Yakiniku Yaruki Shijo-Kawaramachi Branch

Yakiniku Yaruki, a yakiniku restaurant with a long history in Kyoto, founded in 1988, operates an all-you-can-eat yakiniku restaurant in Shijo-Kawaramachi. The restaurant, Yakiniku Yaruki Shijo-Kawaramachi Branch, offers…

• Standard Course 2480yen+tax
• Special course 2980yen+tax
• Premium Course 3980yen+tax

The cheapest Standard Course offers more than 50 kinds of yakiniku dishes, while the most expensive Premium Course offers nearly 90 kinds of them, including Japanese beef, for 100 minutes (last order 80 minutes).

This time, I made a reservation in advance and headed to the restaurant one evening to try the premium course, the most expensive of them all. I wonder what kind of yakiniku you can enjoy for a little over 4,000 yen per person including tax? If you are also interested, please continue reading the article to the end…

Fully equipped with counter seating for one-person yakiniku…All-you-can-eat Yakiniku Yaruki Shijo-Kawaramachi Branch is a restaurant like this

Yakiniku All-you-can-eat Yaruki Shijo-Kawaramachi Branch is located along Kawaramachi Dori, a major artery in Kyoto City. It is usually crowded with people, including tourists, and is always full during peak lunch and dinner hours. I have tried several times in the past to visit the restaurant on a first-come, first-served basis, but all of my attempts were rejected because the restaurant was full. So, it is better to make a reservation in advance when you visit this restaurant.

Well, Yakiniku All-You-Can-Eat Yaruki Shijo-Kawaramachi Branch has two separate seating areas on the first and second floors, and there are a total of 62 seats on both floors combined. The second floor can be reserved for parties of 30 to 36 people, so if you have the right number of people, you can use it for office get-togethers and the like. In addition, there are six counter seats (three with smokeless roasters) at the back of the first floor, so it can also be used for solo yakiniku diners. With such ease of use, it’s no wonder it’s so popular…

What kind of all-you-can-eat yakiniku can you enjoy at Yakiniku All-you-can-eat Yaruki Shijo-Kawaramachi Branch’s top-of-the-line premium course? Let’s find out!

Let me introduce what kind of food you can enjoy at Shijo-Kawaramachi Branch of Yakiniku All-you-can-eat Yaruki, in the order of what I ordered. Of course, I was not able to try all of the menu items, but I ordered mainly from the menu items that I think will be popular among all the menu items, so I think this will be helpful for those who are thinking about visiting the restaurant.

Appetizer: Yaruki Tongue

First of all, “Yaruki Tongue” will be brought to the table for the number of guests. This is a pork tongue, so if you want beef tongue, you will need to add a separate order.

The Yaruki Tongue comes with no chopped green onion topping and no salt sprinkled on it. If you need seasoning, you will need to sprinkle salt on the tabletop and season it to your liking.

The meat is cut into fairly thin slices, so it burns quickly in the smokeless roaster. You have to be careful not to burn it by leaving it alone.

Large Kalbi Steak, Garibata (garlic and butter) Ippon Kalbi, Special Thick Cut Steak, Dragon Ippon Harami (skirt steak)

For my first round of ordering, I ordered some of the specialties of Yakiniku All-You-Can-Eat Yaruki Shijo-Kawaramachi Branch: Large Kalbi Stea, Garibata Ippon Karubi, Special Thick Cut Steak, and Dragon Ippon Harami. Four kinds of meat were served on one plate like this, but to be honest, the volume was smaller than the specialty menus at other restaurants (e.g., 298 Sannomiya Branch). Also, the single rib had quite a lot of tendon, which made it quite difficult to eat. In that sense, this specialty menu was a bit disappointing.

Beef tongue

The next dish I ordered was beef tongue. Like the pork tongue served as an appetizer, the meat is cut into thin slices and served as is. Compared to the pork tongue, it is less chewy and softer. However, I can’t help but feel that “it’s all-you-can-eat anyway, so they could have cut it a little thicker…”.

Japanese Beef Kalbi Yaki-Suki

The third shot is “Japanese Beef Kalbi Yaki-Suki (with raw egg). Like Yakiniku Yazawa Kyoto’s famous Yazawa-yaki, these are the latest fad of sukiyaki style eating, dipped in beaten egg.

The sweet, garlicky sauce is quite thick and flavorful, even after being submerged in beaten egg. At first, this meat…

Throwing it into your mouth with white rice and finally with a beaten egg that has absorbed the yakiniku sauce…

Enjoy it as takikake gohan (TKG).

Grilled Scallops, Grilled Shrimps, Grilled Squid with Butter

Taking a break from meat here, I ordered seafood dishes: Scallops, Shrimps, and Squid with Butter. The scallops are baby scallops, so be careful how you grill them. The scallops tend to stick to the roaster during grilling, so when you remove them with chopsticks or tongs, the scallops split up and become smaller. It could end up falling down through the gaps in the roaster…a sad situation. And since they are not seasoned to begin with, perhaps it would have been wiser to put them in an aluminum bowl with squid butter roast and let them heat through together.

Dragon Pork Kalbi, Yangnyeom Kalbi

From here, I resumed the meat and ordered two items from the Yaruki Korean Fair menu: Dragon Pork kalbi and Yangnyeom Kalbi. As soon as the pork is selected, the amount of meat goes up significantly, a common phenomenon at all-you-can-eat yakiniku restaurants.

The Yangnyeom Kalbi is quite spicy, and the portion size is quite large, so be careful if you don’t like spicy food to avoid leftovers. On the other hand, the spiciness of the Dragon Pork Kalbi is mild due to the cheese, so if you are not a big fan of spicy food, you can eat it normally.

Samgyopsal

Another dish from the Yaruki Korean Fair menu, the Samgyopsal, was ordered. The lettuce came out quite large, but the important three pieces of meat were also very thinly sliced, and I was quite disappointed that it was pork.

Four pieces of pork came out for one person, but I didn’t feel like I was eating pork unless I combined two or three pieces. It’s pork, and they could have increased the quantity per serving a bit more…

Bone-in ribs, top loin, Tender Harami (salted sauce), Chicken Cartilage (grilled with salt)

This was my last order. There are four kinds: Bone-in Kalbi, Top Loin, Tender Harami (Salt Sauce), and Chicken Cartilage (Grilled with Salt). If there is bone-in ribs on the menu, I would definitely want to try it. The part around the bone has a unique flavor…and since only two pieces are served per person, if you like ribs, you must repeat your order.

After ordering this much, time is up. If you add the “Yaruki Tongue” as a side dish, you have 18 dishes in total. I ordered quite a lot of things. However, this happened because the overall volume of each dish was small, so I think it is not a good value for money. Well, if you don’t have enough, you can just repeat the order, and there must be a need to eat a variety of foods, so I think this is a point where tastes differ, but what do you think after reading this far?

I think the meat quality is about average for all-you-can-eat yakiniku (the only thing is that the single ribs were hard to eat…). The smokeless roaster also has a good heat output, so I don’t think it will cause incomplete combustion for the same reason as at Butcher’s Kitchen Kyoto Kiyamachi Meat.

One thing I would like to see improved, however, is the problem of not knowing how much time is left for all-you-can-eat. At one point, there is an alert on the tablet used for ordering when it is 10 minutes before the last order, but after that, there is no way to check how much time is left until the last order ends. If the restaurant reads this article, I would like to see at least this part improved.

Even better deals if you enter the restaurant early! Yakiniku All-you-can-eat Yaruki Shijo-Kawaramachi Branch is a 2-minute walk from the nearest station, Kyoto Kawaramachi Station on the Hankyu Kyoto Line.

Yakiniku All-you-can-eat Yaruki Shijo-Kawaramachi Branch offers special deals if you enter the restaurant early. For example, if you enter the restaurant before 5:00 p.m., you can have any number of alcoholic drinks for 199 yen each, the drink bar and ice cream bar are free, or the standard course is discounted from 2,480 to 1,980 yen plus tax during lunch time on holidays. The variety of meat available is greater than that of the all-you-can-eat yakiniku lunch at the nearby authentic yakiniku Chihuaja Shijo-Kawaramachi Branch, and to be honest, the value for money is better here. Competition seems high, but if you are looking for an all-you-can-eat yakiniku restaurant in the Shijo-Kawaramachi area, I have a feeling that this restaurant will be your first choice.

Now, here are the details of the restaurant…