What Happened When Hayato Morita Changed How the Meat Was Grilled at Gyukyujo: Hiroyuki Miyasako and Ryuji's Yakiniku Review

Ryuji gives a brief account of the background. Morita was Gyukyujo's first producer, but the restaurant drew a huge backlash after Hikaru gave a review to the effect of "this won't do." Ryuji says they watched that backlash unfold. Morita himself says, "I was involved, but it was like I wasn't involved," acknowledging that his position had been complicated. The matter isn't explored further at that point, and the meal begins with a toast of highballs.

Later on, while grilling the harami, Ryuji asks, "Why were you taken off as producer?" Morita only answers, "I might not actually know myself either," and offers no further explanation.

The first dish is a yam kimchi made with honey. According to Miyasako, the menu item started during a period when he couldn't leave the house, and he made it after having his son buy the ingredients at 7-Eleven. Morita praises it as "good with offal," saying it cuts through the fat and also works as a palate cleanser. A little later, he adds that the kimchi plays a role similar to the ume-negi or ume sauce served with pork and the like, and recommends pairing it with offal. Miyasako asks someone to make a note of it on the spot.

Of the yukhoe that comes next, Morita says, "It's rare these days for a place to serve yukhoe," and rates the egg as a good one too. His personal preference would be to have some pepper on it.

When the tongue arrives, Morita immediately recognizes that a good cut is being used. Miyasako demonstrates the "Jimon Attack," which he says he learned from Jimon-san. As Miyasako explains it, making additional knife cuts on top of the usual prep cleanly severs the sinew, a technique that can make even meat from a cheap yakiniku restaurant better.

Morita says that as he watched, he was thinking, "The fat is going to come out." The grilled tongue shrinks dramatically, and Ryuji laughs that it "shrank to less than half." On top of that, when the staff check Jimon-san's video, it turns out the Jimon Attack was never used on tongue, meaning Miyasako had misremembered.

Morita then grills it again. First he lowers the heat, and any pieces that have started releasing fat over the high flame are set aside to rest for a while. According to Morita, the optimal approach for tongue is probably to grill it with a 20/80 split between the two sides. Rather than flipping it repeatedly, you "hold out here," drawing out only the unwanted moisture and keeping shrinkage to a minimum. He also points out what color to aim for. Compared with the tongue Miyasako grilled, Morita's tongue retained about twice the size. Ryuji and Miyasako both say "the taste is completely different," and Ryuji gets a laugh by saying, "If Morita-san grills it for you, you don't need the Jimon Attack."

Next comes harami with salt sauce. Miyasako says he first encountered salt-sauce harami at Gyu-Kaku and has loved it ever since.

Morita first checks the meat's temperature and estimates it at around 12°C. Because it's partially chilled meat that hasn't been frozen, he says it needs to be cooked slowly at the edge of the grill. According to Morita, at the edge it just goes "shhh," but if you place it in the center it sears all at once with a "jitt." He presses two pieces together, treats them as a single steak, and steams them as they grill. It takes about four minutes in total.

Morita considers it "a real waste" when meat shrinks during grilling, and says he wants people to eat it as close to its original shape as possible. On the Jimon Attack, he says scoring does genuinely improve dairy cattle, but meat of this grade doesn't need it. The grill gets up to around 180–200°C, so if you cook slowly, the sinew breaks down with the heat, he explains.

The finish is a quick sear at high heat. Pointing to the fatty part between the pieces of meat, Morita says that if any raw part remains there it turns squishy and unpleasant, so he wants it cooked through properly. For the last minute or so, he moves it to the center to brown the surface. Inside, he says, it's just barely rare.

Tasting it, Ryuji and the others describe the texture as crunchy on the outside, with juices bursting out like a xiaolongbao when you bite in. They also say that just pouring on the salt sauce and grilling it nails the flavor, and Ryuji remarks, "The grilling method makes the salt sauce perfect." Miyasako responds, "I just heard a grilling method that's worth more than 100 points."

Meanwhile, garlic rice inspired by a signature dish from the yakiniku restaurant Daishogun is also served. Ryuji and the others say it's a flavor that comes together when paired with the meat.

Yakisuki is served to go with the garlic rice. According to Morita, yakisuki is often cooked on an iron griddle, and because the meat is pre-seasoned, grilling it on a wire grill is difficult for ordinary people. It's become trendy at yakiniku restaurants recently, and Ryuji describes it as "the thing you find at slightly flashy yakiniku places."

Morita explains that yakisuki won't turn out well unless it's seared quickly at high heat, and that the flavor varies greatly depending on the temperature. The steps are as follows:

1. Coat the meat all over with the sauce and grill it for about 10 seconds over the hot center.
2. Once the fat drips onto the grill and settles in and the color changes, roll it up starting from the cooked part.
3. After rolling, let the residual heat cook it through, then apply more heat to steam-grill it. Morita calls this step "grit" and stresses that it's the important part.
4. Finally, dip it thoroughly in egg yolk and eat.

Even if flames flare up along the way, it's not a problem, since that doesn't mean it's burning. Morita says that, in the end, the approach to cooking it is the same as for a steak.

One of the diners remarks, "I had the impression that this type of meat has a gamey smell up front, but that's gone." Morita adds that since you only want to render off the fat, you have to hold out. Ryuji says it's "a bit of a shock" and suggests to Miyasako that the restaurant recommend this grilling method. Morita agrees, saying, "It raises the grade."

Morita also rates the meat quality highly, judging it to be from cattle with a live weight of over 800 kg and, based on how the fat melts, probably a steer rather than a heifer.

The final meat is chateaubriand. It's recommended with wasabi and yuzu kosho. It's about 2.5 cm to 3 cm thick, and Morita says that at this thickness you could probably only get about three more pieces from one animal. His assessment of the meat quality is "incredibly good."

At the same time, Morita points out that if it were served to customers at this thickness, even Miyasako wouldn't be able to grill it. Even if it could be grilled, he estimates it would shrink by about 40%. If it's going to be offered clearly as a menu item, it would be better to make it thinner, but he also says it's a waste to slice chateaubriand thin. As an alternative, he suggests that adding sesame oil to cook it like an ajillo might, due to osmotic pressure, keep the juices from escaping and reduce uneven cooking.

Morita's method is to crumple up about 30 cm of aluminum foil, lay it down, and grill the meat on top of it while steaming it. Crumpling the foil traps the heat and prevents too much direct heat from reaching the meat. If the foil is left flat, he says, it's no different from grilling on an iron griddle. It takes about seven minutes. Ryuji and the others repeatedly quip, "This isn't yakiniku anymore."

While waiting, Ryuji asks, "Does chateaubriand not work sliced thin?" The answer is that it's an extremely tender cut, so slicing it thin makes it fall apart; once it's grilled, it tears just from being picked up with chopsticks. It needs to be at least 1 cm, but at 1 cm it's hard to cook through and difficult to get right. For serving at a yakiniku restaurant, about 1.5 cm might be easy to eat. The person who answered was told they sounded "like a pro" and replied with a joke.

Once the heat has spread throughout after about seven minutes, the finish is adjusted by how long the surface is seared. As Morita explains it, 30 seconds gives you rare, one minute medium, and two minutes well-done. This time he seared it for 30 seconds to finish it rare. Its size had barely changed compared with before grilling, and Morita emphasizes that viewers can replicate it too: "If you do it exactly like this, it'll be done in seven minutes."

At the tasting, Miyasako eats it with Daishogun's sauce and says it's delicious, the first time he's used the sauce. Miyasako also lets slip that it's "a bit of a shock" that he hadn't realized the grade could be raised through how the meat is cooked. Still, everyone agrees that all the meat served was of good quality.

Between dishes, the conversation also turns to how Morita usually eats yakiniku. According to Ryuji, Morita rarely goes to high-end restaurants, instead frequenting places where the bill comes to around 5,000 yen. His style is to decide, for each restaurant, "I'll eat only this cut and this cut," and hop between them; he sometimes goes somewhere just to eat rump. Ryuji calls this "perverted."

Finally, a special dessert plate is brought out. Miyasako appears moved and says he'd like to thank the person who made it later.

From here, the conversation moves to their experiences. Miyasako and Morita talk about having both felt the same thing: if only the other person had come to them for help, they might have been able to do something, so why did they do something like that without saying anything? Both say, "I don't betray people" and "I'd rather be betrayed than betray someone," describing themselves as people who believe in the inherent goodness of others.

Morita says he had been concerned about Miyasako all along and had hoped that someday they'd be able to have a friendly drink together again. With this reunion, he says, it feels as if the bad feelings between them have thawed. Miyasako, while calling Ryuji "mean" for secretly bringing Morita along, also expresses his gratitude: "I think we probably feel the same way," and "Seriously, thank you." The episode closes with a promise that the three of them will go out drinking together.

Ryuji sums it up like this: Gyukyujo's meat quality and seasoning were both good, but with Morita's grilling method added, it became even more delicious. Looking back, Ryuji calls it a great collaboration and encourages anyone visiting the restaurant to try these grilling methods for themselves.