Goodness gracious, great balls of rice and beef!
Komeda Coffee is a nationwide chain of coffee shops that’s earned a reputation as practitioners of “reverse fraud” (gyakusagi).
More often than not, when looking at a restaurant’s menu, you’ll see images of towering burgers and overflowing fries, only to be greeted with a pale imitation of that on your plate. At Komeda, however, the opposite is more likely to happen. What might appear a modest pork cutlet sandwich on the menu turns out to be a huge feast you’ll have trouble finishing. It’s a phenomenon so sadly rare, we don’t even really have a good English term for it. I guess you could call it a “rip-on” maybe?
One example of this was Komeda’s Kome-Gyu from 2020. This was a burger with shredded beef short rib slathered in chili-mustard sauce and topped with shredded cabbage. It came in three sizes, with the largest having nearly a pound of beef.
It was a hugely popular item and cemented Komeda’s status as a reverse fraudster, because those burgers were way more hearty than even our photo above lets on. However, when they re-released Kome-Gyu on 9 September, there wasn’t much buzz. In fact, even our own gourmet writer Mr. Sato was unaware until they tweeted about it on 3 October.
The tweet quickly went viral, racking up over 10,000 likes and a million views as word of Kome-Gyu’s return spread like wildfire. Part of the reason no one noticed was that this Kome-Gyu wasn’t sold at Komeda Coffee but at their spin-off chain Komeya no Taro that specializes in onigiri rice balls. As such, this Kome-Gyu is not a burger but an onigiri.
There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, so Mr. Sato hurried over to Komeya no Taro to try it and some other offerings out. There are only three locations in the country, two in Saitama and, luckily for him, one nearby in Shinjuku, Tokyo.
This was our reporter’s first trip there, and he scanned the menu to get a sense of things. Komeya no Taro sells a decent variety of rice balls, each in “mini” or “regular” sizes. The prices also range a bit, from 190 yen ($US1.20) for a Salted Rice Ball to the Eel Rice Ball for 770 yen ($4.90).
Mr. Sato decided to buy three on this trip. First, he bought a regular size Salted Rice Ball for 310 yen. There was nothing particularly special about this onigiri, as it was just salt and rice. In fact, the only reason our writer bought this was because a Japanese word for “rice” is “kome” and “da” is the casual form of the “to be” verb and could be translated as “it’s,” which means this rice ball gave him license to write:
▼ “Komeda kome da!”
Having gotten that out of his system, Mr. Sato moved on to his next onigiri. The Miso Pork Tenderloin Rice Ball was easily the most eye-catching item on the menu and sold for 510 yen in its regular size.
The breaded and fried pork tenderloin cutlet jutted out the top to such a degree it didn’t seem right to even call it a rice ball. It had a drizzling of miso sauce down the side, like an erupting volcano.
Cutting it in half revealed that there wasn’t much pork inside the onigiri itself. Still, it can’t really be said that Komeya no Taro was being chintzy with the meat. It was more just arranged oddly.
Finally, it was time for the main event of the Kome-Gyu Rice Ball, which sells in a regular for 640 yen.
Looking at it, Mr. Sato didn’t get a sense of Komeda’s reverse fraud. It was a perfectly average-looking onigiri in terms of size, though the amount of beef appeared plentiful as it seemed to overflow from the top.
He tried cutting it open to get a better sense of what it contained, but it was so crumbly it more or less fell apart in the process.
It had a good amount of meat, but again, not so much that our writer would describe it as a case of reverse fraud. It all seemed perfectly reasonable. It did excel in the taste department, however. The taste of the sauce was outstanding and complemented the rice as well as the meat.
It made Mr. Sato realize that this kind of meat’s natural partner is rice rather than buns. It all went so well together that as he ate, he wished Komeda would just cut to the chase and release a proper gyudon beef bowl with these ingredients. Perhaps they will one day, and perhaps there was no reverse fraud this time because they’re saving it for Kome-Gyu’s final form.
Store information
Komeya no Taro / 米屋の太郎
Tokyo-to, Shinjuku-ku, Nishi-Shinjuku 1-25-1, Shinjuku Center Building B1
東京都新宿区西新宿1丁目25-1 新宿センタービル地下1階
Open: 8 a.m. – 8 p.m.
Holidays: None
Website
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