Not to be confused with another popular chain, Gyukatsu Motomura, Gyukatsu Kyoto Katsugyo was founded in 2014 in Kyoto and has over 70 stores worldwide. It’s known for its deep-fried premium beef cutlets cooked to medium-rare doneness and served with rice, miso soup, and dipping sauces and condiments. The hot plates are for diners to sear the cutlets to their preferred doneness. In Kyoto itself, the restaurant can command queues as long as one to two hours.
Here in Singapore, you’ll be greeted with the same menu as the restaurants in Japan. Choose from a variety of beef cuts starting from $25, with options ranging from the standard sirloin to tenderloin, chuck tail flap, beef tongue, and even premium A5 Miyazaki Wagyu. For the undecided, half-and-half variations are aplenty, so you can customise your set to your liking, whether it’s a sirloin and tenderloin pairing or chuck tail flap and sirloin combination.
We recommend going for the chuck tail flap and tenderloin set ($32). The chuck tail flap is cut into thinner slices while the tenderloin comes in heftier chunks, and both are Haneshita beef – a rare cut of beef that the original Gyukatsu Kyoto Katsugyu uses. We wouldn’t suggest going for the beef tongue as it was too thickly cut and hence rubbery and difficult to chew. But if budget isn’t an issue, then we definitely recommend going for the premium wagyu sirloin set ($55). The wagyu slices are melt-in-your-mouth tender, cut to just the right thickness, and best enjoyed with the special pairing sauce of daikon radish ponzu and a touch of wasabi.
That said, each set also comes with standard condiments like dashi soy sauce, sansho pepper salt, a special Gyukatsu sauce, Kyoto dashi curry, and an onsen egg. Special sets like the beef tongue and wagyu are served with unique additions of togarashi miso and daikon radish ponzu, respectively. With so many possible combinations, no two bites taste the same, and we also appreciated the option of mixing in the curry and onsen egg into our leftover rice.
While the hot plates are a signature element of the dining experience, we noticed that the cutlets tended to get stuck on the surface, perhaps due to the cast iron plates being new and unseasoned. The meats also appeared to be closer to rare rather than medium-rare, which meant more searing time was required, unlike the ‘one-second-rule’ that we were recommended – teething troubles that would hopefully go away with time. Nevertheless, dining here might be worth a shot if you haven’t managed to snag those tickets to Japan.