SUBANG JAYA, Jan 17 — A new year brings a wave of new openings, and the month-old Restaurant Juban 十番 in SS15 is one of them.
But this eatery is no stranger to a familiar trend: the Malaysian restaurant industry’s obsession with importing brands from abroad. Bonus points if they’re Japanese or Korean - we really eat that up.
The idea promises something ostensibly new but actually, quite familiar, ensuring we don’t accidentally challenge the intrepid palate of the average Klang Valley resident. Could you imagine?
Restaurant Juban is a branch of Yakiniku Don Juban Sannomiya Ten, a 28-year-old restaurant in Kobe, Hyōgo Prefecture.
It specialises in yakiniku don — grilled meat rice bowls. Neither yakiniku nor donburi are new or particularly rare to Malaysians, but it is not commonly seen together.
Most yakiniku places might have a donburi or two on their menu, but few make it the centrepiece of their restaurant.
Juban is not the kind of yakiniku place where you grill your own meat. Instead, it offers four types of donburi, including chicken and pork options, alongside bibimbap and kuppa — the Japanese take on Korean gukbap, a soup-and-rice dish.
Those familiar with Japanese history will not be surprised to see this connection to Korean cuisine.
Kobe, like much of the Kansai region, is home to a significant Korean population. The city was even one of the sites (along with Osaka) of the Hanshin Education Incident in 1948, where civilians protested the closure of Korean ethnic schools in Japan.
I opted for the karubi (boneless short rib) don (RM26.50 for small). For an additional RM7.50, soup was included, along with a choice of kimchi or namul — a common Korean banchan of blanched, raw, or fermented vegetables.
The kimchi, crunchy and piquant, proved to be a better foil for the tender, buttery slices of beef.
Much was made — both on the menu and in a Japanese news segment about the original restaurant in Kobe, playing on the TV — of the proprietary sauce. Sweet and savoury with a hint of spice, it caramelised beautifully around the thin edges of the beef slices.
The sauce’s sweetness only accentuated the already rich, slightly sweet character of the karubi.
Though thin, the slices were still unctuous thanks to a decent amount of marbling, and each bite was best enjoyed with a healthy scoop of rice and a dollop of kimchi to wake the palate.
Honestly, I couldn’t get enough of the kimchi.
Though one set is more than a satisfying meal — especially when washed down with the clear yet surprisingly flavourful soup — we also tried grilled meat à la carte, including buta (pork, RM18.50) and rosu (chuck tender, RM21.50).
As expected, all you can really taste is the sauce. With the milder pork, it completely masked the meat’s character.
The rosu, a firmer and leaner cut, allowed more of the beef’s natural flavour to come through.
However, it still couldn’t compete with the sweeter, richer karubi. Paired with the crunchy, piquant kimchi, the donburi felt far more balanced and satisfying.
Next time, I’ll stick to the karubi don — the beef, the sauce, and the kimchi make it the real highlight.
Restaurant Juban 十番
9, Jalan SS15/7, SS15,
47500 Subang Jaya, Selangor
Open daily, 12-10pm.
Tel: 03-5611 1150
Facebook: Restaurant Juban 十番 神戸焼き肉丼
* This is an independent review where the writer paid for the meal.
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*** Follow Ethan Lau on Instagram @eatenlau for more musings on food and mildly self-deprecating attempts at humour.
