Japan’s gyudon king now has Gyunikutama Ramen available too for the winter.

Yoshinoya’s big thing is, and always has been, beef bowls, or, as they’re called in Japanese, gyudon. So strong is the connection between Yoshinoya and gyudon that when we were looking at the menu and read “gyu” our brains were almost ready to mentally autofill it to “gyudon.” Thankfully, that didn’t happen, because if it had, we might have missed out on something we don’t expect to find at Yoshinoya: ramen.

▼ You can see 牛, the kanji for gyu, meaning “cow” and in restaurant contexts “beef,” on the screen, and the photo is also a tip-off that this is no mere beef bowl.

New to the Yoshinoya menu as of November 27 is the Gyunikutama Ramen Nabezen, which translates to Beef and Egg Ramen Hot Pot Meal. This is a set of strips of beef and vegetables simmered in a ramen broth that’s a mixture of tonkotsu (pork stock) and soy sauce stock, accompanied by ramen noodles, an egg to crack and cook in the broth, rice, and pickles. There’s also a non-set version of the ramen that skips the rice and pickles and, at 899 yen (US$6), is a little cheaper than the 987-yen set meal.

Up until now, there’s only been one Yoshinoya branch in all of Japan that serves noodles, located in a part of Narita Airport’s Terminal 2 that can only be accessed by outgoing international flyers after they’ve gone through the security check. Yoshinoya’s parent company has also dabbled in the noodle world with Wada, an Osaka-based ramen chain with a small number of branches. This, though, is the first time Yoshinoya has offered ramen of its own at all of its branches, and so we were eager to give it a try.

As you can see, the noodles are served in their own separate bowl. This might have you thinking that Yoshinoya wants you to eat them like the style called tsukemen, where you give dry noodles a quick dip into the broth before eating them. While you can do that, you can also opt to put the noodles into the bubbling hot pot to simmer together with the beef, veggies, and egg, keeping everything nice and warm and letting their flavors thoroughly combine, a style of ramen known as nabeyaki.

That’s what we did first, and the results were very tasty. Despite being a brand-new dish at a chain that, with a single branch as an exception, doesn’t ordinarily do ramen, Yoshinoya’s Gyunikutama Ramen tastes great, rich and flavorful thanks to the mix of beef, pork stock, and egg. It’s thoroughly satisfying, with no discordant quirkiness to throw your taste buds off and spoil a mouthful’s moment. The noodles themselves are also expertly made, with a uniformly smooth texture that lets them easily slide up from your chopsticks as you slurp them.

On the other hand, when we switched gears and tried eating some of our noodles tsukemen-style, we were less impressed. Dedicated tsukemen sauces are usually thicker in consistency and more heavily flavored, since the noodles will only be briefly dunked before they’re eaten. With the Yoshinoya’s broth being closer to that of non-tsukemen ramen in those aspects, though, it’s harder for the noodles to soak up enough liquid and flavor with just a quick dip.

Because of that, eating Yoshinoya’s Gyunikutama Ramen nabeyaki style would be our top recommendation right now, because when the broth is this good, it’d be a shame not to fully enjoy it.

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