On Saturday, January 10th, hubby and I stopped by a bookstore in Umeda and bought a couple magazines featuring many of the different restaurants in the particular areas surrounding our home. We decided to randomly select a restaurant by flipping through the pages and pointing at one.
We landed on Takeru no Steak, which specializes in the one kilogram steak bowl. Despite being warned to reduce his intake of red meats during his annual health check, hubby was more than happy to beeline over there.
Unfortunately, or fortunately for us, they were sold out of the 1-kg steak bowl. Then again, we did arrive around 9:40 P.M. A friend of ours informed me that the first five people to order the 1-kg steak can get it for just 940-yen! One day..... one day........ we'll get hubby's BMI down and we'll head there for breakfast. XD
Anyway, this place is located within the Tenjinbashi-suji shopping arcade 5-chome in the street heading the East-West directions. You can see from the storefront that it's definitely a beef place.
The interior was small, which is not unusual for all the small and delicious restaurants in the Tenma area. By doing a quick lookaround, it looked like there were roughly nine seats at the counter and a table for four in the back. I was very happy to see that this was a non-smoking place - which is rare for this kind of small establishment in Japan.
It's really too bad that Japan has yet to ban smoking from public areas in this day and age. Hopefully, this will change in the near future so we can all enjoy our food with all the senses without the smell of tobacco smoke interfering with our experience.
Along the top of the walls were autographs from various celebrities, which is always a good sign. There were hangers on the wall behind the counter for coats and slots beneath the counter to put your bags. I love that most every place in Japan makes it standard to have someplace to put your things.
The music was an interesting mix of early American 80s pop. It's not something you hear too often in Japan. The old soul in hubby was groovin'.
The signs on the glass explained the different spices and sauces that were available to use with your steak. You'll find no A1 sauce here, but you may never need it again after tasting all the flavors made specifically for what you are eating. (If you absolutely cannot let go of A1, the next closest thing is Tonkatsu sauce. I personally recommend the Bulldog brand).
The server brought out this Takeru sauce, which was a mixture of onion and soy sauce base, to have with your steak. It was very light flavored, not really onion-y or salty at all. The onions were grated, so there weren't any chunks of onion inside.
There was also this little bin of sauces at the table. I didn't bother to use any of these, aside from the garlic chips and dressing for my salad. I highly recommend the garlic chips sprinkled on top of your steak (the red lid).
There are aprons available as well for the messy eaters. The little sign on the utensil box says you can get the soup, salad, and unlimited rice refills for 210-yen during dinnertime only. We went for this option. When you say "set" we say "go." ^-^
With the seductive sound of meat sizzling in the background, I proceeded to order the 200g "double" size Chuck Eye. Although the staff asks how you would like it cooked, they don't hesitate to tell you how it should be cooked. So I ordered mine medium-rare, as that's how they suggested it, and hubby ordered his 200g Harami steak medium-well.
We got the "cup" of soup and salad first. The soup is good by itself, but also good to add a few garlic chips or pepper. The salad wasn't too special. It was just your average mix of cabbage and other veggies.
Then, we got our sizzling hot plates of steak... complete with a slice of butter melting on top. I'm looking at these photos again and my stomach is growling. -,-;;
My Chuck Eye was really juicy and soft. It was perfectly cooked as they recommended. The little bit of butter added to the simple salt and pepper seasoning and made it delicious on its own. I sprinkled some garlic chips on top and had a few bites with the Takeru sauce. Yumm~~ There was no ketchup for the potato wedges, but that's just the American in me I have to work on suppressing.
Perhaps because hubby's steak was cooked medium-well, it was more chewy and the texture was more "stringy," for lack of a better work. It was good, but we both prefer not having to chew so much.
But for 1,300 ~ 1,400-yen per plate, we were more than happy. You could never get steak like this in the states for this price!
All in all, we will definitely go back someday because I have my eye on the rib roast. But we don't know if we'll ever make it back because of the overwhelming number of other tempting restaurants occupying every square meter of Osaka. The only thing we worry about is whether we'll be able to visit all of them before we die. Won't that be a shame.
*Tip: Go as early as possible to try to get one of their limited 1-kg steak dishes.
Takeru no Steak - Tenma
タケルのステーキ
Address: 5-6-22 Tenjinbashi, Kita-Ku, Osaka
Phone: 06-6357-2929 (Seems to be a play on words: 2929 = "ni ku ni ku" = "meat meat")
Hours: 11:00 ~ 23:00 (Last order 22:30), Lunch 11:00 ~ 17:30
