I have been seeing photos of the beef version of tonkatsu from Gyukatsu Motomura floating around on Instagram for the longest time but was never convinced to give gyukatsu a try. I like tonkatsu but the idea of deep-fried beef cutlet felt weird to me.
During one night on our trip to Tokyo in February, we had no dinner reservations and was thinking about where to go for dinner when we decided to check out the Shimbashi outlet of Gyukatsu Motomura which is near our hotel. We have heard about the long queues at Motomura and were quite prepared to queue. Luckily, we managed to get a table in approximately 10 mins. The Shimbashi Motomura is a very small basement shop with plenty of fumes from the kitchen.
Gyukatsu Motomura sells only gyukatsu sets (so don’t go there if you don’t eat beef). The menu offers sets comprising different quantity of beef, with or without nagaimo, and an option to upsize the beef further. The set also comes with rice, shredded cabbage, miso soup and several sauces. I took the 130g beef set with nagaimo only because I love nagaimo. If you don’t like gooey shredded mountain yam, there is no need to order it because the nagaimo does not enhance the flavour of the beef.
The bowl of rice came with a small serving of mentaiko which made me really happy – I love mentaiko. As my better half doesn’t eat mentaiko, I ate his serving as well. Warm Japanese rice with mentaiko and nagaimo is so delicious.
I took a bite of the gyukatsu and couldn’t understand why I ever thought deep-fried breaded beef was weird. It is SO delicious! I like it better than tonkatsu now! Gyukatsu Motomura provides every customer with a small grill so if you find the gyukatsu too pink for your liking, you can just cook it a little more on the grill.
I am definitely making a return visit to Gyukatsu Motomura when I next visit Tokyo! You can find the list of Gyukatsu Motomura outlets on their website here. They have more than 10 outlets in Tokyo and a couple in Osaka.
