BLACOWS — Restaurant in Tokyo

TLDR; Excellent quality beef gets outshined by an overly complicated burger with too many competing sauces.

Don't get me wrong, Blacows is a good burger restaurant and yes, absolutely high-quality. But if you're positioning yourself as a gourmet burger restaurant and I have to pay almost $25 for a burger and fries, it's going to up my expectations. I want to be "wowed". Was I? Read on.

I came in on a Tuesday right when they opened for lunch and ordered what the menu says is the most popular item, "The Blacows Burger".

To be honest, I was hesitant to order it because on the menu, it lists this as the topping: cheese, bacon, tomato, lettuce, onion sauce, tartar sauce and BBQ sauce.

"3 different sauces?", I thought to myself. It sounded like overkill to me but I decided to trust the menu.

From an aesthetic point-of-view, the Blacows Burger is a great looking burger and the overall presentation was excellent.

But how is the flavor?

Unfortunately, what I had anticipated came to fruition--the 3 different sauces (onion, tartar and BBQ) weren't complimenting each other, they were competing. Most of all, this mess of sauces didn't really make the excellent beef patty the star of the show. It was getting so lost in saucy flavors.

My feedback to the Blacows is this: If you want to be known for high quality beef, then let the beef patty do the talking by removing all the sauces that don't allow to do that. I think the beef should be the focal point of the the burger and by removing the sauces, you would allow it to become that. It would really shine.

Other than, this meal was pretty standard. The service at Blacows was great and the atmosphere within the restaurant was enjoyable.

Would I come back here?

Yes, absolutely, but next time I would ask for the sauces on the side.

Other things worth noting: You can pay with cash or credit card. Out front, there is a store front where you can get burgers to go. To the right of the store is the door to...

Blacows is owned and operated by Meat Yawaza, a butcher specializing in premium quality wagyu. With their expertise in all things concerned with wagyu, it is of no surprise that they would venture into operating restaurants featuring wagyu.

They have a successful wagyu steak and hamburg steak restaurant in Gotanda, and a burger joint in Ebisu. They also have a joint wagyu steak, hamburg steak and burger outlet at Daimaru Tokyo Station (where they sell ridiculous 12,000 yen wagyu bento boxes).

Before I had the first bite of a Blacows burger, I had some reservations that a burger patty made from wagyu beef would be too greasy. One Blacows burger later, any silly concerns over grease were thrown out the proverbial window. The Blacows wagyu burger is juicy yet it is never greasy. We have a winner!

The usual suspects such as the Cheese Burger and Bacon Cheese Burger are great, but they offer many more combinations on their menu. In fact, the dinner menu offers even more choices than the sizable lunch menu. Many of my burger loving friends have Blacows on the very top of their list of best burger joints in Tokyo. You definitely can’t go wrong with a...

Update: December 2023 -- I was back in Tokyo on a holiday and decided to give this place another shot. The original review below was for one of their restaurants in Ebisu if memory serves. This location was a short walk from my hotel in Shibuya. The only reason mention my hotel is that a burger I had here was much better than what I had at Blacows this time around. Burgers have shrunk to about half the size of the previous one. Overall, food was bland, overpriced, and service was disorganized at best.

Original review: November 2018 -- Good burger but not great. The burger was somewhat overcooked and I found it a bit bland, meaning not overly flavourful. Very expensive for what I got. Service was good. I had an excellent wheat beer there, a house brand I think that was extremely good. One thing I found somewhat distracting was the endless "slapping" sound that came out of the kitchen. It went on the entire time I was there. Seriously, it sounded like someone was forming hamburger patties on some sort of...