Date: February 18, 2010
Location: Gusto Family Restaurant, Mitaka (Tohoku-doori)
Subject: "Set" Meals
Before I even explained why I had asked to go to Gusto, or why it had anything to do with school, I pointed to this menu option and asked if they thought it was Western or Japanese? Two of my Japanese friends answered, "It's foreign, of course." However, one of them disagreed, and called it "Japanese" because of the side dishes, which he explained, were pretty standard "Japanese style" (Nihon-teki). Interestingly, the two friends who disagreed were returnee Japanese (one had lived in England, the other had grown up in California); however, the friend who agreed grew up in Ibaraki and has only traveled outside of Japan to Korea.
My friend who defined the set meal as "American" pointed out that the serving platter used for that particular dish was very similar to those from the Australian-themed American restaurant, Outback Grill. Standing alone, the advertised hamburger is more or less on par in "American-ness" or at least 'foreign-ness' with other menu items such as the Gusto King Burger, which comes on a white plate with a side of French fries and parsley.
The only thing that debatedly sets it apart is the word "set," which indicates that the burger is served with a side of rice.
"Teishoku" set meals follows a Japanese dining concept of arranging a number of sides around a main course and serving it all on separate dishes. Gusto uses the teishoku set meal concept emphatically in the construction of the menu dedicated to "Japanese dishes."
In a sense, the Gusto serving style of adding traditional Japanese sides to a separate main course of a hamburger followed more of a "traditional Japanese culinary concept." Note that all of the sides are interchangeable, including the varieties of the rice side dish (not only pure white rice is offered). Even so, it would be difficult to order a "Japanese set" without the rice, as it is categorized separately from the other side dishes -- as if even the possibility of ordering an accumulation of dishes excluding rice is strange, or simply not a possibility.A restaurant like Gusto has significance as a case study because it, like Mos Burger/a fast food restaurant, caters to a very wide range of customers. Gusto in particular has high turn-over of products, and innovates new menus for every season, which requires extensive marketing and customer consideration. This means that Gusto's menu options will be designed to target a wide range of people, and along with that, I speculate that an analysis of effective marketing strategies will give a fairly accurate representation of what Japanese consumers want or expect from different types of food.
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