Gyutan Higashiyama Miyabi 東山雅 @ Hiroshima

When I looked at the directory of Minamoa, the shopping mall at JR Hiroshima Station, Sendai grilled beef tongue stood out among all the rest.

Sendai, a city near Tokyo, is famous for gyutan (grilled beef tongue), a local specialty created in 1948 by a local chef using charcoal grills, salt seasoning, a multi-day ripening process, and traditional techniques. It is usually eaten as a set meal with boiled barley rice, ox tail soup, and salted Chinese cabbage with cucumber and green chili preserved in miso.

The beef tongue served by Gyutan Higashiyama comes exclusively from the tender, beautifully marbled section near the base—yielding only 30–40% of a single tongue. It is a low-fat, high-protein food with less than half the calories of other meats.

I ordered the Sendai Tontan, Aged Miso Beef Tongue, and Boiled Beef Tongue Set Meal (仙台とんたんと 熟成味噌牛たんと ゆで牛たんのお膳), one of the most comprehensive set on the menu with everything. The beef tongue—long cherished as a healthy choice—accompanied by perfectly paired barley rice (mugi gohan) and slow-simmered oxtail soup.

The set came with a boiled beef tongue soup that used slow-simmered oxtail soup as its base stock. It was decked with lots of chopped scallions and very tasty. I could simply order a full size portion of the soup and made it a meal.

Also, there were different ways of cooking the tongue, and a tasting version was provided in the Beef Tongue Shokado Box (牛たん松花堂) as an appetiser.

I couldn’t say I enjoyed the braised beef tongue as they were very dry and very sweet.

The yukhoe used lightly blanched tongue and topped with a raw egg yolk. It was nice, but I wished it used a different sauce, instead of the same sweet sauce as the braised tongue.

The shumai was the surprise of the trio of appetisers. Not exactly the Cantonese dimsum style siewmai, the wrapper looked like it was shredded. The filling was minced tongue mixed with minced beef and shiitake mushroom. It was full of umami and really delicious.

The meal was only Y3,298 including tax, and you can have a taste of every conceivable way of cooking beef tongue. I don’t know why the meal was slightly cold when served, it would have been perfect if the beef tongue was served on a hotplate.

Higashiyama Miyabi (Minamoa Hiroshima Store) 炭焼牛たん東山雅ミナモア広島店
Minamoa 6F, 2-37, Matsubaracho, Minami, Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan
広島県広島市南区松原町2-37ミナモア6F
Tel : +81 (082) 236 1629

Visited Sep 2026