Can the Cheese Burger Don join Japan’s beefy meal royalty?

When it comes to beef, there’s no more broadly beloved dish in Japan than the beef bowl, or gyudon, as it’s called in Japanese. Over on the other side of the Pacific, America’s flagship beefy meal is the hamburger, and by association its evolved form, the cheeseburger.

Now gyudon restaurant chain Matusya is arranging for a meeting of east and west with its newest creation the Cheeseburger Bowl/Cheese Burger Don.

This fusion menu item made its debut on November 12 at select Matsuya locations, and luckily one of them, the Shinjuku Sanchome branch in downtown Tokyo, happens to be very close to SoraNews24 headquarters. So when lunchtime rolled around, we headed over to try it for ourselves.

The regular-size Cheese Burger Don we ordered is pried at 850 yen (US$5.70), but there’s also a extra-large version for 950. Staring at the top of the stack, there’s a fried egg, a common topping for deluxe burgers in Japan.

Underneath that is the cheese…

…followed by the hamburger patty…

…tomato sauce (playing the role of a hamburger’s ketchup)…

…and, finally, vegetables and mayo, with a bed of rice at the very bottom.

In other words, this is truly what you’d get if you took a cheeseburger, removed the top and bottom half of the bun, and then put everything else, still in a stack, on top of a bowl of white rice. Honestly, we’re glad Matsuya went the simple route here. It’s just about the truest possible manifestation of the idea of a cheeseburger rice bowl, and we’d have been disappointed if they’d gotten too cute or clever by trying to add merely a touch of cheeseburger essence instead. They call it the Cheese Burger Don, and there’s no way you could accuse them of not delivering on the promise that name makes.

So how is it to eat? According to our reporter P.K. Sanjun, who handled taste-testing duties, awesome!

Matsuya has previously shown they know what they’re doing when it comes to making hamburger patties, as they’ve had a hamburger steak set meal on their menu for years. But whereas their hamburger steak sets come with more heavily flavored sauces, the Cheese Burger Don’s sauces and seasonings are balanced in a way that lets the beef flavors shine through more strongly. In particular, P.K. was impressed by the tomato sauce, which is different from the one used in Matsuya’s pre-existing tomato sauce hamburger steak set. For the Cheese Burger Don, the tomato sauce has noticeable tart notes, but they work to accentuate the meaty flavors. The patty also has an enticing texture, with the beef ground to just the right degree of coarseness.

So yes, the Cheese Burger Don is a harmonious meeting of Japanese and American takes on how best to use beef. A full list of Matsuya locations where it’s currently available for a limited time can be found here, and for Tokyo includes the Shibua Dogenzaka-ue and Shinjuku Nishiguchi branches, but P.K. is hoping the Cheese Burger Don becomes a big enough hit for Matsuya to expand its availability to all locations.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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