When in Kobe...

On a trip to LA a couple of years ago, Evan and I went to a swanky hotel for lunch and split an appetizer of Kobe beef sliders. Trying to ignore our waiters disdain for people who come in wearing hoodies and jeans and split the cheapest thing on the menu, we savoured those burgers. They were good...really good. So when I started to look up things to do around Osaka and saw that Kobe was just a short train ride away, an idea started to hatch. We could eat not just a slider, but a whole steak of this delicious beef.

We went to Kobe for lunch (instead of dinner) and even then we could barely afford the price of the meal, but I have to say I think it was worth it.

First we were presented with The Steak. It was all marbled and gleaming and sitting on its own wooden pedestal.



Then the fixings were brought out: tofu, green peppers, potatoes, zucchini, gelantinized fish, and bean sprouts. Some of these things are pretty suspect on their own, but it turns out everything tastes good when cooked with Kobe steak fat.



The chef then started to cook garlic chips on the grill. Evan and I agreed that smelling bad in enclosed spaces for the rest of the week would be worth it.



To start off, we had a creamy corn soup and a garden salad. They were pretty good, but it was hard to think straight with that steak in front of me.





Here's where the fun began. The chef sectioned off the steak into the centre piece, the fat, and the heavily marbled piece.





The fat was cooked with the veggies.



Then the centre part of the steak was cooked with the veggies.



The centre part was served with the garlic chips, mustard, rock salt, and cracked pepper.



The veggies and tofu that were cooked in beef fat were delicious.



The fat was cut into small pieces and added to the bean sprouts for a beef fat stir fry.



We love beef.





The meal ended with lemon sorbet and coffee/tea. I almost didn't eat it because I wanted the beefy flavour to last.



What else is there to do in Kobe? Who knows. But they sure do make a mean steak.