Roast Beef Ohno Harajuku Branch — Restaurant in Tokyo

Frustrating.

The food is OK, maybe even good, but it's hard to tell the quality of the beef when it's all smothered in overpowering sauces and toppings (which are fairly tasty at least). But in a country of absolutely outstanding food this is probably one of the worst meals I've had in Japan.

It's just not worth the queues, which, even worse, could have been much quicker. It took me maybe 5 minutes of waiting to note a couple things:

First, they have outside seating, but they only offer it to the first couple of parties. Of course if you've already waited for over 30 minutes you'll wait a little longer to sit in the AC and drink in the atmosphere. This meant the outside area was completely empty the entire time I was there.

Second, you have to order at the beginning before being seated. So a server has to stand there doing nothing but watch you stare at a menu and contemplate. While there were 3 empty tables I had to wait standing on tired feet while the groups in front of me ordered. And the servers just seem pretty slow. So much wasted time clearing and cleaning tables.

All told it made for a very disappointing final meal in...

If you're looking for quality more rare wagyu roast beef then you got to eat here. It's about a 1 minute walk away from the Line Friends store in Harajuku so check google for business traffic because weekends have terrible lineups. This is a major chain restaurant so you can check their other locations if Harajuku and Shibuya is too much of a line up for you.

There are 2 options for the roast wagyu beef rice, the regular (1500-1800 yen depending on location) and the "double meat" which is exactly how it sounds, double the meat same amount of rice for (2500-3100 yen). Most stores also offer a non Japanese beef version (some indicate Australian beef some do not specify) for about 1100 & 1800 yen respectively.

The meal is served with the roast beef rice bowl topped with a raw egg and vegi , a soup, and wasabi & Creme cheese as condiments for the beef. It's definitely on the pricey end for a rice bowl but you can't argue with the taste. My wife thought it was a bit heavy (lucky me I ate the rest of her beef). So if you're a beef fan you should really stop...

This is my fourth time having this and my second time to this branch. It's not exactly the most delicious beef bowl you'll ever have. Still, I make it a point to have one each time I'm in Tokyo. It's the tender texture of the whack you beef and the pure spectacle of its arrangement on a bowl that meets all my senses.

With 200g of rice and 250g (L size) of beef, I've got more protein than I bargained for at 2970 yen. Included were two sauces that cost 150 yen and they were horseradish and butter cheese. On top of that, the beef bowl came drenched with two different sauces. It was a case of too much sauce getting in the way of the beef flavor in my opinion. So I took my time to slowly savour each slice until I could taste the beefy flavor. Each slice looked raw and red but it's actually slowly roasted for 7 hours according to its website.

So that was my last dinner in Tokyo before going back to Malaysia. Good thing I had a furry jacket to keep me warm while I enjoyed my dinner sitting outside of...