JAPAN

Two video-savvy cooks who tried to find out how many scoops of stewed beef can you pile onto a bowl of rice could find themselves out of jobs after the Japanese beef bowl chain Yoshinoya D&C Co. suspended them for posting a clip of their experiment on YouTube.

The three-minute clip, posted Nov. 30, had been viewed almost 480,000 times on the video-sharing site as of late Tuesday.

It shows a man in a Yoshinoya uniform heap ladle after ladle of steaming stewed beef onto a bowl of rice.

By the sixth scoop, the mound of stewed beef is twice as high as the porcelain bowl, with bits tumbling off the sides. The chef then goes on to make a huge corn salad.

"It's just a disgrace to treat food this way," said Yoshinoya official Haruhiko Kizu.

Company cooks are trained to top beef bowls with just one scoop of beef, he said.

The YouTube cook and his camera-holding accomplice — both part-time employees at a Yoshinoya outlet in western Japan — have been suspended and the company is considering further penalties, including dismissal, Kizu said.

The company tracked the culprits down by scrutinizing the clip for clues, eventually identifying the restaurant and the employees.

Tokyo-based Yoshinoya operates over 1,000 restaurants in Japan and about 300 overseas, mostly in the United States and China.

It was one of the first major Japanese chains to put U.S. beef back on its menu when Japan resumed imports earlier this year following a three-year ban over mad cow fears.