Where's the Beef?

The beef is currently being found at Yoshinoya. Yoshinoya is a famous inexpensive fast food restaurant. They are everywhere in Japan and it appears that they are making a name for themselves now in the US (click here for their US website). It's most popular dish is gyudon or in eigo terms, "beef bowl". Supposedly Yoshinoya's gyudon is good because they use American beef. Well about 2 years ago Japan halted all imports of US beef due to fears of madcow. Yoshinoya bought up as much of it as possible before the ban so that they could continue to serve gyudon. Then they subsituted beef from Australia, however patrons said that it doesn't taste the same. In the past two years without American beef, sales have dropped and Yoshinoya has fallen on hard times.

Now American beef is back and Yoshinoya fans are happy....... well sort of. The American beef ban got lifted in July, however they are limiting the amount of beef imported. So Yoshinoya can only purchase a certain amount of beef. On Sept. 18, Yoshinoya offered one million servings of gyudon made with American beef. They expected to sell out of it on that day. Pictured is the queue line to get into a Yoshinoya in Osaka. We couldn't believe the amount of people. I heard that some people camped out to insure getting a beef bowl. You can see Rich in the top photo cheering on the crowd. I believe he chanted, "Good American Beef". He got a few laughs. Anyway Yoshinoya hopes to offer American gyudon for the first five days in October and the first five days in November. That's about all the supply they can obtain. Click here to read the article.