Gyu Nami: Wagyu Roast Beef Donburi

TL;DR Novel addition to Singapore hawker centres. Reasonably priced. Worth a try but not worth the queue.  

Gyu Nami is one of those hip, young hawker stalls that are rejuvenating the hawker scene with untypical "hawker" food at "hawker" prices.

At their stall in Amoy hawker centre, they sell one dish only. Just one. And that is their Wagyu Roast Beef Donburi at $10. You must probably need a lot of confidence to only sell one dish, or just be inadequate at diversifying the food preparation processes. Armed with a 50% off voucher from Qoo10, I headed to Amoy hawker centre to find out which was it.

I read that there are typically long queues during the weekday lunch crowd. But since we went during the weekend, there was thankfully no queue in sight!

The roast beef donburi is served in a visually striking way. A tower (a very short tower) of rice is wrapped with thinly sliced roast beef (supposedly wagyu). White yogurt sauce and a brown sauce is drizzled down the sides, and it is crowned with a golden onsen egg, garnished with some greens.

However, it falls short tastewise. While the roast beef slices were pleasantly soft and tender, the rice was too sticky, and the sauces too overpowering and salty. I wouldn't say it was bad though. It is worth a try, but not worth the queue. The principle of this dish seemed good, and even looked good, in theory. But the execution of this dish needed more refinement so that the various flavours would be in balance.

The creativity of Gyu Nami must be lauded. I don't think I've seen a roast beef don plated this way in the Singapore F&B scene at all. And the novelty of this dish for the Singaporean taste buds is worth some bonus points. That is if we disregard the identical plating of this dish to the Red Rock chain of restaurants in Japan. You can read reviews of Red Rock here, here and here, and compare the photos for yourself. It's perhaps difficult to be original in a very saturated F&B scene, but copying the plating right down to a T just seems like a lack of effort to me.

Value

The original price is $10 for a bowl. And it's a fair price since they supposedly use wagyu beef (I can't taste it). But I would want to mention that there are other better donburis in Singapore you can get with this $10, though none of them are roast beef donburis at the moment. 

If you come across a 50% voucher or some deal like me, it's worth it though. And definitely worth a try. 

Location

Amoy St Food Centre, #02-126
7 Maxwell Road
Singapore 069111

Nearest MRT: Tanjong Pagar, Telok Ayer