The Japanese grilled eel and rice bowl dish is called unadon. It consists of steamed white rice topped with eel, or unagi, grilled in the kabayaki style and coated with a sweet soy-based tare sauce.
The eel is typically filleted, grilled, basted with sauce, and caramelized. In the Kantō style, the eel is steamed before grilling, producing a particularly tender texture; in the Kansai style, it is grilled without that steaming step. Sanshō, a fragrant Japanese pepper, is often sprinkled over the finished bowl.
Unadon is a type of donburi, the broad Japanese category of rice bowls topped with meat, fish, eggs, or vegetables. It is not simply donburi, because that term describes the entire class of dishes. Kabayaki names the eel-grilling preparation, while unajū is a closely related version served in a lacquered tiered box instead of an ordinary bowl. Hitsumabushi is another eel-and-rice specialty, associated especially with Nagoya, in which chopped eel is served over rice with accompanying condiments.