Kobe beef

I was in Kobe last Monday through Wednesday, at the Portopia Hotel, for a conference of all recontracting JETs. Pretty standard affair by now: workshops, lectures, networking, partying, meat-marketting, etc. Speaking of meat-marketting...

I tried Kobe steak in a downtown Kobe steakhouse near the Shinkobe station with Adam, Ian, and Adam's Liverpool buddy Jonathan. The experience comes with a price tag of 6000 yen a head (about $60) excluding drinks.

Only sirloin and tenderloins were available, and were cooked at the teppan grill in front of us with nothing other than salt, pepper, and minced garlic. A dipping sauce of a mixture of soysauce, lemon/lime juice, sesame and ground daikon radish was also available, but it tasted more like salad dressing rather than steak sauce.

The raw beef was thoroughly marblized,

and was cut and grilled in bite-sized pieces.

Following the advice of the chef, we ate the steak while it was supercially seared and essentially raw. It looked like seared tuna sashimi--and tasted like seared tuna sashimi. The texture of tenderloin was closer to otoro (fatty cut of tuna) than beef. Though not my favorite of the two cuts, the sirloin was chewier, but had more flavor and juice than tenderloin. However, the unique flavor was not lasting--the texture and flavor deteriorated as the meat was cooked more. The last couple of pieces on the teppan were good but a far cry from extraordinary. The extended cooking probably cooked all the marblized fat out of the beef.

While it really did taste like no other steak I've had, I wasn't so sure if what looked like less than 8 oz of Kobe beef was really worth the \6000 price tag.