Kobe Beef in Kobe City, Holy Cow!

Ah, Kobe. The sixth-largest city in Japan and capital of the Hyogo Prefecture, Kobe is about 74 km southwest of Kyoto. The city is notable for a couple of reasons: mainly that it was one of the earliest Japanese cities to open for trade with the West after Japan came out of seclusion, the major damage it suffered during the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, and perhaps most famously — its beef.

Kobe is mainly a harbor town, and the briefest stroll through its streets make its history of Western influence abundantly clear. Many older buildings have a distinctly Western architecture and style, the city apparently boasts quite an expat community, and it’s abundant with international fare (plenty of English, French, Italian, Chinese, and even Spanish restaurants abound). Most of this is anchored around the main Sannomiya train station, its main transportation hub and shopping/entertainment district. South of that you’ll find plenty of familiar upscale designer stores (off the top of my head, I remember spotting Louis Vuitton, Cole Haan, and Coach), and farther south you’ll hit the harbor, including Port Tower, the Kobe Maritime Museum, and the Harborland entertainment district (which includes arcades, shopping malls, department stores, a ferris wheel, and restaurants — including, oddly enough, and Old Spaghetti Factory?).

Sannomiya is where it’s at, though. Most of the restaurants and stores are centered there, and if you’ve come to Kobe looking for its famous steaks or cosmopolitan atmosphere, this — and the Kitano district north of the station — is what you wanna check out.

After wandering around Kobe a little and checking out its Chinatown (the only one in the Kansai region of Japan, apparently?), we bit the bullet and decided it was time to check out the city’s main attraction — the beef. Our guidebook recommended A-1 (what a cheeky name), a Japanese Kobe beef chain that maintains a couple of branches in the Sannomiya district (we saw about three within a few blocks of each other).

First, though, a briefer on Kobe beef: Prized for its flavor, texture, and fatty, marbled texture, Kobe beef refers to meat from a black cattle species called Wagyu (the species is not indigenous to Japan, it was introduced in the second century to help cultivate rice and eating it was prohibited for more tahn 200 years). In America, “Kobe beef” frequently actually means Kobe style beef; the cows raised in the States are actually a crossbreed between Wagyu and Angus cattle.

True Kobe beef, then, must be imported from Kobe, Japan, and the phrase is actually a registered trademark (similar to how authentic Cognac, Champagne, and Balsamic vinegar must come from their eponymous regions). Rumor has it that Kobe beef are fed beer and grain and massaged with sake daily, and true Kobe beef must meet seven specific criteria (it must be born in and raised in Hyogo Prefecture; it must come from a castrated cow; it must be processed at slaughterhouses in either Kobe, Nishinomiya, Sanda, Kakogawa, or Himeji; its marbling ratio must be a “level 6 or above;” it must have a “meat quality score of four or five;” and the gross weight of beef from one animal must be 470 kg or less).

As you can imagine, then, Kobe beef can be extremely expensive. A small filet ran me about $60, but you can easily spent $70, $80, and more than $100 on a Kobe beef dinner for one person. Its preparation is also quite versatile, and can be served as a steak, sukiyaki, shabu shabu, sashimi, sushi, and teppanyaki.

At A-1, they serve the Kobe beef teppanyaki style (which means, in this case, flame-cooked on an iron griddle). It’s served with onions, spinach, potatoes, and garlic, and a full dinner set is served with a small green salad topped with Thousand Island dressing, miso soup, a bowl of rice, and a glass of wine. I ordered mine a la carte and skipped the soup and wine.

The meal ran me about ¥6,000 (roughly $60 USD), but was absolutely worth it. The beef had a perfect sear but was still pink, tender, and barely warm in the center (as a good steak should be!). The teppanyaki sauce was flavorful and the vegetables had excellent texture, seasoning, and balance of flavors (and those caramalized onions — rawr!) I hadn’t had teppanyaki in years (or a good steak, for that matter, and I’d been craving one something fierce a few months ago), but this meal was not only an excellent value for its quality (and the associated bragging rights), but it was delicious and satisfying and reminded my why teppanyaki is such a great part of Japanese cuisine that I really need to eat more of.

After dinner, we wandered over to Molto Cuore, a pastry and coffee shop on Tor Road that serves an assortment of cakes and pastries (Kobe, apparently, is also renowned for its Western sweets offerings):

As you can see, this store offers a range of beautifully arranged desserts, including shortcakes, tarts, custards, and a wall of cookies, breads, and pastries. I ordered a blueberry custard tart and a coffee:

But it was delicious and I still had some coffee left, so I ordered a strawberry shortcake, too:

Both were served with a melon-flavored soft serve ice cream topped with a caramel sauce. They were both amazing, and a perfect chaser to the expensive — but absolutely worth every single penny yen — Kobe beef teppanyaki. Suck on that, Benihana.