We check out another all-you-can-eat yakiniku deal in Shinjuku, just 1,080 yen!

In short order, it seems we at RocketNews24 have found ourselves not only unwitting experts in fast foodology – what, with our near-constant coverage of McDonald’s new pie flavors and Lotteria’s most recent forays into madness – but we’ve also added quite a few notches into our cheap, all-you-can-eat yakiniku deals belt (which doesn’t even fit us anymore, if we’re being honest).

But, recently, our resident yakiniku fiend, Mr. Sato, reported he may just have found the cheap all-you-can-eat yakiniku restaurant to rule them all.

Mi Sen So, an unassuming little place in the Shinjuku’s San-Chome district of Tokyo, had apparently long been catching Mr. Sato’s eye, as he would pass it on his lunchtime strolls. Finally, an opportunity arrived for Mr. Sato and another writer from our Japanese sister site to check this intriguing little place out, and they were not (entirely) disappointed!

In terms of cost performance and availability, Mi Sen So beats out both of the other all-you-can-eat yakiniku deals we’ve featured here at 1,080 yen (US$8) for 60 minutes of all-you-can-eat. And, if that weren’t enough, Mi Sen So also blows those other locations out of the water in terms of sheer volume of delicious yet of-questionable-provenance meat cuts you can stuff down your gullet.

See, most all-you-can eat deals, yakiniku or otherwise, offered in Tokyo tend to follow a similar procedure for making sure they don’t, you know, go out of business four hours after their grand opening: Diners have to order their all-you-can-eat food from a server by the plateful, and you only get to order more after you’ve finished a plate. If the restaurant staff decides you’ve wolfed down far too many gyoza dumplings or whatever, they can just conjure up some “kitchen delay” to ensure you don’t single-handedly consume the entire dumpling supply in all of Tokyo in one sitting (let’s face it, we would all do this if it were an option).

Mi Sen So, however, bucks this system and just offers up huge, heaping plates of raw meat cuts buffet style, so diners can go back for more any time they want and are free to pile it on.

Of course, a near never-ending smorgasbord of meat has to come with a tradeoff: Mr. Sato and his colleague say the meat wasn’t bad by any stretch, but it wasn’t exactly stellar quality. The spread also consists almost entirely of pork products and offal, so squeamish eaters might find the “all-you-can-eat” part of the offer sort of moot anyway. However, the restaurant also serves all-you-can-eat grilled vegetables, which ironically makes it one of the very few places strict vegetarian eaters can enjoy a filling meal in Tokyo.

Finally, although Mr. Sato didn’t mention this specifically, we’d be remiss not to point out that a bunch of raw organs piled unceremoniously on a plate and left to sit out, wriggling in their own juices like alien blood slugs, looks pretty gnarly, so we’ve saved those pics for last. Here you go!

Restaurant information
Mi Sen So / 味仙荘
Address: Tokyo-to, Shinjuku-ku, Shinjuku 5-15-12
東京都新宿区新宿5-15-2
Open weekdays 11:30 a.m.-11:30 p.m., weekends 12:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m.
Map

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