Matsuya makes the step from beefy bowls to milky drinks, but only at select locations for now.

Hamburgers and milk shakes have been happily coexisting on fast food restaurant menus for generations…so why not add them to the offerings at other beef-centric eateries? This week Matsuya, one of Japan’s big-three gyudon/beef bowl chains and rival to Yoshinoya and Sukiya, started serving up a brand-new line of milk shakes.

▼ Matsu シェイク = Matsu Shake

Well, it sort of started serving them up. Matsuya has over 1,300 branches across Japan, but currently Matsu Shakes are only available at five of them. Luckily for us, one of those, the Adachi Rokucho branch in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward, is withing striking/snacking distance of SoraNews24 HQ, and so as soon as Matsuya’s milk shakes went on sale on April 28, we rushed out to try them.

And when we say try them, we mean all of them. The initial lineup consists of three different shakes, and while our dietician may not recommend a triple-serving of dessert drinks, we’re willing to defy such guidelines to bring you, our cherished readers, the full story.

We started off with the Vanilla Matsu Shake (180 yen [US$1.15] for a small, 240 yen for a medium). Taking a sip, we found an orthodox vanilla shake. Matsuya isn’t trying to do anything tricky or quirky here. They’ve simply taken aim at the creamy sweetness you’d expect in a vanilla milk shake, and they’ve hit the mark, with a deliciously satisfying flavor profile that’s exactly what one would anticipate.

Things start to get a little cleverer with the Strawberry Matsu Shake (290/350 yen). Rather than using strawberry ice cream, the base here is the same as with the Vanilla Matsu Shake, but with pieces of fruit as a topping, with strawberry sauce drizzled in too. Again, there’s nothing shocking here, but this is a perfectly tasty treat with the strawberry adding some extra tart complexity to the flavor profile and also adding some variety to the texture. Matsuya serves its shakes with a wide-diameter straw of the type you’d get for boba/tapioca bubble tea, but you can also get a spoon and eat the Strawberry Matsu Shake like it’s a little parfait.

And last, we come to the Vanilla and Choco Cocoa Cookie Matsu Shake (320/380 yen).

Once again, we’ve got the vanilla base, but this time topped with chocolate sauce and chocolate cookie crumbles.

This was the standout of the trio. Sure, a cookies-and-cream-style shake isn’t anything earth-shattering on the conceptual level, but we were blown away by just how many cookie pieces Matsuya gave us! From our first sip to our last, we had a joyfully strong stream of cookies coming through the straw.

With only five Matsuya branches (Adachi Rokucho in Tokyo, Misato Shimohikogawa in Saitama, Kashiwa Aobadai and Higashi Kamagaya in Chiba, and Ayase Teraonishi in Kanagawa Prefecture) currently offering the Matsu Shakes, they appear to be in a test phase, so it’s possible that the recipes might be tweaked if/when they go nationwide. For now, though, the Vanilla and Choco Cocoa Cookie Matsu Shake is unique and delicious, so hopefully it’ll stay that way when it makes its all-Japan debut.

Related: Matsu Shake-serving Matusya location finder
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