As my husband and I were staying nearby at Mercure Tokyu Stay Osaka Namba, we decided to take a walk around the Dotonbori area and look for a dinner spot. We chanced upon this restaurant with a super long queue and I recognized it to be the highly recommended one from a Telegram group chat.
Gyukatsu Motomura is a popular Japanese restaurant chain with multiple outlets across the country. It is known for its gyukatsu (beef cutlet) served with a personal hot stone grill for customers to cook their gyukatsu to their preferred doneness. The photos of the food online looked good so we thought to give it a shot since we were already here!
- Inclusions:
- Beef cutlet (1 portion) set meal for 2
- Spent: JPY3860
The wait time was no joke though as we stood in line for about 45 minutes, probably the longest we’ve ever queued for food (we’re eat-to-live people, okay?). Don’t be fooled by the external queue outside the building as it continues inside down a flight of stairs to the basement.
Inside the restaurant, the dining space is plain and unadorned. We were seated at the counters with a full view of the chefs at work, pretty cool!
There is only one thing on the menu here – gyukatsu. All you have to choose is the portion (1, 1.5 or 2) and whether you want complimentary cold tea to go with it. The set also comes with rice, miso soup, sauces, grated yam, spicy cod roe and warabi mochi dessert. You can ask for an additional bowl of rice at no extra cost.
Our initial plan was to share a 1.5 portion as we wanted to leave tummy space to try other food in the vicinity but alas, the staff said that every guest has to order their own set. As such, we went with 1 portion each, which worked out perfectly. Otherwise, we’d be fighting for every piece!
This gyukatsu was perfectly seasoned with an umami taste and a melt-in-your-mouth texture. Together with the sauces, it was an absolute divine experience. The miso soup was flavourful and not too salty (I desperately wanted another bowl of this). The creamy potato salad had a mild peppery kick to it, which was really nice. I typically don’t like mochi because of its overly sticky consistency but this one surprisingly melted away after a few bites, plus it had just the right level of sweetness ❤ An amazing meal indeed!
If it’s your first time visiting, you can refer to the guide provided on how to best enjoy your meal, like cooking the gyukatsu on the hot stone grill and pouring the grated yam over your rice.
Staff were very friendly too, helping us take photos, offering more sauces and restarting the fire for my stone grill when it went out (:
My overall rating of the experience: 5 out of 5 stars. The food here was totally worth the 45-minute wait! Every element in the set meal was just glorious in both texture and taste, especially the star of the show – the gyukatsu. This is a restaurant where the only choice you need is how big a portion of gyukatsu you want. Do note that there’s no sharing of a set between customers, everyone is required to order their own. Service was fantastic as well – the staff were really quite in tune with what we needed and offered assistance without us asking. Although the dining space felt more like a functional grab-and-go, the food was honestly way too scrumptious for us to pay any attention to such peripheries. It is definitely a restaurant I see myself returning to again and again when I’m in the country!
If this post helped you in some way and you’d like to buy me a coffee, I’d be incredibly grateful (:
Dania Experiences 