Gyūdon
Gyūdon, also known as gyūmeshi, is a Japanese dish consisting of a bowl of rice topped with beef and onion, simmered in a mildly sweet sauce flavored with dashi, soy sauce and mirin. It may sometimes also be served with toppings such as raw or soft poached eggs, negi onions, grated cheese or kimchi. A popular food in Japan, it is commonly eaten with beni shōga, shichimi, and a side dish of miso soup.
History
After the arrival of Buddhism in Japan in the 6th century, consumption of meat became rare in Japanese culture and in many cases frowned upon, both for religious and practical reasons. It was only after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and the subsequent westernization of the country that meat began to be widely eaten.Gyūdon is considered to be derived from gyūnabe, a beef hot pot originating in the Kantō region of eastern Japan. Gyūnabe originally consisted of cuts of beef simmered with Welsh onions and miso, but by the late 1800s, a variation that used a special stock called warishita – a combination of a sweetener such as sugar or mirin and soy sauce – instead of miso and featuring additional ingredients such as shirataki and tofu began to appear. This version of gyūnabe eventually came to be served with rice in a deep bowl, becoming gyūmeshi or gyūdon.
By the 1890s, gyūmeshi had already become popular in Tokyo, but was yet unknown in other places such as Kyoto or Osaka. In 1899, Eikichi Matsuda opened the first Yoshinoya restaurant, at the fish market in Tokyo's Nihonbashi district. Gyūdon, under the moniker kamechabu, were also being sold in food stands in the streets of Ueno and Asakusa.
Originally disparaged as working-class food, gyūdon experienced a surge in popularity that transcended class boundaries in the aftermath of the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923, when it was one of the food items readily available to the citizens of a devastated Tokyo. It was around this time that gyūdon evolved further into its present form: a bowl of rice topped with thin slices of beef with onions.
Although some establishments still offer gyūdon with a sukiyaki-like topping, the dish as served in most major food chains nowadays simply consist of rice, beef and onions.
As fast food
Gyūdon can be found in many restaurants in Japan, and some fast food chains specialize exclusively in the dish. Many of these chain shops are open round the clock. The top three gyūdon chains in Japan are Sukiya, Yoshinoya, and Matsuya.Some of these establishments might refer to gyūdon by other names: Matsuya for instance sells gyūdon under the name gyūmeshi, while Hanamaru Udon, a chain specializing mainly in Sanuki udon, includes what it calls gyūniku gohan in its menu.
While many establishments charge for miso soup or offer it as a part of a set, Matsuya is known for serving complimentary miso soup for customers who are eating in.
Customer specifications
It is common to order gyūdon with extra sauce or no sauce. Customers can request even more sauce with tsuyudakudaku or even tsuyudakudakudaku.The practice of ordering tsuyudaku is speculated to have started in the 1950s as a code word originally used by staff. One theory says that daku comes from the taku part of takusan which, when doubled as in daku-daku, is also the onomatopoeia for the sound of dripping.
Ban of US beef
As a consequence of the fear of mad cow disease and a ban on imports of beef from the United States, Yoshinoya and most competitors were forced to terminate gyūdon sales in Japan on 11 February 2004. Yoshinoya moved its business to a similar dish made with pork instead of beef, which it named butadon. Sukiya continued to serve gyūdon and also added a dish, tondon, equivalent to Yoshinoya's butadon, to its menu.The Japanese Diet voted to resume beef imports from the United States in early May 2005, but the ban was reinstated in January 2006 after detectable quantities of prohibited spine tissue were found in the first post-ban shipments arriving in Japan. As the issue was discussed between the United States and Japanese governments, gyūdon vendors and customers waited for a resolution. As of September 2006, the ban has been lifted.