Buta Kabayaki Review: Restaurant-Quality Japanese Pork Rice Bowls At $7 In Town

Since ‘buta’ means pork, the stall’s name is a literal representation of what they specialise in: sauce-coated, char-grilled pork. Food at Buta Kabayaki The Teriyaki Pork Jowl Don ($7) came with a thick, sweet-smelling glaze drizzled across the pork.

The pork jowl is a cut from the cheek of the pig, and is often compared to thick slices of bacon because of its high fat content. Despite appearing rather thin, the meat slices were juicy and melt-in-the-mouth, thanks to little pockets of fat bursting with every bite.

The taste of the glaze also came off strong, sweet, and fragrant, cutting through the fat of the pork without stealing its limelight. My only gripe with the dish was that there was too little sauce for us to eat with all the rice in the bowl.

Every bowl of their pork don comes with a sous vide egg and pickled vegetables on the side. You can break the beautifully cooked egg white and flowy lava-like amber yolk into the dish to make a dreamy concoction of egg, rice. Pork. 7 Hawker Beef Donburi From $5 That Won’t Burn A Hole In Your Pocket The Iberico Pork Char Siew Don ($7.90) was the most costly dish on the donburi menu.

What makes Iberico pork so sought after by a pork lover like myself is that it comes from the black Iberian pig, a type of hog known for its distinctive savour and marbling. With one glance, I could tell that the meat slices had gained a darker shade from the char of the sauce, glistening with the drizzle of extra char siew sauce on top. The first thing that came through was the char siew sauce, which tasted more like a sweet glaze than anything.

If I had any scepticism towards the quality of Iberico pork sold in a food court before, this dish proved all my doubts wrong. With my love for all garlic-related food, the Garlic Pork Loin Don ($7) was the first dish that caught my eye.

Lifting it up, it was obvious that this cut of meat was cooked differently from the rest. Unlike the pork jowl and Iberico pork, the pork loin was cooked by pan-frying the slices flat. Pork loin comes from the midsection of the hog and it is usually leaner than other cuts such as the jowl.

The resulting meat is less juicy than the previous two versions, but its saving grace was the aromatic garlic sauce, which permeated the thinner slices of pork. As its name promises, the broth contains pieces of thinly sliced Iberico pork, infusing the soup with a meaty taste.

The verdict Overall, it was interesting to see how different cuts of pork, prepared in a variety of methods, could yield such contrasts in taste and texture.