Yakiniku: My Beef with Dating Sims

Yakiniku with onions and ribeye has been one of my favorite Japanese style dishes since I was introduced to Japanese cuisine. It’s expensive, so it’s one of those things I only indulge in when I really want a treat—and I recently learned to make it at home.

Ingredients:
½ lb beef ribeye (or you can substitute a different cheaper cut in a pinch)
2 tbs unsalted butter
½ large yellow onion, thinly sliced
1 tbs cooking sake
⅔ cup white wine
1¼ cups water
3 tbs soy sauce
½ teaspoon ginger juice (grate ginger root and then squeeze the pulp to get this)
2 tbs sugar
¼ tsp very finely minced garlic
½ tsp salt
2 cups hot cooked rice

Optional Ingredients:
2 tbs beni shoga (pickled ginger) for serving garnish
2 large eggs to break over your yakiniku beef bowls just before serving

Serves two, so double the recipe if you’ve got four people in your family like I do.

Before you do anything, you’ll want to freeze your beef for an hour. This will make the beef rigid enough to cut into thin slices. Slice the beef very thinly, almost shaving it. In a saucepan over medium heat, melt your butter. Once melted, add your onions and cook until translucent, about four to five minutes.

You may also want to start steaming your rice now, if you haven’t prepared it already. Each cup of rice will become two cups once it hydrates, so one cup of rice will be enough to make the two you need. If you’ve got a rice cooker, you won’t have to pay much attention to this, but if you’re working with a pot like I am, here’s a great way to make sticky rice. If that’s too much work, just cook it normally in a pot and keep the lid on. Once the lid starts to jiggle a little, reduce the heat and let it simmer for about fifteen minutes until the rice is completely cooked through. After that, remove the rice from heat and let sit for another fifteen minutes without removing the lid. Washing and soaking your rice can also make a difference in how sticky your rice turns out, so consider letting it soak overnight or washing it vigorously before cooking it.

Once your onions are done to your satisfaction, add your white wine and cooking sake and let it cook for another two minutes. Next, add the water, soy sauce, ginger juice, sugar, garlic, and salt to the pan and mix well. I find it easier to do if I combine those ingredients in a measuring cup prior to adding them to the saucepan, as it makes it easier to dissolve the sugar in the other liquids and disperse it more evenly throughout the seasoning.

Next add the beef. Stir the mixture constantly to keep pieces of meat from sticking together and keep on heat until the meat is just cooked through. That should take about two to three minutes total.

Divide your rice between the bowls you’ll be serving the yakiniku in, then spoon the beef and onion mixture over the rice. If you feel like it, provide an egg for each person to crack onto their meal and mix with their beef. A garnish of Japanese pickled ginger called beni shoga will add a splash of color and a tasty side treat to the dish as well.

Hopefully you know what kind of media tie-in I’m about to make the leap to. But don’t worry, it’s not what you think. I’m not going to list off all the problems I have with dating sims. Instead, I’m going to talk about the beefiest dating sim of the year: Dream Daddy!

Dream Daddy is a dating sim produced by Youtube famous group The Game Grumps, and is a dating sim where you create a dad and then go forth to date other dads. Although there are definitely some really good dating sims out there in the world, this is the only dating sim that I know of that focuses less on the fan-service and more on the realistic portrayal of people.

Before even entering the game, the player is asked to choose a body type for their character. The game is body positive, offering players three different diverse body types. The game is also inclusive of trans men, mirroring the three available body types, but wearing binders.

After creating your Dadsona and jumping into the game, your first interaction is with your daughter, Amanda. Through your conversation with her, you establish your character’s backstory. Was their previous partner a man or a woman? Was your daughter Amanda adopted or born to you and your partner? The freedom allowed to the player with these dialogue options is momentous for a dating sim.

But the good feelings don’t stop there. In the game, there are six different dads to date. You can date every dad a total of twice before choosing to get serious about one of them—so the game doesn’t ask you to pick a favorite without getting to know them—but what’s exciting about each dad’s storyline is discovering how they go against the stereotypes you assume about them.

For example, let’s take Damien.

Damien is marketed as the goth, Victorian obsessed dad of the game. The achievements you get for going on dates with him are called Interview with a Vampire 1, 2, and 3. But Damien isn’t all that he seems. He’s a man who cares a lot about his clothes and about being able to do the things he likes, but he’s also afraid of horror movies.

He enjoys the gothic pastime of strolling through graveyards because he feels it allows him to celebrate life.

And, if you compliment his clothes on your first date with him, he’ll talk about how important it is to him to be able to pick from a closet of period specific clothing—including binders.

Trans characters are often overlooked in media, so this tidbit of information that confirms Damien as trans while also not making a big deal out of it is a huge victory for the dating sim genre, which is often written off as shallow and there only to provide fan-service.

Damien isn’t the only character in the game doing his part for representation.

Craig, Hugo, and Mat make the cast ethnically diverse, making room for Asian-American, Latinx-American, and Black-American representation.

Mat represents how a person who likes people but has social anxiety acts in social settings.

Hugo represents the intellectuals who also enjoy “base” things like wrestling.

Brian represents how always trying to please someone else can backfire and make them think you’re competing with them instead—leading to an entire debacle over both people thinking the other one hates them. He also is an example of an overweight and active character—counteracting the stereotype that being overweight is a result of laziness rather than genetic disposition.

Joseph represents tolerant religious practice and how to be a cool youth pastor.

But it goes even further than that.

Craig, the dad who seems to be successful at everything he touches, is actually representing what high functioning anxiety looks like.

And Robert, the seemingly unfazeable bad boy of the dad group has some self-destructive tendencies that he doesn’t want to admit to himself. This realization is very difficult to get to, however, as if the player sleeps with Robert either of the times Robert tries to avoid the subject, he will discard the player as someone who is only interested in him superficially and can’t be trusted.

It’s worth noting that all of the dads have different familial make ups as well. Some have lost their past spouses like Dadsona has. Others have separated from their partners amicably. Others never had a partner to begin with, and still others may still be involved with their crumbling marriages.

What I’m trying to say, is this is a wonderful story in which you act as a real father figure to your remarkable photography major of a daughter, and also meet some other remarkable fathers along the way. Go play Dream Daddy and let it wash away your beefs with dating sims.