El Monte, CA

About Yoshinoya

It all began in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, in 1899, at the bustling fish market, when our founder, Eikichi Matsuda, first made a name for Yoshinoya. Each day, fishermen would return from a hard day working on the water and go to Yoshinoya for a warm hearty beef bowl. A generous, heaping bowl of Yoshinova beef was the perfect way to reward a full day’s work. Today we serve the same flavorful recipe. It’s been our goal since then to provide hot, steamy, satisfying, and hearty portions to every community we serve. We get our name from our founder’s hometown, Yoshino-cho, and the word Ya, which means home in Japanese, which was customary at the time. Beef was then still relatively new to Japan and seen as a premium dish only a person of privilege could afford. When Yoshinoya introduced our original beef bowl, it was served with sukiyaki sauce on rice. It was the first of its kind. Beef became affordable and accessible to the many fishermen, laborers, and tradesmen of the town. That’s how our signature Gyudon Beef was born! The key to our unique flavor is in our sauce, and our secret recipe is currently known to no more than three people in the entire world today. Demand for our Gyudon beef bowls steadily grew, and its popularity began to spread throughout Japan, reaching 100 restaurants by 1977. Shortly after, we opened our first American Yoshinoya location in Los Angeles in 1979. Today, Yoshinoya has expanded to over 2000 restaurants worldwide.