Do Komeda’s beefy rice balls continue the chain’s hallowed tradition of “reverse fraud”?

Goodness gracious, great balls of rice and beef! Komeda Coffee is a nationwide chain of coffee shops that’s earned a reputation as practitioners of “reverse fraud” ( gyakusagi ).

More often than not, when looking at a restaurant’s menu, you’ll see images of towering burgers and overflowing fries, only to be greeted with a pale imitation of that on your plate.

At Komeda, however, the opposite is more likely to happen .

What might appear a modest pork cutlet sandwich on the menu turns out to be a huge feast you’ll have trouble finishing.

It’s a phenomenon so sadly rare, we don’t even really have a good English term for it.

I guess you could call it a “rip-on” maybe? One example of this was Komeda’s Kome-Gyu from 2020 .

This was a burger with shredded beef short rib slathered in chili-mustard sauce and topped with shredded cabbage.

It came in three sizes, with the largest having nearly a pound of beef.

It was a hugely popular item and cemented Komeda’s status as a reverse fraudster, because those burgers were way more hearty than even our photo above lets on.

However, when they re-released Kome-Gyu on 9 September, there wasn’t much buzz.

In fact, even our own gourmet writer Mr.

Sato was unaware until they tweeted about it on 3 October.

The tweet quickly went viral, racking up over 10,000 likes and a million views as word of Kome-Gyu’s return spread like wildfire.

Part of the reason no one noticed was that this Kome-Gyu wasn’t sold at Komeda Coffee but at their spin-off chain Komeya no Taro that specializes in onigiri rice balls .