ロン丼牛ドン / London Gyudon 05: Sushi Waka

This would be the third restaurant that we went to that appeared to specialise in a particular kind of Japanese food but none of them had been gyudon. Sushi Waka seemed to be a sushi place, so it was still not specialising in gyudon, and took us to North London or Camden to be more specific. This was pretty convenient for me as I didn't live too far away and I know the area quite well. As a result, I had been to Sushi Waka before but had been to some other Japanese restaurants more often. My favourite Japanese restaurant is in Camden and is called Asakusa close to Mornington Crescent station and I also rather like Seto Ramen which is also nearby. As far as I am aware, neither does gyudon and so Sushi Waka it would be.

Camden is a bit of a nightlife area and there is a fairly "old" feel to the establishments in the area with the atmosphere having been set a long time ago rather than as a result of more recent redevelopment but there is still plenty of new to go with the old. Nearby the multiple Camden markets bring plenty of tourist footfall to the general area but Parkway is not so close to the market and so I imagine the restaurant does rely on regulars rather than drop-ins.

The first thing to note is that there was no "gyu-don" on the menu, only in set form. The restaurant feels different to each of the ones we've been to so far with very little pretentiousness which comes with being a more local kind of place. Sushi Waka itself must be of a certain vintage as it has a sign that gives that away if you know the details^[1]. This little fact, I love.

Camden has a few Japanese restaurants and parts of LB^[2] Camden have long been home to Japanese people which lends itself to less touristy restaurants, I hope. It was a pleasant restaurant inside but was not particularly modern feeling, or even "refreshed" with old looking décor and rather odd dining chairs which looked like conference or meeting chairs. It did not feel upmarket or downmarket, it just felt a bit local and quite unimpressive as a location. There is also a Japanese (tatami) room upstairs but we did not see that.

We didn't pick so many dishes and supplanted the order of 2 gyudon sets with vegetable korokke and some house salad and decided we'd get more if necessary. The sets came with miso soup, pickles and fruit so we felt that had enough variety, initially at least. The food didn't all come together and was served, effectively, as courses with the korokke, soup and salad coming first, followed by gyudon.

The korokke was pretty creamy and tasty but nothing particularly noteworthy (it was just something I'd not had in a while) but it reminded me of supermarket food in Japan - in a good way. The salad was fairly plain and seemed to be more an accompanying dish rather than a course but we still finished it before gyudon was brought out. Interestingly, the table was clear as we sat down with no condiments, such as soy sauce and shichimi^[3] at all so the restaurant was obviously confident in seasoning appropriately. I was less confident and so asked for some shichimi to put in the soup but only wanted to have it with the gyudon.

The gyudon was brought out in quite large, solid bowls that felt more like bibimbap bowls, such was their heft. This is relevant as it made it enjoyable to hold when eating ^[4] with chopsticks. The big bowl meant quite a decent portion of rice and meat – and the meat was quite dark with a little sprinkling of pickled ginger. That, however, is just the mechanics, how was the taste? In all honesty, I was not expecting much with the colour not looking quite right. And that taste was very good. Surprising, but very good. The meat was sweet – far sweeter than I expected or probably (thought that I) wanted but quite easy to eat. Coupled with the rice, it was a great combination as the rice soaked up a bit of that sweetness. As I mentioned before, there were no condiments on the table and so no extra pickled ginger either but the sprinkling that was in the bowl was also very good and wonderfully sharp providing an excellent counterpoint to the meat and rice. I was genuinely surprised about how good it was. I was also heartened by the quality of the miso soup which felt deep and flavoursome which again was improved by the addition of a little counterpoint which the shichimi provided. Being picky, as I devoured the bowl, it did feel a spot dry but Paul said it was a bit "wet" for him so it may just have been the way we ate it. There was no egg to top the dish but we were both in agreement about this one – it was not missed. We both left our bowls without even a single grain of rice remaining and that sweetness of the marinade goes so well with the rice by the end, having seeped through such that the balance is spot on. It is a bowl that improves through the meal which is quite an odd sensation. Eventually, after being asked about whether we wanted anything else, we were presented with small fruit plates as a sort of dessert (although there is an actual dessert section on the menu) which was at turns very Japanese but also quite uncommon – I think the first time we have had it. It was a very satisfying conclusion to the meal which cleansed the palate and also gave a fresh ending ^[5] .

As ever, it felt a bit bad to miss out on much of the breadth of the menu (in this case, sushi) due to the project but it was not such a disappointing turn of affairs as it was in Machiya. The "gyu-don set" is a good meal in its own right and the surroundings are pleasant enough but I was truly impressed by the gyudon. It was not particularly nostalgic for me, but at the same time, it kind of was. I don't think the gyudon I used to enjoy in Japan was quite as sweet and it did not set off any repressed memories (as for the Koya meal) about gyudon so it was different to what I was expecting but not a fundamental diversion so it did tick the boxes. I would definitely recommend a visit to most people as the gyudon was really nice and the restaurant presents an atmosphere of a Japanese restaurant that is not quite as prevalent as it used to be. That lingering feeling of the past and not quite modern interpretation of Japanese décor is one that I really appreciate and is not replicated too much anymore. The gyudon was great and I'd be intrigued to try some more from the menu.

Cost of gyudon (set): £12.50

Sushi Waka
75 Parkway, Camden Town, London NW1 7PP

<sup>1. The Sushi Waka sign has a phone number that does not work any longer and has not worked since 1999 as Inner London's area code for telephone numbers changed from 01, to 071 to 0171 to 020 within about a decade.↩
2. LB meaning London Borough. LB Camden is fairly dense and, although an inner London borough and so smaller than others, covers Covent Garden in the south to Highgate in the north. The Finchley Road area had traditionally had quite a few Japanese ex-pats. They weren't immigrants, they were ex-pats.↩
3. Shichi-mi tōgarashi also known as nana-iro tōgarashi or simply shichimi, is a common Japanese spice mixture containing seven ingredients.↩
4. I like to eat bowls of rice held in my left hand rather than from the table but I have to say that I rarely do it in restaurants in the UK. I don't think I have been doing that on the gyudon project either but it felt really nice here. It is all part of the process.↩
5. It was not a true ending though, of course – it was only 8pm. Not too far away on Kentish Town Road, we went to the "Dirty Ice Cream" emporium Mamason. This is a fairly new Filipino ice cream bar that I had been to before and thought it worth checking out again for a dessert and/or drink. With a selection of ice cream and sorbet flavours that are rarely seen in London, such as ube and lychee, we thought it worth a try. And it very much was as the ice cream was excellent.↩</sup>

The Lloyd's Building

Lloyd's (or Lloyd's of London) is an insurance market that could lay claim to being the prime mover in creating the concept of insurance as is widely understood^[1] and is named after a coffee house that was run by Edward Lloyd. The original coffee shop became a meeting point for those involved in the maritime trade and they came to share information about shipping which was used for offering insurance. Insurance is just about managing risk by pooling those risks so that it benefits more people. By pooling that risk, catastrophe can be more effectively managed. If 5% of 20 ships will sink, that might not seem so bad but if it happens to be your ship - you will take 100% of the loss. So, the effect of that risk is different if you have one of twenty total ships or if you have twenty ships yourself. Pooling that risk means that everyone pays a little bit more but nobody loses out entirely and as it is pretty random who that 5% will afflict, it seems like a low cost. So the financial risk is, effectively identical, but the real risk to individual participants is reduced.

Insurance works, but pooling risks only happens if you actually have multiple risks to pool and for that you needed people to be pooled together to be able to meet and strike these agreements. That happened at Lloyd's Coffee House - it was a prime example of the benefits of mixing people together.

Fast forward a few years, or a few centuries, to 1986 and a new building was completed for the market in the City of London. A building that split opinion and also, 25 years hence, became the youngest Grade I listed structure^[2] in the UK. Why did it split opinion? Because that is what modern architecture does and this structure was very modern. Like the Pompidou Centre in Paris, this building was "inside-out".

In many ways, we have to think about what the purpose of a building is and Le Corbusier, famously, described homes as machines for living. If we think about it in that way, then it allows us to reassess what the purpose of components that make up a building are. At the most basic level, you need walls and a roof but that does not quite scale up when you have larger buildings with the requirements of infrastructure. Traditional buildings have external walls that do two things - structurally hold the building up and provide shelter from the elements. Walls can be load bearing or simply partitions and that is the difference in looking at the purpose of the walls. What if we split that responsibility out a little, you could have something else that was better at holding a building up and a separate something else that was better for providing shelter. Once you separate that out, you can start having load-bearing structures that don't need to look good as they are hidden away and facades that are better for the inhabitants - this gave us the glass skyscrapers with central cores. Glass lets light in and makes a nicer environment for those inside the building. Many traditionalists in the world of newspaper columns don't seem to think buildings are for anything other than looking at from afar, however, and so changes in technology are not always seen positively. What a central core also allowed was for all the "services" (such as lift cores, utility supply etc)to be put into that central core and then allowing the space between the glass frontage and the central core to be pretty open - giving large open spaces. This centralised load-bearing structure soon became the new tradition of building skyscrapers.

What, however, could we do if we could also move that central core outside the building to leave an open, unbroken space? The benefits of an unbroken, easily adaptable space were clear for tenants of a building and that is what drew Lloyd's to the vision given by Richard Rogers as he persuaded the decision makers over to his way of thinking. Another benefit of an approach like this, a sort of exoskeleton for a building, is that the maintenance of these previously hidden things is made much quicker and easier as a result of being accessible. Maybe most famously for the Lloyd's building, the lifts are placed outside the building and that just happens to afford great views of the City of London - I assume that this is a positive unintended consequence. Does the building work for the inhabitants? Over thirty years on, that answer seems to be a clear "yes" but you have to think of stakeholders and the external view of something is important in such a central location in one of the best-known cities in the world. Well, unsurprisingly, this has been a success too - it will never be a universally loved building but it is one that fewer and fewer people are against now.

I'm not that interested in architecture - not enough to write about anyway which seems an odd thing to say after a few hundred words about a building. The point, however, is about the idea of thinking of design in a new way. Taking a step back to see the purpose of a building rather than what had gone before it seems like a sensible way of approaching problems and maybe we should all try to get back to first principles every so often to appraise what we do. I am also a big fan of making things easily accessible to make changes to when required. At work, I do a fair amount of calculation models and it is always important that we can see what is going into those - the inputs have to be clear^[3] and externalised so that you can change them easily. So that others can maintain them rather than hiding away the working components. Eventually, people get used to the look and it becomes a house style. That's what I have learned from Richard Rogers' groundbreaking building.

<sup>1. Although this may not, semi-famously, be all that well understood by some high ranking people in US politics such as Paul Ryan (amongst many, many other Republicans).↩
2. Listing structures in the UK involves giving the architecture certain types of protection and many owners would not like this to happen as it necessitates conservation which may not always be what the owner wants to do.↩
3. The Pompidou Centre, which came before the Lloyd's building, by Rogers and Renzo also externalised the structures but went one step further by colour coding the infrastructure lines to give clear indications how things worked. In some ways, like a diagram rather than real life.↩</sup>

ロン丼牛ドン / London Gyudon 04: Machiya

Ramen has a sort of level of awareness in London at the moment stemming from a number of places that became popular enough to start mini-chains. One of those, and the branches I have seen often have queues outside, is Kanada-ya^[1]. Unlike Yamagoya, they do not seem to have branched significantly from their ramen but Machiya is supposed to be run in the same vein as Kanada-ya but with different dishes. It could be said that Machiya is a return for Paul and myself as this is actually where we decided^[2] on this project and it was as a result of gyudon here. My abiding memory of that meal^[3], however, was not the meat but the baked sweet potato which was genuinely amazing. I think we may have shared a few things including a gyudon then but all memories are clouded by that sweet potato.

Machiya takes us back to the West End and, more specifically, Panton Street near Leicester Square. It has a fairly pared down menu with a few specials but luckily, gyudon is a standard item - and is in fact boxed out as if it is a highlight of the menu. The general style of the place is casual and the menu is supplanted by a specials menu which is written by hand on a big piece of paper which is in keeping with the casual style. As it happens, there was little on the specials menu with it mainly being different cold drinks due to the slightly warm weather. Paul and I noticed that items we had ordered from specials menu before were now on the menu proper (including the aforementioned yaki imo sweet potato dish). Looking at the menu again, the items that jumped out were the ones we had eaten previously but I did want to try new things^[4] so we ordered a side salad and grilled miso aubergine to go with the gyudon.

The food came out as it was ready but we waited for the gyudon before starting. The bowl was topped with a beautiful looking onsen egg and pre garnished with pickled ginger - there was nothing to add. So, we dug in. The flavour was, however, missing a bit and was not quite what was expected from the look. The mixture of onion and beef tasted a bit anaemic - lacking the bold flavour I expected and had probably not been marinated enough. This was actually a disappointing first mouthful. Diving in again gave the same impact of "is this it?" (and I don't mean the vibrancy of the Strokes' debut album) to the beef. In all honesty, the egg was excellent and a mouthful with a bit of egg and pickle was pretty nice but there was no getting away from the lack of saltiness of the meat. The sauce was fairly weak and the onions were more oniony than sweet as they were not cooked through. As it happened, the bowl wasn't that big either so it wasn't particularly filling and had a lot more rice as a ratio than I'd want too. The other dishes were far better, and the meal as a whole wasn't bad. The yaki imo still an astounding combination of yuzu, butter and wonderfully smooth sweet potato. The aubergine had a nice texture with walnut and a little kick from the garnish but as good as those dishes were, the main was disappointing and so I was a bit disappointed. The meal as a whole wasn't so voluminous either so I was left a bit unsatisfied^[5] afterwards.

The thing about this project is that it is about gyudon so I feel bad that I can't particularly recommend a place that also happened to serve some exceptional food that wasn't gyudon. Service was quick, simple and easy and I will definitely return but I doubt I'll order the gyudon as a main (though it could work if shared) when I do. The location is really convenient, the food is generally good but it is too casual to linger there for a long time. With all that in mind, I do hope people go and have the yaki imo which is genuinely exceptional. The gyudon, less so.

Cost of gyudon: £9.50

Machiya
5 Panton St, London SW1Y 4DL

<sup>1. "ya" in this case just means shop and is a common suffix as in Matsuya.↩
2. In a sort of circuitous route. Paul mentioned to me the gyudon here when I asked about Japanese food around London which kicked off a nostalgic chat about Japan in general and also our first meeting there which revolved around gyudon.↩
3. And maybe food in that whole year, such was the quality.↩
4. I remember the chicken wings were really good, as was the yaki imo and I think we had some form of katsu so we didn't re-order (except the yaki imo, I'm not an idiot).↩
5. Satisfaction was gained by going on to have dessert at nearby Chin Chin Dessert Bar which was chocolate tacos with pineapple and habanero ice cream. It was pretty special.↩</sup>

ロン丼牛ドン / London Gyudon 03: Yamagoya

I had a feeling we'd end up in the south at some point but not as soon as number 3 but here we were near Waterloo. Yamagoya is a ramen chain from Japan (the first actually "originated from Japan" place we've come to on this) and so not necessarily the obvious place for a gyudon but there it is on the menu - in the other bits, "rice", section^[1] . I guess that is similar to going to an udon restaurant (as at Koya) so fair enough. Yamagoya is actually a pretty old chain of restaurants from Kyushu dating back to 1969 and the website has some nice photos of that time.

Having already fallen behind schedule a little by 03 (which was supposed to be monthly), there is always a risk that the bottom could fall out of the project unless it is worth doing so I felt a little internal pressure in this one.

The Cut is a road near Waterloo and Southwark with two three (one is hidden, I have been informed) theatres and a number of eateries including Yamagoya but, even so, the Japanese styling of the shopfront does stand out a bit. Walking in, I looked for a door handle but noticed it was a sliding door on a button which I thought a nice touch^[2] . Once inside, it was fairly obvious that this was a far more casual environment than we'd seen thus far and also that there was an active promotion effort to sell gyudon seen by the pictures at the entrance and inside. These three elements pointed to a very positive experience for me so my hopes were raised. Then I saw Paul seated at a table… Service was effectively self-service so there were no menus at the table but only at the counter so I went to have a look and we ordered two gyudon and a tofu ramen salad,^[3] seeing that we were in a ramen shop. Once ordered, they said they would bring it over which I thought a bit odd. In a true Japanese style, the food came when it was ready rather than together which was, again, just what we wanted.

Beef on rice is all you need for a gyudon, but a little bit of egg can help it along a bit and so to see a soft boiled "onsen" egg placed on the gyudon was something that warmed the heart. There was no pickled ginger in the dish, normally a point of disappointment but, even better than this, there was a pot of pickled ginger to use. The excitement and anticipation was high!

Digging in with the chopsticks showed that the volume of beef was not so high and the egg hid that fact a little bit so it would not necessarily be a filling bowl on its own. The beef was subtly flavoured and fairly light but was, of course, flavoured by the addition of egg. Having liberally sprinkled ginger over it too, (after having tried without), it was a pleasing combination but nothing special. I think, had I not tried other gyudons recently, I would have enjoyed this a lot more but it was actually quite average. Yamagoya is a ramen place and this was also a fairly cheap meal (the lowest so far) and with this in mind, it is an entirely acceptable gyudon but not one that I would travel for. We also received a tofu ramen salad which was a really nice mix of ingredients and quite refreshing and zesty. It worked very well as accompaniment and it made the size of the meal more appropriate.

In so many ways, Yamagoya is exactly the kind of slightly westernised version that Paul and I were looking for but I don't feel like it quite had it right overall. The casual setting, the counter ordering, the pickled ginger at the table and even the sliding door were all the details that I wanted to see. If I worked a little closer, I think I would go for lunch every so often as it seems a nice, quick meal that is the right size for lunch. I would not, however, travel too far for the gyudon but I imagine the ramen may be a little better and I will almost certainly return to try that out. Being a counter service kind of place is quite appealing and the fact you can eat and then walk out is a real draw to me - this could only be better if you ordered by vending machine. Maybe another branch will open.

Cost of gyudon: £7.50

Yamagoya

49 the Cut, London, SE1 8LF

1. A little like the salads in McDonald's - which are not really there for you to order but really just to give breadth to the menu to look.↩

<sup>2. The vast majority of doors for eateries in Japan are on these sliding doors - I assume a riff on the sliding paper doors that you find in homes.↩
3. This appeared to be a cold ramen without broth but a cold sauce to pour over the top.↩</sup>

ロン丼牛ドン / London Gyudon 02: Koya (City)

There is an element of the difficult second album about episode 2. The initial rush of excitement and anticipation of a project has dissipated a little but there is still a bit of it left. With comparison now possible, do you alter direction or double down? Unlike music, where there are quite a few directions that you can go in, a project focusing on the specifics of gyudon in London kind of locks you in so "double down" it was.

The location was down to me this time, in the spirit of sharing the burden, and so I went for a place I'd heard of a few times but never visited. Koya has two branches in London - the original in Soho and an offshoot in the city. In a probably vain attempt to introduce variability into a fixed project, I chose the City one^[1] as 02. Unfortunately, Paul had not realised this and made his way to the Soho^[2] one and when that was sorted out, we went in a little later than planned.

I hadn't really looked specifically for gyudon or, more widely, donburi that much in London and doing a more specific search highlighted the dearth of options away from the west end so this was an opportunity. This was still an offshoot of an original Soho place so I guess it is hard to start something new outside of the west end. There seems to be a proliferation of Ramen places over the last few years and sushi is very popular for lunch within London.

Koya City is a fairly new place and that showed in the way it was set up and the clientele. The area it is in is a brand new building for Bloomberg^[3] and also the nearest train station, Cannon Street, has been refurbished recently. Being in the city^[4] meant that there was an expectation of other city workers (or "salarymen" and "office ladies") in the evenings and so a more brisk trade than I would expect in Soho on a Wednesday night. At 6:30, it wasn't full but not empty either so it was a welcoming sight.

The menu could be as extensive as it liked but that would be irrelevant - we ordered a gyudon each and some sides. Koya is better known for udon and it actually has quite a selection but it doesn't have that much more on the menu^[5] as appropriate sides so we ordered another main to share between us of cold udon with a sesame dipping sauce along with some fried tofu with enoki mushrooms.

I'd been recommended Koya when I had asked on twitter so my expectation was fairly high but also tempered by the knowledge that it was still going to be a restaurant. Japanese restaurants generally bring food out as and when it is ready but we were fortunate to get everything at the same time including a miso soup each.

Seeing the gyudon brought a mixture of pleasure and disappointment as it did not seem there wasn't much meat but there was a sprinkle of pickled, red ginger. Mixtures of disappointment and pleasure are what I live for so things looked positive. I tucked in and, what was this feeling? Was it what I thought it was? Was it natsukashii ("nostalgic")? Yep, that's what it was. Dredging up taste memories that I'd forgotten about, I was very surprised. Japanese gyudon is actually pretty salty I suddenly remembered, it isn't just a cheap meat, it is stringy and sort of tender. I wasn't sure if I was implanting this into my brain but Paul concurred. I dug in deeper into the rice. As it happened the volume of meat wasn't great so there was quite a bit of rice underneath which initially felt like a bit of a con. But, that rice was subtly flavoured by the meat and light sauce to make it really quite moreish. Digging in deeper still for a rounded mouthful of rice, meat and a little sprinkle of ginger gave those flavours and then rounded it off with the sharp flavour of the ginger which, again, was definitely hitting the right notes of my memory banks. This was pretty impressive and better than I was expecting. It felt a bit like an alarm going off in my head. And, it actually was an alarm going off but not in my head - the restaurant had a real and repeated problem of the smoke alarm going off. It was not ideal and although kind of fun the first couple of times, it was significantly less so the next eight or nine times.

The miso soup was actually a little different to what I expected too and even came with a spoon with which to have it. This kind of threw me and I did use it initially before realising that was too weird. The soup was without seaweed but did have radish to change the flavour which took some saltiness out of the meal making it a nice offset for the gyudon itself. The tofu was also a bit more coherent and stayed in cubes rather than falling apart.

And so, on to the "sides". Koya's extensive noodle selection made me think that they probably know what they are doing so we went for a simple udon to get a bit of the purist flavour and with a thick, creamy dipping gomadare (literally sesame sauce). The udon itself was cold (you can have hot udon too, we both fancied cold to go as a side) as was the sauce so it had an almost salady feel. Again, this was good but the gomadare was maybe a little thicker than it needed to be so the amount of sauce was a bit uneven and could mask the flavour of the udon. I'd recommend it but I think I would have preferred the simplest of dishes which would be zaru udon (cold udon dipped into a simple tsuyu sauce). The other "side" was an actual side rather than another shared main and was a more subtle tofu dish than I was expecting. The wording "Fried tofu with mushrooms and sauce" gave a different impression to the lightly fried large tofu piece we actually got. Again, it was of a certain style that did not quite work perfectly but was still very nice and easily finished. The tofu went quite well with the gomadare which allowed us to offset the surfeit of sauce on one dish with the subtlety of the other.

Overall, I was really surprised at the meal due to the gyudon. In many ways, this felt more Japanese due to the subtle elements to the dishes but the surroundings were a clear, clean "every restaurant" in many ways with little to distinguish it from a neighbouring burger restaurant or pizza place. That is not a negative, per se, and it still looked quite "cool" and I actually enjoyed the fact that the staff were not all oriental and it gave a better indication of the context of the location. The food felt sort of incongruous in that way but I will definitely be back. The spoon with the soup would normally be a massive sign that we were about to get a novelty meal but this indicator seemed less about unwitting capture and more about accessibility, which is a noble aim. The gyudon was the best I have had in a very long time but I am intrigued by the other offerings so I'm sure I'll go to try those too. Koya City seems less of a sharing kind of place than other Asian restaurants with its focus on difficult to share donburis so that is worth considering if you fancy a visit. And you should fancy a visit.

Cost of gyudon: £11.60

Koya city
10-12 Bloomberg Arcade London EC4N 8AR

(other branches are available)

^{1. This decision was entirely unaffected by the fact that the City branch was closer to my workplace, near City Hall. And anyone who says it was is guilty of slander. Or libel. Whichever one it is depending on the method of communication.↩}

^{2. Brilliantly, Paul was quite smug as he answered the phone as I called him. "why is Saif calling, probably to tell me he is running late. But I am on time, I am great." is probably close to what he was thinking. It was nice to give him the opportunity to be smug and then also the quick correction of his emotions.↩}

^{3. I was asked to refrain from taking photos in the arcade, the creeping takeover of space by private organisations that make it feel public, I guess.↩}

^{4. For those not in the know, "the city" in London refers to the area administered by the corporation of London and is sometimes also referred to as the square mile. Although not exclusive to the area, it is known for being a financial hub and so has many professional services in the area too.↩}

^{5. It has a three page menu, one page for different udons (btw the lack of italics suggests that this is a loan word in English and so I am applying English grammar - so udon can be pluralised even though the original language has no plurals), one for drinks and one for everything else, including gyudon.↩}

ロン丼牛ドン / London Gyudon 01: Lingo

Episode 1 was to take place near Piccadilly Circus where there seems to be quite a few Japanese establishments and a bit of a media set around Golden Square. I would guess that this first time will not be the last time to this area. 

Lingo is a fairly well established restaurant and I had been there before a few years ago and had different food. I'd also had gyudon there but as a take away on a (well priced) lunch deal. 01, however, was not my choice so that past experience was irrelevant. 

A Wednesday evening may not be the best time to judge how busy a restaurant gets but we were seated promptly at the ground floor as we went in without a reservation. The floor was almost full but there is space downstairs that I didn't see. The atmosphere was fine with enough of a background noise to make it comfortable. As it happens, most diners seemed to be in pairs or small groups and the upstairs does lend itself to that ambience. It also had a sort of honesty and enthusiasm that feels common at these kinds of Japanese restaurants, which I think was highlighted with a wonderful sign about wasted food.

Paul and I decided^[1] to have gyudon accompanied by a few sides/starters. We discussed the rules - we do both have to order gyudon but extras can be whatever is decided and so we got some kimchi pancake and gyōza. The orders did not all come together to my disappointment and we were served miso soup followed by pancake, gyōza and then gyudon  as separate courses. 

The Korean influenced pancake was nice with a good bit of crispness that set off the strange mellow and pickled flavour of kimchi. Handily, it was cut up for sharing. The gyōza were sort of a mixture between the fried and steamed variants with the jacket being rather softer than the gyōza that I am used to. They also did not have the flat, crispy bottom that I like but the taste of the dumplings was definitely acceptable. 

The gyudon came out together and it was clear from first sight that this would not be scratching the relevant gyudon itch. Oh, it was definitely a beef bowl but it was also a restaurant and so it looked quite a different beast. To assess the meal is quite difficult in some ways as the gyōza were probably a good indication of the restaurant as a whole - nice for what it was but not quite what I was after. As you'd expect, the beef was placed on a bowl of white rice with a sweet sauce but there were some other elements. A spot of yellow was placed in the form of some pickles but, and this is sort of key to the experience, there was nothing else at the table. Red pickled ginger is usually available at gyudon bars and it is up to the diner to add it and I would usually add quite a bit for both the taste and the texture. The other major difference was the look of the beef itself which was rich looking and fairly chunky. It looked really good and covered the rice as you'd expect so the portion was also fairly decent, if not exactly overflowing. The meal as a whole was the right size. We didn't have dessert because, well, you don't have to have Asian dessert - not always the best way of finishing a meal. We left as seemingly the last people in the restaurant and it was only about 9pm^[2] which was a surprise.

As I have said, gyudon, as I know it, is a cheap meal and so this made the serving just not quite feel right which might be a tad unfair. We both enjoyed the beef bowl as the meat was tender, tasty and had been marinated with onion in a good sweet sauce. It reminded me of what you would do if you didn't have the right ingredients - in this case the restaurant does not have the type of stringier meat available. In many ways, I would recommend the meal as a meal (so do go) but not for the gyudon. Paul mentioned that it was not a restaurant that he would order gyudon at - the menu is extensive and it makes more sense to get a few items (like the pancake) to share rather than a bowl to yourself. 

I wonder whether this will be a common comment.
We shall but see. 

Cost of gyudon: £11.50

http://www.lingocuisine.com/

1 Lower John Street, London W1F 9DT

<sup>1. This decision is sort of out of our hands in all honesty, with the project as it is.↩
2. We went on to discuss and converse to another place. We have, for mundane, convenience reasons, ended up at Caffè Nero in Soho a few times of late. It is opposite the relatively well known Bar Italia but is not as pressured. I'm sure the coffee is not as cool either but I rarely have coffee “out” and had tea anyway. This particular one is open very late - until 2am on a school night. This is pretty handy to know when there is a need for a place to sit of a night sans alcohol. When we got there, there was quite a commotion with the staff swearing at some customers. And the customers, unsurprisingly responding in kind. On the face of it, the shop staff seemed overly aggressive and the customers sat down and continued flinging abuse. I thought it quite odd that they stayed in the cafe for quite some time and offered insults and conversations to the staff. Eventually, the police were called to eject them. A few moments later, another group came in and a similar thing happened - it was all pretty exciting. It then made conversation flourish across the tables and we got chatting to a guy on his own on the table next to us. He was drinking nothing. His tip, as a “poor artist” was to pick up a take away cup and sit at a table. He said the coffee was terrible there anyway. He actually ran a project to make art more accessible and he asked what we did. I answered “I'm an accountant for…” and I could sense his disappointment. It is a fairly common thing after starting a conversation. Luckily Paul had a more interesting answer so the conversation as a whole continued.↩</sup>

Gyudon in London: ロン丼牛ドン

Japanese food, like so much of Japanese culture, is a fairly simple proposition made complicated by the complexities of the Japanese people. The most well known Japanese food is probably sushi which is a bit of raw fish with a little bit of white rice. This sounds pretty simple, but in order to be a sushi chef requires years of training in order to get those basics to a high enough standard. Rice is very much the staple of the nation and is consumed daily by most people and often multiple times in a day. Japanese food is actually quite varied in terms of ingredients but it is often accompanied by a bowl of white rice and soup. 

One form of having that rice is to not have the rice separately but with a topping on top of a bowl of rice and these are “don”^[1]. Popular dons are with eel (unadon), pork cutlets (katsudon), tempura (tendon) etc^[2]. but I think the most popular is the beef bowl, or gyudon. There are three major chains Sukiya, Yoshinoya and my personal favourite Matsuya. I have a soft spot for Matsuya as there was one which was very close to where I lived in Japan and it always felt so welcoming. It is also one of the places that I have previously mentioned in a blog post from 2003^[3] (link) and it links in with that particular friend of mine and how succinctly it seemed to represent some of the basic differences between the UK and Japan in a few transactions. 

Gyudon is a very cheap meal, I think the basic form at Matsuya, with a serving of miso soup, was 390 yen which was about £2 at the time. In all honesty, I would have a “set”^[4] which had salad and some extras too if I had gyudon but this added maybe 200 yen to the cost. Obviously, with such a cheap meal, the quality of the components was not stellar, though Japan has quite a high “low” so it was far from terrible. It is made, not with “good” chunks of meat, but a stringy, saucy meat. This is quite difficult to get outside of Japan as with a niche food, you will have to charge a bit more. And this is the challenge, an appropriate level of gyudon is really hard to find. 

And this is the challenge… 

We’ll see how far this goes but the “Gyudon in London” project I am starting here is very simple, it involves going to different places in London that serve gyudon and eating gyudon. From that place which is in London. 

As I rather like circularity, my partner for this will be the aforementioned Paul and our reference point will be the starting point for all of it: Matsuya in Koshigaya. In many ways, this is all just about the warmth we have for Matsuya in Koshigaya.

See all of the Gyudon posts here:
http://walletsandswords.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/ロン丼牛ドン

<sup>1. Don refers to the bowl itself that the food is served in rather than the food. This is similar to the “balti” which is a curry that was first concocted in the UK and means “bucket” in Bengali.↩
2. My favourite named don is the “oyakodon” which is made up of the words “oya” and “ko” which mean parent and child respectively. What does that mean? It is a mixture of chicken and egg. This is a great name!↩
3. A number of years ago, I worked as a teacher of English in Japan. I was based in the southern Saitama region and was there for approximately three years. When I mentioned to a few people about moving to Japan, food was mentioned frequently: “how are you going to have raw fish every day?”. Of course, there are loads of types of food in Japan and sushi is not particularly commonly eaten - it is often for special occasions.↩
4. I liked Matsuya as it was simple, quick and tasty which is a pretty killer combination. I enjoyed having a raw egg with gyudon and salad. Pickled ginger came in a pot which I sprinkled liberally over the raw egg with a little barbecue sauce. These kinds of places didn't invite disapproval and felt like anything goes kinds of places. The other thing i liked there was The “Hamburg set” which was a beefburger (hamburg steak) with a sauce accompanied with rice and soup.↩</sup>