Shimo-Yamate-dori 2-2-9, Sannomiya, Kobe, Japan
Web: Kobe A-1
Phone: 078-331-8932
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Drinks Favorites Japanese Kobe Sake Steak
"Though it's internationally best known for its beef, Kobe is domestically renowned for its sake - it and nearby town Fushimi collectively account for 45% of Japan's total production of the famed rice wine."
Once in a while, a meal completely changes the way you'll look at the same food in the future, and yesterday in Kobe, Japan, we had one of those meals. We weren't expecting it - in fact, we thought it was all but impossible - but we have fallen head-over-heels in love with the city's famous Kobe beef. This didn't happen at a fancy steakhouse, and when you read the story, you'll hopefully understand why we were so skeptical going in, but the summary is short and sweet: we will literally never, ever be able to look at or taste a steak the same way again. The second part of this article discusses another Kobe specialty, the Japanese rice wine called sake (properly pronounced sah-kay), which we have featured in a number of earlier articles.
First, a little perspective. Kobe is Japan's fifth-largest city, and having substantially rebuilt itself since a historically devastating 1995 earthquake, it is modern, filled with family-friendly attractions, and as famous as ever for both its beef and its sake. It was Kobe that brought Wagyu cattle into the global consciousness, telling the world about beef that was genetically predisposed to produce superior steaks, plus some unusual cultivation techniques: traditionally, Kobe's Wagyu cows received massages and atypically nice diets, even including sake or beer, all designed to relax them and help to marble their fat. Consequently, the steaks command insanely high prices: a pound of uncooked Kobe-certified Wagyu sirloin goes for $130, versus $5-$8 for a pound of typical sirloin, and prepared steaks sell for $500 a pound in some restaurants.
This was not our first, second, or even third time trying Kobe beef, and it needs to be said that we've never been especially impressed by it in the past. Much of the "Kobe beef" served in America is sad and disingenuously named meat, offered almost flippantly in everything from forgettable steaks to ridiculous hot dogs and hamburgers; having tried these items, we have never wanted to order the same specific item again. Before we ever sampled the American variations, we ordered Kobe steak some years ago in Tokyo, receiving a sizzling teppanyaki-style plate with narrow, overcooked pieces of beef that were fatty, but not memorably tasty. All of this might explain our mindset as to what would happen when we sampled Wagyu in Kobe itself - we considered the visit to be obligatory, and researched worthwhile places to try the beef, but weren't entirely looking forward to it. We were fully prepared to spend a bunch of money, shrug off the steak, and tell you if we hadn't been impressed.
But as always, we did give the city and the steak a more than fair opportunity to win us over. We decided to visit a local restaurant that has been praised up and down for the quality and the atypically reasonable pricing of its Kobe beef, though its name, Kobe A-1, didn't exactly inspire confidence. It has all the class of a bottle of steak sauce known for deliciously masking the poor flavors and textures of mediocre beef, and of its several locations, the one we happened to visit was small and only a little more impressive cosmetically than the typical Buffalo tavern. For some reason, we were given bibs along with the expected chopsticks - more on that in a moment - and had three minutes to select our meals from a highly simplified menu. Patrons choose filets or sirloin steaks, in either 1/3 pound ($63) or 1/2 pound ($83) portion sizes, and unless you want wine or another beverage, that's pretty much it. Literally the only optional item on the menu was a side plate of garlic rice, which we didn't order; all meals include some nice but not memorably great starters: a hot, rich beef stew appears first, light on pieces of meat but heavy in flavor, followed by a nice but plain bowl of green, Thousand Island- and rice vinegar-dressed salad, plus cup of hot green tea at the very end before you receive your check.
The magic started in the middle of the meal after we finished our salads. Kobe A-1's servers doubled as chefs, walking behind a wooden bar that partially obscured whatever they were doing - prepping soups and salads didn't seem much worth watching, and they weren't trying to call attention to themselves or the process in any way. So we were completely surprised when two black skillet entree plates were set ablaze behind the bar, producing roaring balls of fire only seconds before they were brought over to our table. Normally, we find theatrical teppanyaki preparations to be laughably showy, but we leapt up to grab a picture, and our photo caught only the afterglow. The flames had helped to flash-fry the meat, and those unusual paper bibs had been delivered to keep us from getting splattered with grease. Alongside a bowl of lightly black peppered rice and a tiny dish of pickled veggies, what arrived was a sizzling platter so covered in other, healthier items - sliced onions, mushrooms, fat fry-like potatoes, and spinach - that we feared there wouldn't be much steak on our plates. Worse yet, it was at this point that we realized that we had never been asked how we wanted our filet and sirloin to be cooked.
As it turned out, there was no need for concern. We pulled the piled onions back to reveal two of the most unbelievable steaks we've ever seen or tasted, the beef muscle of the sirloin in particular so amazingly marbled with fat that the texture was unlike anything we've tasted in a steak before - soft and nearly bereft of grain, the pieces were rare to medium rare, and pre-sliced to an ideal roughly 1/2" thickness. They could be bitten through with ease and eaten fully with chopsticks rather than forks and knives; the quick and thick preparation of the meat illustrated why the similar, thinner-sliced version we'd had in Tokyo before had arrived comparatively overcooked and forgettable. In addition to an unnecessary dollop of butter up top, plus a nice red wine and garlic sauce that included large, tasty garlic chunks, Kobe A-1's filet and sirloin tasted better than any steak we've ever eaten, juicier than the very softest, fall off the bone ribs, and were without any question amongst the very best meat dishes we can recall consuming. No kidding, no hype, no bias: as you can gather from other articles on Buffalo Chow, we've eaten a lot of steak over the years, pride ourselves on laying waste to Brazilian churrascarias, and have had mediocre "Kobe" more times than we'd care to admit. This was the real deal, and even when the bill arrived for the equivalent of $144 - pricey, but far less than $500 per steak - we had no complaints. We wound up feeling so full from the lunch that we didn't eat another meal all day.
Based on our experiences over the years, we are convinced at this point that much of what is called Kobe beef, particularly outside Japan, bears little or no resemblance to the real thing. It is a marketing scam designed to justify crazy high prices for meat that is at best only a little different from the norm, but at worst, completely indistinguishable and quite possibly not even using the same cows or production processes. On the other hand, poor preparation of the real meat can transform an expensive steak into a completely forgettable, throwaway meal, demonstrating just how essential both the right meat and chef can be in utilizing this very special ingredient. We're glad to have finally had a chance to enjoy the real thing; going forward, it is something we look forward to having again, though we'll also be more aggressive about calling out the imitators.
Though it's internationally best known for its beef, Kobe is domestically renowned for its sake - it and nearby town Fushimi collectively account for 45% of Japan's total production of the famed rice wine, which has grown in popularity outside the country over the past decade. The reasons: in addition to an abundance of experienced brewing talent, Kobe's breweries have access to water and rice from the Rokko mountain range, the former considered great for sake due to its mineral content, and the latter prized for its "crisp flavor and subtle mellowness." This isn't to say that the sake produced in Kobe is always the country's best - our favorite sake comes from another city, and there are 2,000 brewers spread across the country - but rather that Kobe's location provides easy access to resources that can produce good quality drinks.
Our intention was to visit two different sake brewing facilities, one internationally famous and the other comparatively unknown, but time constraints yesterday limited us to only one: the Hakutsuru Sake Brewery Museum. Two hundred and sixty-six years old, Hakutsuru began trading under its present name in 1885, opened in Kobe in 1918, and established an American arm in 2005. Today, its high-end Junmai Daiginjo Sho-Une sake and lower-end Hakutsuru Junmai Draft Sake are widely available in the United States, and its plum wine is growing in visibility, as well. Notably, its entries into the Sparkling Sake field - Sparkling Sazameki and Sparkling Sazameki Rose - are not yet available outside Japan, and the company places very little emphasis on cloudy, unfiltered nigori sakes in favor of varied grades of clear, filtered ones.
Hakutsuru's Sake Brewery Museum is one of several in Kobe, and set within an old-fashioned two-story wooden building on the grounds of what otherwise looks to be a conventional brewing factory. This particular building once served as a brewhouse, but was converted into a storage facility after modern techniques improved the quality, quantity, and seasonal capabilities of sake production. Subsequently, it was reopened and renovated with full-scale examples of classical wooden and metal brewing tools, Japanese-language explanatory placards, and video monitors capable of leading people at their own pace through the stages of the old and new brewing processes in either Japanese or English. Though we won't recite all the details here, we found the tour to be legitimately interesting, with the storytelling focus on traditional wood-and-manpower techniques removing some of the sterility associated with the modern computerized, biology-focused, and stainless steel vat imagery shown in the videos.
At the end of the tour is - surprise - a sake tasting room, where samples of slightly unfinished and unusually high (20%) alcohol content sake is offered in sip-sized cups, along with some of the plum wine. A gift shop offers sake sets, some quite impressive, and numerous bottles of the company's various sakes. We bought a few, including both of the Sparkling Sazameki variants and a bottle of traditional Daiginjo sake, and found them to be fine; the plum wine, by contrast, struck us as unusually pure-tasting and light in a good way. If nothing else, the visit to Hakutsuru left us interested in exploring more of Japan's sake scene, though the more we learn, the more we realize there is to learn, and there mightn't be enough time in this visit to do the sort of tasting we'd want to accomplish. We'll have to see. Perhaps some things are best left as enticements for future visits.
