Tokyo's one-pot sukiyaki chain GOKU opens its first store outside Japan, in Sydney

GOKU, the Tokyo operator of the one-pot-per-diner chain WAGYU SUKIYAKI GOKU, opens its first store outside Japan on 5 November in Sydney -- a city with its own wagyu industry -- testing whether a 24-store domestic format travels where the company has no captive demand to lean on.

The floortok desk · 2 min read · 27 October 2026

Illustration of a long restaurant counter set with a row of individual lidded pots, a chef in silhouette tending the nearest one, and a sunlit window onto a city street behind — Illustration by floortok.com

GOKU, the Tokyo company behind the single-pot sukiyaki chain WAGYU SUKIYAKI GOKU (styled 極〜GOKU〜 in Japan), said it will open its first store outside Japan on 5 November, in Sydney's Haymarket district. The 18-seat restaurant at Shop 3, 730-742 George Street will run from 11:00 to 22:00 local time, according to the company's 26 October announcement -- GOKU's first step abroad since it was founded in April 2023.

The format centres on giving each diner an individual pot rather than the shared tabletop pan typical of sukiyaki, with the beef pre-arranged and the first slice seared by staff in front of the guest. GOKU said the approach lets it serve a finished dish in as little as five minutes, against the 20 to 30 minutes it says a conventional sukiyaki order takes. The company said it uses only A5-graded Japanese black wagyu, imported through its own supply channel, and a proprietary warishita sauce combined with dashi stock.

GOKU runs 24 stores in Japan under what it calls a dominant-area strategy, with 25 staff, according to the release. The company said it chose Sydney in spite of -- and partly because of -- Australia's own wagyu industry, describing the city, in its own words, as a market already thick with wagyu competition, and said it wants to make sukiyaki a global standard dish rather than the expensive, special-occasion item it is often taken to be.

The announcement is written in unusually combative terms for a single store opening -- GOKU describes the move as a bet on the company's fortune and says it has ruled out the possibility of failure entirely. Its president, Ura, went further in the release, describing the Sydney opening not as market testing but as an attempt to win outright. Strip the framing and the underlying facts are modest: one 18-seat restaurant, run by a 25-person company that has never operated outside Japan, entering a city whose own beef industry it has already singled out as competition. Whether the format travels -- and whether GOKU opens a second overseas store, in Sydney or elsewhere -- is untested; the release sets out no further international plan beyond this one site.