While in Kobe last weekend my wife demanded I take her and my daughter to eat Kobe beef. So after that last day of our gem and mineral show we set out to hunt for the best beef in the world.
Being Kobe, there are endless places to eat Kobe beef at, so how do you decide? Enter Steakland.
Steakland is one of the more famous steak houses in Kobe. In addition to being well known their prices are very reasonable. They offer A5 Kobe beef, a special breed of black cow only raised in Hyogo state of which Kobe is a part of.
When we walked in I was a bit surprised to see it was teppanyaki. I don't even recall the last time I had eaten teppanyaki, if ever in Japan.
For those who don't know, teppanyaki is the type of dinning where the chef cooks the meal right in front of you. It was very popular in the USA with Benihana and other Japanese steak houses.
Ordering was easy as the menu isn't very big. Wagyu runs $35, Kobe beef starts at $55 and goes up to over $100 depending on the cut and portion. My wife and I just went with the basic $55 and ordered the wagyu for our daughter. Each course comes with soup, salad, rice, the main dish and coffee.
As I admired the dish of garlic chips the our food began arriving, beef broth soup & a house salad. They were just you average, simple dishes, nothing special about them.
It only took a few minutes from ordering for the beef to arrive.
I laughed at what came next, a huge chunk of butter to cook the vegetables in. My wife hates when I cook with butter instead of olive oil so I took this time to remind her, even the best steak houses use butter!
After the vegetables are cooked the meat is then prepared. On the right is the wagyu, left is Kobe gyu(beef).
The wagyu looked more presentable then the Kobe gyu because of the marbling.
A little salt and the show started.
For all three steaks we ordered them medium rare.
Then came the moment of truth...
A bit of garlic and I was ready for the legendary beef.
My first impression was the softness of the meat. It's not chewey and almost melts like an A5, actually this was A5 beef so that made sense. The flavor was very light though. I was a little surprised about this. While delicious it didn't rank up there with other A5 beefs I have had in Tokyo. That might be the cut we ordered though. It made me wonder about my daughter's wagyu. So I tried a piece of hers. The wagyu had the flavor I was looking for, but the texture was not as good as the Kobe gyu. If you combined the two you would have the ultimate beef. I believe if we had ordered the $100 Beef that would have been the result. My wife also preferred the flavor of the wagyu so we ordered one for us to split.
Butter!
It was delicious!
We finished everything off with coffee instead of desert.
I had seen a chocolate shop just across from Steakland I thought we could get desert at instead.
We finished up and when we got to the cashier we found their curry for sale for $5 each so we added two of those to the bill for a grand total of about $138. Not bad at all!
Steakland is located next to the Kobe Sannomiya station.
For more information on Steakland you can visit their website here:
https://steakland-kobe.jp/en/
Oh, and desert, Cacao Sampaka.
This place was amazing and deserves it's own review, but let me say the creme puff, shu cream, we had for desert was incredible! Rich chocolate with vanilla bean cream. It was one of the best I have ever had in Japan. I will go back there again next year for a full review and sampling of their other sweets. Until then....
Thanks for reading!
