This post was written in 2008. Shop details and prices may have changed since then.

I’ve written about Fujimasu before. It’s a place where you can eat top-grade wagyu at a ridiculously low price. I heard they have sukiyaki as a special menu item that you can only get if you book a day ahead, so I went with some friends who had come down from Tokyo.
The vegetables

That was a lot for three servings.
The beef.

It’s fresh enough to eat raw.
Close-up

Just looking at it makes me happy.
The pan

First you oil the pan and sear the beef. Once it’s partly cooked, you add the sukiyaki sauce and the vegetables. With shabu-shabu you have to wait a long time for the vegetables to cook, but with sukiyaki you can dig in almost right away, which I love.
All done

Looks good, right?

You dip everything in raw egg.

It’s sublime: the fresh sweetness that comes from the sauce and beef working together, the warmth that melts away the winter chill, and the soft, mellow egg yolk all at once. This was the dish I really wanted to eat this winter, and I was completely satisfied.
Sukiyaki sauce + sake + water.

You keep adding ingredients and sauce a little at a time as you eat. There was so much that the sukiyaki alone filled us up. I wanted to try some of the other cuts too, but had no choice but to give up. Ordering just two servings would have been plenty. All that came to only 3,000 yen per person. I don’t know if I’ll ever get back there, but I think you only come across a place like this a handful of times in your life.

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