Matsuya's Official X Tries the Autumn Classic "Stir-fried Pork and Eggplant with Spicy Miso Set Meal"

At 8:35 PM on September 8, Matsuya’s official X account posted that it had actually eaten the “Stir-fried Pork and Eggplant with Spicy Miso Set Meal,” released that same day. The post opens with “We had the ‘Stir-fried Pork and Eggplant with Spicy Miso Set Meal,’ on sale from today( ¯꒳¯ ),” and introduces the spicy miso-dressed dish with the pun “Appetite in autumn, spicy miso in autumn!”

Skipping the Stock Phrase for “Appetite in Autumn, Spicy Miso in Autumn!”

The official announcement dated September 3, titled “Loved for 18 Years, Matsuya’s ‘Autumn Tradition’ — ‘Stir-fried Pork and Eggplant with Spicy Miso Set Meal’ Released,” opens with the lines “Melt-in-your-mouth eggplant, pork loin, and onion, savory-grilled in spicy miso sauce.” and “Matsuya’s classic menu item, perfect for the appetite of autumn, returns again this year.” This taste-testing post borrows only the phrase “appetite of autumn” from that announcement, rewriting it into its own rhyming line: “Appetite in autumn, spicy miso in autumn!”

The release-announcement post from three days earlier, at 6 PM on September 4, used the phrase “autumn tradition” from the announcement’s title directly, as “Matsuya’s autumn tradition is back again this year🍁.” That phrase doesn’t appear in the taste-testing post posted the night of the release; it’s replaced by the pun instead.

The emoticon at the end of the post, “( ¯꒳¯ ),” is a recurring fixture in the official X account’s “we had” and “we ate” posts — it appears in 14 of the last 20 such posts. The 🍆 (eggplant) emoji in the body text, on the other hand, marks its first appearance in a recent taste-testing post, apparently chosen to match the dish’s main ingredient, eggplant.

The Dish Itself

The photo attached to the post shows pork loin, roughly cut eggplant, and wedge-cut onion, stir-fried together in a glossy spicy miso sauce and served on a white rectangular plate, finished with a scattering of white sesame seeds. Behind it sit a generous bowl of white rice, a salad of shredded cabbage topped with corn, and miso soup, confirming the full set meal lineup.

The post text emphasizes how the spicy miso sauce stokes the appetite, saying, “It’s a dish that makes the rice disappear fast✨.” The set meal comes with rice and salad, and the official website also offers a “Double” option with an increased amount of meat, in addition to the regular serving.

An Autumn Classic That Vanished, Then Returned

Looking back through past announcements, the “Stir-fried Pork and Eggplant with Spicy Miso Set Meal” first appeared in a release announcement in September 2008, and has returned as an autumn menu item around that season nearly every year since. However, no release announcement for a product of the same name can be confirmed between 2019 and 2021, and it reappeared in an October 2022 announcement explicitly labeled a “comeback.” Announcements have continued every autumn for four years running since then, and this year’s announcement touted it as “loved for 18 years.”

The price for the 2026 edition is 880 yen for the set meal. Last year, the ingredient was swapped for thick-cut pork boneless short rib and sold as the “Stir-fried Thick Pork Boneless Short Rib and Eggplant with Spicy Miso Set Meal” for 980 yen; this year it returns to pork loin at 880 yen, 100 yen cheaper. Details on the price and specification changes, along with the release-day details, are covered in the related article.