People are queuing up for Rou Rou Da Mi (肉肉大米), a Japanese fast-food restaurant with a single menu item. The dish? Hamburger rice.
Where
Head down to the basement of Metro City Mall in Xujiahui, and snake your way through the treasure trove of eateries and rush hour throngs to Rou Rou Da Mi. It’s hard to miss, as they’re likely to have the longest queue.
Hamburger Rice
Rou Rou serves only one item: hamburger rice.
It’s a popular Japanese dish, categorized as yoshoku, Japanese adaptations of Western foods.
There are three variations: plain, cheese, or seasonal special. The current seasonal special is green chili pepper.
The cheapest set is ¥68 for two plain patties. The pricing increases by ¥10 depending on how many patties you want, with or without cheese. All orders come with rice, a soup of the day, and an onsen soy egg.
Doesn’t matter how many patties are ordered, everyone gets unlimited refills on rice and soup.
The condiments are also included.
Diners are seated around the cooking stations, and in front of them are individual griddles. Patties are cooked by staff to medium rare, and then served onto the personal griddles. Diners can then continue to cook their patty to preferred done-ness.
According to the staff, they use USDA beef, which is ground on-site and is about 95g a patty.
The cheese patty is topped off with grated parmesan. (They said parmesan, but I suspect Grana Padano?)
In Summary
It’s great! Satisfying meal with a little bit of a show.
It’s ¥98 for three patties, two of which were with cheese.
The patties had a good ratio of lean and fat. The rice quality was good too; it had body and bite. Plus, they kept the blanched green peas on the side for the soup instead of letting it boil and disintegrate in the pot.
It was especially impressive on two fronts: affordability and scalability.
It’s a small restaurant with about 40 seats. Diners spend about 30 minutes for the meal, or maybe even less, as it’s not the kind of restaurant you want hang about after. On average, each diner spends ¥80. Based on the lines I saw, they could do 10 turns a day.
A Broad Estimate:
40 diners x 10 turns x ¥80 average spend
= ¥32,000 daily revenue
Not bad for a little shop.
As a business, it’s fascinating to watch. Their ordering system is marked by little magnets; red for the special, blue for regular, and yellow for cheese, which are placed behind the counter per diner. Genius!
According to Dianping, another location is due to open mid-August in Cloud Nine Mall, Changning.
The Queue
The wait time when I went was no longer than 15 minutes and the line moved quickly. They are vigilant about the queue and won’t seat incomplete parties. Obviously, if you want a shorter wait time, you can try going after rush hours.
Is it worth queuing for? Yes!
Rou Rou Da Mi 肉肉大米
Address: B1-28, Metro City Mall, 1111 Zhaojiabang Lu 肇嘉浜路1111号美罗城B区地下1层B1-28单元
Tel: 18017297751
Hours: Mon-Thu, 11am-2pm, 5pm-9:30pm; Fri, 11am-2pm, 5pm-10:30pm; Sat, 10:30am-3pm, 5pm-10:30pm; Sun, 10:30am-3pm; 5pm-9:30pm
