I walked a bit around Osaka and just wanted something grilled to eat. The place Kiyomizu Hall seemed a good idea for the evening, I read some reviews about it online, and yakiniku sounded perfectly good. At the front, covered with big red lanterns and signs of beer brands everywhere, you already know what kind of place this is before even going in.
Yakiniku is Japanese BBQ, where you cook thin meat slices on the table with hot metal plate, which I like because you can decide about the ways of BBQ.
Yakiniku Dinner at Kiyomizu Hall in Osaka
In the menu, I found different sets and ala carte foods to choose from. It had omakase sets at some prices if you only want to pick what looks good. At Kiyomizu Hall there were Wagyu choices, different kinds of beef tongue, skirt steak and a whole drink list with local beers and plum wine.
In the end I just chose a mix instead of a whole set.
First came kimchi with sesame seeds. It crunched in the mouth and had a nice kick, nothing exciting, but a good start while waiting for the meat.
Then came pieces of hormone covered with a thick sauce with green onions and sesame seeds on top. The sauce was sweet and sticky, and the meat was really soft. It reminded me a bit of something that my mother made at home, except that this has a sweeter taste.
Not that, because of what I came for, but I kept taking more anyway.
After that came soaked pork slices with sesame seeds and pepper on top. The pork looked nice and oily and smelled smoky even before touching the grill. I put them on it, and they sizzled well.
It was different from that meal at Issunboushi in Kyoto, where the beef pieces were the main star, but that pork really did well on its own.
On the side, they gave a bowl of miso soup with green onions floating in it. It was very simple, if I must be honest, normal miso, nothing special. Thin broth.
I mostly drank it between the meat bites.
Then came the Wagyu, so things became really fun. They gave different pieces with tags showing what each is. Every piece had thick fat running through it, and you can see the fat lines just looking at it.
The fat of Wagyu comes from the way they raise the cows in Japan, everything is about special food and care that takes years to make the best. I grilled every piece, to really taste the difference between them. Some fatter, some skinnier, but each had that soft, melting on the tongue feel.
There are also thin slices of fat beef put around a raw egg yolk with cut green onions and sesame seeds. That is the Loin Yukhoe, Japanese version of beef tartare. The meat was all raw and cold, and you must mix the egg yolk into it before eating.
I stopped a bit at first, because raw beef is not my usual thing, but it felt very soft, and the egg made it all creamy. The sesame added a little crunch also. In the end I finished it much faster than I thought.
