Many years ago I was having dinner at Japanese Village here in Calgary. I’ve been eating there since… well, let’s just say long enough that I stopped counting quite some time ago and prefer not to date myself further. Every visit ended the same way. I would happily drown my steak, vegetables, rice… pretty much everything… in their famous steak sauce.
Eventually curiosity got the better of me. I had to know what was in it.
So I started asking around.
One conversation led to another until, somehow, I found someone who knew someone that had worked there and actually still had access to the original recipe. Better yet, they had someone call me from inside the restaurant kitchen and read it straight from the actual recipe sheet while giving me ingredients one or two at a time. Apparently they were trying not to look suspicious while standing in the kitchen with their phone reading off the recipe. It felt less like getting a recipe and more like participating in an undercover operation. James Bond would have been proud.
The original recipe makes enough sauce to feed what felt like half the city, so I’ve done the only thing necessary: scaled it down to a sensible batch for home cooks. Other than that, this is the recipe exactly as it was given to me.
One important note before anyone else tells me it’s the wrong version. The recipe below comes from Japanese Village in Calgary. The restaurants in Vancouver, Victoria, and elsewhere are separate businesses and have their own recipes. Over the years I’ve seen people compare them as though they’re all the same restaurant, but they aren’t. So if the sauce you remember came from one of those locations, it may well be different. If you’re looking for the steak sauce served at the Calgary Japanese Village restaurants, this is the one.
One little side note. Every so often Costco carries a dressing that’s similar in some ways to this sauce. Nancy and I have affectionately nicknamed this sesame based narcotic “Crack Dressing” because once we open a bottle, it seems to disappear at what can only be described as an alarming rate. It’s delicious and definitely worth trying if you happen to spot it, but in our opinion it still doesn’t quite match the flavour of the Japanese Village Calgary steak sauce. It comes close enough and reminds us why we like this recipe so much.
The original recipe didn’t specify ingredient brands or specific types, so use good-quality ingredients and you’ll very likely be rewarded.
I’ve had more requests for this recipe than just about any other. There are plenty of copycat versions on the Internet, but this isn’t one of them. It’s the original Calgary recipe, simply scaled down from the restaurant’s production batch to something a home cook can actually make. Once you’ve tasted it, you’ll understand why so many people in Cowtown end up pouring it over everything on the plate for decades
Ingredients:
- ¾ cup Soy Sauce (Japanese Shoyu type)
- 1 cup Vegetable Oil
- ½ cup Toasted Sesame Seeds
- 1 Egg yolk
- ½ tablespoon Dry Mustard
- 1 Clove Garlic, large (Minced)
- ½ cup Chopped Onion (One small Onion)
- ½ cup Whipping Cream
Method:
- Place soy sauce, sesame seeds, onion and garlic in a blender and mix on high for 30 seconds.
- Add remaining ingredients and blend until fine.
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