet at the same time with the onion and beef. There was a tanginess to the ginger and smooth taste with the raw egg poured on top. This was not the disappointment I was fearing after Yoshinoya at all. This was worth waiting for...
I would definitely recommend a visit to Matsuya whenever you can!
Matsuya Nakano
2 Chome-29-8 Nakano, Nakano City, Tokyo 164-0001, Japan
〒164-0001 東京都中野区中野２丁目２９−8
Cost of gyudon: 320/380(premium)円(＋税) (approx 140 yen was £1 at the time)
2. I did quite like the breakfast options available.↩
3. It is worth noting that this seems to be how McDonald’s operates stores in the UK now.↩
4. Paul remembers a phrase I used when he came to visit in 2003 and I said that the Japanese had “elevated sweetcorn to its rightful place” by adding it to salad. This may have been at the very first Matsuya [link to original blog post] we shared, in fact, and so, in essence, where the project started from. ↩
