Gyukatsu Rose sizzles with sear-it-yourself beef cutlets, but will wagyu lovers sniff it out?

When Sonny Nguyen opened Domu in 2016 after nearly a decade of working in various capacities for James Beard-nominated restaurateurs Johnny and Jimmy Tung and their Bento Group, he didn’t think his ramen-ya would achieve the level of popularity or success it has.

“I just wanted to bring something fun, new and exciting to Orlando,” he says. And he certainly couldn’t have imagined he would one day be nominated for a James Beard Award, as he was this year for Best Chef: South. Indeed, the past six months have been fruitful ones for the 35-year-old chef-restaurateur. In October, he opened his poke concept, Rion’s Ocean Room, on the ground floor of East End Market and, this past January, he opened the row of counter seats next door for a venture called Gyukatsu Rose.

It’s named after his youngest daughter, Harlee Rose, and modeled after restaurants in Japan offering gyukatsu, or flash-fried beef cutlets for patrons to sear tableside on a hot stone grill. But Nguyen is offering wagyu — what the menu describes as “a proprietary cut” from “100% Japanese Tajima cattle crossbred to achieve a premium BMS (beef marble score) of 6-8.” Now wagyu, whether it’s from 100% full-blood, Japanese Tajima cattle, or Tajima cattle crossbred with, say, an Angus cattle (as in the case with Australian wagyu) is marbled. Like really stupendously marbled. But in both my visits to Gyukatsu Rose, the wagyu we were served was lean, with little to no fat distribution. It’s good beef, but it just doesn’t eat like lush, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth wagyu.

“I think that marbling score is about 6-8 points too high,” half-joked my dining comrade. In Nguyen’s defense, those scores, he says, are determined by his supplier. Anyway, if the wagyu had been heavily marbled, the cost for 130 grams (or 4.6 ounces) would likely double or triple from its current price of $29 ($48 for 260 grams). “Things I kept in mind were that the wagyu had to be extremely tender and it had to be at an affordable entry point for the customer,” says Nguyen.

And the meat is tender, no question. I just felt it needed to be cooked to a medium-well (or until the edges of the pre-cut slivers of breaded, flash-fried beef crisped) in order to extract the most flavor. Personally, I’d rather pay a bit more for a better grade of wagyu, but Nguyen is considering adding a premium option. A pescatarian one, too, both of which would serve the operation well.

The fun part is dipping the beef into the onion-yuzu and yakiniku sauces, or enjoying it with the citrusy heat of yuzu kosho sauce, or sprinkling a bit of spicy ichimi togarashi onto the cooked morsels. Hell, just a sprinkle of pink salt, or a wee brush of real wasabi, will do the trick.

Of note are the side items — barley koshihikari rice, creamy potato salad dotted with corn and scallions, sweet pickled bok choy, blistered shishito peppers and a cabbage salad with tomatoes begging for a liberal squirt of sesame-scented goma dressing. The sides are all included in the price, as is a soupy ending of suimono with umami-filled dashi broth and enoki mushrooms. Oreo-crumbled matcha ice cream ($5), brûléed tableside, makes a sweeter conclusion.

Reservations, it should be noted, are required to sit inside at the counter, but there are two tables outside reserved for walk-ins. It’s where we sat, and were capably tended to, on our second visit. Passersby took notice of the sizzle scenting the spring air, sniffing and reacting with delight.

A Gyukatsu Rose by any other name would certainly smell as sweet … and as meaty.

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This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2025.