Wakkoqu Kobe Beefsteak ..... One of the best beef experience we had! - Kobe, Japan

What's most popular in Kobe? Kobe Beef! Are we gonna miss that while we are in Kobe? No Way! Sounds like a tour guide urging on the tourist while on a tour in Kobe. Well, that did go on in my mind while I was task to search out our food venue in Kobe. Wakkoqu market themselves well enough on their website to make me pick it as our choiced venue for the revered beef of Japan. It didn't take much to persuade me as it's one of the few website that had English translation. The beef in Wakkoqu are from the best of Hyogo bred Tajima black cattle and specifically 3 year old female cattle. Turns out, it became one of our best beef steak experience.

We (HY, William, Joanne and I) arrived into Kobe from Kyoto via the intercity train and stepped out of Sanomiya station. As we had some time before lunch, we did some shopping in Motomachi, the shopping street in Kobe before we fumbled our way to our extravagant Kobe steak lunch in Wakkoqu.

Entrance of Wakkoqu

Lunch sets cost between 2,940~5,040 yen. However, we decided to go extravagant for this meal and go for the best grade sirloin in the house. This set us back 13700 yen per person. However, we were impressed by the marbling on our sirloin and find that it was all worth the experience.

The best premium Kobe sirloin in Wakkoqu was shown to us
before cooking over the teppanyaki hot plate.

A close-up of the marbling of this top grade Kobe sirloin.

The sirloin was cut up and the fattiest portion was first cooked by placing it vertically on the hot plate.

Initially, a young Japanese chef was designated to serve us behind the teppanyaki counter. He was able to speak very fluent Mandarin and that made ordering very easy. When we decided on their most expensive course in the house, the most experience chef was then sent to cook for us.

The cool looking chef preparing our sirloin in fluid motion and made the cooking all seemed so easy.

Green Salad and an appetizer of salmon or raw beef sliced was served but this wasn't the highlight.

Apart from the sirloin steak, there was also an assortment of teppanyaki vegetables like carrots, sweet potato, tofu and mochi.

First, the leanest portion of the steak were cut up into strips like this.  All sides of the pieces were carefully cooked to uniform browning. Seeing the teppanyaki chef manipulate these pieces of sirloin was like watching a performance. He made it look so easy. I tried doing that at home and realized the difficulty.

The first pieces were served onto our individual plates right at the edge of the hot plate. These pieces were to be eaten by dipping into crushed course salt and crushed black pepper.

A close-up of this leanest sirloin portion still reveal a good amount of interlaced fats which made this revered Kobe beef so juicy and tender.

Next, the portion of the sirloin with more fats were cooked for us. These can be eaten with mustard dip as well as the course salt and crushed black pepper. Even though, the carrots and potatoes were like supporting cast in this meal. They were really sweet and went well with the beef.

A close-up of the fatter portion of the sirloin. With such a rich meal, a bottle of red wine that we ordered certainly helped reduce the level of cloying that can be quite overwhelming with sirloin of such intense marbling.

In all Japanese style, the meal came with rice and pickled vegetables.

The fattiest portion of the sirloin were then cut up into small bits and then stir fried with bean sprouts.

This turned out of be one of the best meal we had for this Japan trip and one of the best beef meal we had so far. Apart from the delicious food, the cooking 'performance' by the chef made it such an enjoyable meal. Needless to say, service was excellent, typical of high end Japanese restaurant. Oiishi!

We had quite a fair bit of the house red to go with the beef and we ended up sauntering down the hill, a little tipsy, faces all flushed, bracing ourselves in the autumn breeze, towards Motomachi for more shopping.

1F Hillside Terrace 1-22-13
Nakayamate-dori, Chuo
Kobe, Japan
Tel : 078-222-0678
Wakkoqu Website