I made a reservation on Google so the reservation process was easy.
I went for lunch on Sunday at 11:30 (when they open). I believe that at this time you can just walk in with little to no wait. The restaurant is located on a fun street full of shops and restaurants. It's covered so it's a nice place to visit if it's really hot or rainy.
Most of the others at this time were ordering off a lunch menu. The hamburger steak seemed to be the most popular thing at this time.
They didn't give me a lunch menu...only the full menu. I wanted to order kobe beef anyway so it wasn't an issue but they probably should have given me a lunch menu in case I wanted it. But I don't know...maybe the reservation was such that the lunch menu wasn't an option?
I wanted the best kobe beef that they have so I opened for the chateaubriand. If price is what determines their best cut, this was the most expensive meat on the menu.
Since it's lunch time and I had more things to eat later I opted for the smallest (120g) portion. I also opted for an upgrade in rice to a rice bowl with egg and beef (rather than plain rice or fried rice) which was an extra 800 jpy. I thought it would come with more of a raw beef (which is what the picture looked like) but it was cooked so I wouldn't recommend this upgrade.
They brought out the beef so that I can take a picture. They asked for temperature (I said medium rare) and they cooked it on the teppanyaki.
I was seated off to the side so I couldn't really get a good view of the teppanyaki. Also, unlike places like Benhana in the USA, there wasn't any type of "show" or anything like that. But maybe it's because it was lunch and not dinner? Not sure...
The beef itself was pretty good but not mind blowing. I was actually hoping for a more fatty and more marbled cut of beef. Maybe that's not the chateaubriand and it's more the sirloin or tenderloin (one of the slightly cheaper cuts?) Either way, the chateaubriand was good but not any better than meat that I've had many times before.
Service was excellent. The cooked half the beef and then when I finished it, they cooked the other half and served it. Excellent way to serve beef.
There were 2 women sitting next to me and they were friendly and nice. One spoke good English and she said that she's taking English classes and she welcomed the opportunity to practice her conversation with me. She was very friendly.
