TacoCat's TrEats #35: A Rare Meat Cute 🍖

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Hey Steemit!

This week's Tasteem contests were a toss up between the Steak Lover and All About Noodles contests for me. Ultimately I decided on the steak one because not only do I love meat but I found a really great steak restaurant that I want to share (and I wrote about noodles the previous post so yea)!

Anyway, the restaurant I wanted to share today is called Ikinari Steak! We actually found this gem earlier this year during our trip to Hiroshima!
I don't have an actual photo of the Hiroshima outlet but this is what it looks like (no worries tasteem I have another store picture below).

Source: tripadvisor.co.nz

We found this restaurat totally by chance (yet again), while walking along the street. We actually weren't really craving steak but the heavenly aroma of tasty meat was too irresistible so we had to check it out!

It was quite a small restaurant with limited seating but we were lucky it was past peak lunch hours. Even though we like steak, we're not meat aficionados so we had to read the instructions. 😅

They were having a promotion for their Wild Steak so we ordered 1 portion of that and 1 portion of sirloin steak. They charge by weight (oz/g) and I believe you can order in 100/200/300g or something like that.

Soon our steak arrived! This was the Wild Steak:

And this was the sirloin steak:

We were given bibs to wear so the meat juices wouldn't stain the front of our clothes. 😅

The steak was sooo good! The Wild Steak was a little tougher and chewier but the sirloin was really smooth and cut really well. I guess it depends how you like your meat, but they have a variety of types to choose from, including fillet, ribeye and hamburg.

The standard meal if you order ala carte is just the steak and some vegetables on the side, but you can also add on additional sides like salad, rice, curry, potatoes and more.

Source: thevillager.com

So Ikinari Steak is a Japan-based steak restaurant group which first opened in Tokyo in December 2013, and now has over 300 outlets throughout Japan, and is the most popular steak restaurant in the country! It even opened a few branches in US, and now has 9 locations in Manhattan.

Roughly translating to “Sudden Steak”, Ikinari Steak is a zero frills, “let’s get straight down to the meat, eat and get out” type of affair, so most of their restaurants are standing room only.

I'm not sure about other steak restaurants but at Ikinari, steaks are cut to order, cooked on an open-fire, and presented sizzling on a cast-iron platter. You then drizzle their special soy sauce based signature steak sauce over the meat and enjoy it while it's still sizzling!

I think the unique aspect of Ikinari Steak is that they don't boast about the types of beef they have; like whether its wagyu or kobe or anything like that. All their steaks are great and they know it.

Since that first meal in Hiroshima we've eaten at 2 other outlets in Japan; 1 in Kawasaki (which was a standing restaurant) and 1 in Aomori!

This is the Kawasaki branch, which was pretty near the station if I recall.

It was my first time eating in a standing restaurant and it was full of working professionals at dinnertime!

We ordered a 200g sirloin each and it was sooo delicious! With the fried garlic, the natural sweetness of the corn contrasting with the saltiness of the steak sauce, it was truly exquisite! 😋

Look at how untidy Sean is with cutting his meat. 😄

I'd say the best branch we went to is definitely the Aomori one. It's a pretty remote city in Japan so they have space for a huuuge outlet there.

There's definitely a different atmosphere when you enter this particular restaurant compared to the ones in crowded cities like Tokyo.
Look at how much space there is! It felt more comfortable and homely that's for sure.

We discovered we could swop the corn out for some broccoli (my favourite vegetable) so that's exactly what we did!

Look at it steamin' 🤤

We don't eat steak that often (you know, red meat and all) and unless you have all the monies you probably wouldn't visit this chain that often too cos it's pretty expensive but I'd definitely recommend visiting at least once if you're a meat lover like us!