Shokunin Don Late-Night Diner: Cheap, Huge Donburi Bowls — and Right Now a Free Fried Clam for Leaving a Review!
Intro
Meow meow, hi everyone, welcome back! I’m Mydondon, and today we’re heading out to try a budget-friendly spot that somehow manages to look totally over-the-top with its donburi! It’s Shokunin Don Late-Night Diner. This place has five branches around Taipei, so if you want to check it out, just pick whichever location works best for you. Today we visited the Xinyi branch, so all the business info below is for the Xinyi branch.
Shokunin Don Late-Night Diner info
Shokunin Don on Google Maps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/paWxbpZwhm6GzA4v8
Opening hours: 11:00 ~ 14:00 and 17:00 ~ 00:00 (open every day)
Seating: about 15 seats (a single-row counter, plus one six-person table)
Address: No. 258, Zhuangjing Rd., Xinyi District, Taipei City 110
Shokunin Don Late-Night Diner – the space
The best thing about this place, in my opinion, is the opening hours, which make it perfect for a late-night supper run. The whole shop is actually pretty small, but the seating doesn’t feel cramped. We arrived at 18:21, and there was hardly anyone inside, so we got a seat right away. You order via QR code, which is great for anyone with social anxiety, and the interface is really intuitive, not hard to navigate at all. Compared to most places where you’d honestly rather just order in person because it’s faster, I think this is way better. On top of that, you can customize your dish, and there are tons of options!
You can check out the Shokunin Don Late-Night Diner menu here: https://shop.ichefpos.com/store/X2edRFwx/ordering
The kimchi katsu crispy chicken donburi
I ordered the kimchi katsu crispy chicken donburi, and I went with extra onion, extra rice, and extra donburi sauce (none of which cost anything extra). The food arrived after about a 15-minute wait, which is on the slightly long side. But considering the kitchen is tiny and they also have to handle delivery orders, I personally think that’s pretty fast.
This… is way too big a bowl! The toppings were literally overflowing, it was honestly ridiculous. Anyway, let’s dig in. Hmm… I personally think the katsu crispy chicken tastes a lot like the fried chicken thigh burger you’d get at a breakfast shop, but because it’s fried to order, it’s crispier and tastier. Once I started eating, though, I ran into a big drawback. I think every single time I visit one of these restaurants where the bowl looks super loaded, I hit the exact same problem: all you can eat is the toppings, you never get down to the rice itself!!! There also wasn’t any little side dish to set things on, so I ended up wolfing down all the toppings at the start and then being left with a giant pile of rice.
Because of that, I unexpectedly discovered that the toppings aren’t that salty. They’re actually pretty light, so they don’t feel heavy. The kimchi isn’t all that sour either, more like the “golden kimchi” you see at a lot of hot pot or grill restaurants, with just a restrained touch of sour and spicy. That layer on top that looks like cheese is actually a soft, half-set egg drizzled evenly over the rice. The rice itself is moist and soft, and once you mix the two together it creates a shift in texture that makes it really go down well with rice.
The onions had been sautéed, taking on a faint golden hue, and because they were cooked they weren’t sharp or pungent at all. The rice underneath turned soft and moist from the donburi sauce, and that texture pairs just right with the onions. One last thing: I wouldn’t really recommend ordering extra rice, because it really is a bit too much, and by the end you’re basically just eating plain white rice.
Shokunin Don Late-Night Diner – leave a Google Maps review and get a free fried clam
Right now, all you have to do is leave a review on Google Maps and they’ll give you a free fried clam. The fried clam itself is genuinely amazing. One bite and the ocean flavor just bursts out, and it’s a decent size too, so they’re really being generous. On top of that, we ordered two other set meals: the horse mackerel (aji) donburi and the chicken cutlet donburi. The toppings were pretty much the same across them, and I hadn’t tried these before, so I won’t comment too much here. Also, every meal can be upgraded to a set for +50 NTD, with sesame broccoli, vegetable croquette, and golden shrimp cakes to choose from, plus the smallest-size drink. The two photos below are the golden shrimp cakes and the sesame broccoli.
Let’s wrap things up. The most important part, the price, I think is super cheap. At a Taipei restaurant where a meal easily runs over 200 NTD (especially Japanese food), being able to order a bowl of gyudon for as little as 100 NTD is genuinely rare. The space is fairly clean, with nowhere that struck me as dirty, and the floor wasn’t sticky. During mealtime hours, the roughly 15-minute wait for food is a touch slow, but still acceptable. As for the taste, honestly there’s nothing all that memorable. It’s the kind of place that fills you up cheaply and is worth dropping into if you happen to be passing by. And between you and me, the thing I loved most out of the whole meal was actually the free fried clam.
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