It’s hard to imagine a more honest name than the Kobore Wagyu Rare Steak-ju . If you’re a foodie who’s into Japanese cuisine, you’ve probably learned that “don” indicates a rice bowl of some kind, like how oyakodon is a bowl of chicken and egg over rice or katsudon is a pork cutlet bowl. Another suffix you’ll sometimes come across, though, is “ju.
” Loosely meaning “layer,” in culinary contexts ju refers to a box of rice with toppings . But while technically the only difference between don and ju is the type of container it’s served in, in practice restaurants’ ju tend to be more luxurious than their don cousins , and we stumbled across a great example of this (in terms of clearly illustrating the phenomenon and being delicious) at a restaurant in Tokyo’s downtown Shinjuku neighborhood . Called Harapekotei , the restaurant bills itself as a wagyu-dokoro, or “a place for a place for Japanese beef.
” What really convinced us to give the place a try, though, was the sign they’d posted outside the restaurant promoting their wagyu rare steak-ju . So we bounded up the stairs to the second-floor entrance and walked inside. The restaurant’s atmosphere has an elegant retro air with stained glass windows and rosewood countertops, which makes the meal ticket vending machine you order from feel a little out of place, but not so much as to dampen our excitement as we looked over our options.
We decided on the Kobore Wagyu Rare Steak-ju , which you can see.