Yun C.
Yelp
On our recent trip to Japan, our friends highly recommended us to try Matsusaka Beef and they also recommended Satou Kichijoji for the steak!
We were in Kobe and we had two rounds of Kobe beef steak just a few days prior to our visit to Satou so it was still quite fresh in our mind the Kobe beef yumminess. Matsusaka beef is Kobe beef's competitor and some people might prefer Matsusaka than the more-famous-well-known Kobe beef.
We went there on a Tuesday evening, the location was not really hard to find if you have internet and GPS!!!!! When you exit the station, goes towards the shopping arcades..yes, it's located in the "covered" shopping mall but not far from the Chuo line Kichijoji station.
When we got there, there were a line of about 6 people, the waiter told us, the wait would be about 15 minutes.
I'm giving 5 stars for service....I asked them to show me where the ATM was and one of the them actually WALKED me to 7Eleven and even waited until I finished getting money and walked me back to the restaurant!!!! omg, soooo nice!!!
There were only enough seating for probably 6 people by the grill... the rest of the tables are just regular table, no grill. We got seated in the regular table.. no biggie but it just would have been nice if we could watch the chef cooked. This is NOT why I'm giving a 3 stars...
The 3 stars is really merely the steak... sorry! There were two of us and we each ordered the famous 10,000 yen matsusaka beef steak dinner set. We also ordered (ala carte) the CHEAPEST steak they had on the menu so that we could compared the qualify of the meat.
The cheap steak was not cheap.. it was about 2000 yen I think and it was chewy, not good. Even other steak that we had in Japan in which we paid less than 2000 yen for was a lot more tender than this one.
They showed us the fame matsusaka beef steak before they went ahead and cooked them...the marbling looked a bit different than Kobe but the meat looked really good.
Now, we tried the matsusaka steak without the sauce and we were dissapointed. It didn't taste any different than USDA prime beef that certainly would have cost us 1/5 to 1/3 of the price we paid. We also tried it with the dipping sauce that they provide..it was just ok.. it just helped with the flavor but it cannot save the taste of the meat itself. Keep in mind that a good steak, should not need any sauce.. salt and pepper should be enough.
We purchased a few packs of the curry that they sold though (made with matsusaka beef), as souvenirs... we have not tried it yet.
We were glad we went to eat here, just to experience it, the service was great, but the we certainly would eat Kobe beef instead the next time around.
PS: the restaurant is tiny....