There are some surprises you don’t want in your gyudon…so we explore other options. 

Beef bowl lovers around Japan were shaken to the core recently, following two high-profile cases of food contamination at popular gyudon restaurant chain Sukiya. One customer in Tokyo reportedly found a cockroach in their meal, just weeks after it was revealed that a customer in Tottori Prefecture found a rat in their miso soup.

After issuing a formal apology to the public, Sukiya announced it would be closing all its branches in Japan, save for a few mall locations, from the morning of 31 March to the morning of 4 April.

▼ Our local branch, closed until 9 a.m. on 4 April.

The note in the window reads:

To customers,

We would like to sincerely apologise to our customers for the inconvenience and discomfort caused by the recent incident of foreign objects being found in products at some Sukiya stores.

Sukiya takes this situation very seriously and will close all stores nationwide, with the exception of a few, from 9:00 am on Monday, 31 March to 9:00 am on Friday, 4 April. During this time, we will conduct thorough cleaning to ensure our stores are clean and sanitised.

All our staff will continue to work hard until the day you can visit us again with peace of mind.

We would like to express our sincere regret and ask for your continued patronage in the future.

With the incidents causing consternation amongst beef bowl lovers, everyone can agree that this is a sad state of affairs. It became such a hot topic for our team of beef bowl-loving Japanese-language reporters that they even held a meeting about it, and as they expressed their views, they all agreed there were some things nobody wants to see in their gyudon.

But then they got to thinking…might there be some other so-called “foreign objects” that they wouldn’t mind seeing?

Putting their creative minds to work, they grabbed a pack of Sukiya’s frozen gyudon from the nearby supermarket for 538 yen (US$3.66).

▼ The bag contains three servings of gyudon.

So what would our team think if they found these “foreign objects” in their beef bowls?

Starting with the olives, these turned out to be a good match. Sure, they were visually striking, standing out against the muted hues of the traditional ingredients in the bowl, but the salty flavours paired well with the soy sauce-based seasoning in the meat topping, making them the firmest of friends.

Moving on to another salty pairing, we have “bainiku“, which literally translates as “plum meat” but is actually umeboshi (pickled plum) flesh.

While we wouldn’t normally want to see any other type of “meat” interfering with our beef, we’ll make an exception for plum flesh, as it pairs well with the rice and adds a tart sweetness to the topping.

With the pickled plum adding some traditional flair to the bowl, we continued the Japanese theme with wasabi mayonnaise.

Mixing the two together allowed us to control the spice levels, and adding them to the gyudon enhanced its deliciousness tremendously.

Moving on to something a little more unorthodox, we have…

▼ …butter.

Anything with butter is a win in our eyes, and this was no exception. In fact, it was so good that we began to question why Sukiya had never thought to release a Butter Gyudon, and if we had some cheese to add, it would’ve made things even better.

With the olives and seasonings being a hit, it was time to beef things up, literally and figuritively, with a dollop of yakisoba.

Fried noodles bring extra carbs and extra depth of flavour to the mix, making it feel like some sort of guilty pleasure a student might mash together at a university cafeteria.

In the spirit of mashing things together, the team decided to put everything into the bowl, creating something that no longer even looked like gyudon.

This really throws the rule book out the window, but after tasting it, the team realised rules were meant to be broken.

It was sinfully good, with all the flavours melding seamlessly together for a decadent feast. However, all the added toppings made this a pretty expensive beef bowl, so if our reporters had to choose just one foreign object in their gyudon, it would have to be olives for their unusual, salty accent.

While our reporters may have tried to see the silver lining in the Sukiya incident, they all agree the incident itself is no laughing matter. It’s one thing for Mr Sato to throw caution to the wind when it comes to food hygiene, but another thing entirely when it’s your favourite gyudon chain. Sukiya still has a lot of work to do to win back their customers’ trust, so perhaps they should extend an olive branch by adding free olives to their beef bowls, as an initial peace offering.

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