The Travel Bug & Food Bytes: The Best Steaks I Ever Had! (Satou Steak House)

Credit for finding this place goes to one of my best friends, who is also hot on all things Japanese, including food, fashion, sanyo, anime, dramas.... You know who you are! I also should refer you to this blog http://paulstravelpics.blogspot.com/2007/08/day-2-matsuzaka-steak-and-yakitori.html which helped us to navigate our way there.

Like many others before us, we combined our visit to Satou Steak House with a trip to Studio Ghibli Museum. The museum is a 20-30min train journey from Shinjuku to Mitaka, followed by a short 15-20min walk. We spent a few hours wandering around the museum, and exploring Miyazaki's wonderous creations of new words, before taking a 10 min bus ride (or its actually just 1 train station away) to Kichijoji.

As the restaurant is an extremely small 15 seater, we arrived very early hoping to beat the queue. Unfortunately it would open for dinner only at 5pm, so we spent some time wandering around the surrounding shopping streets, and most of all, admiring the queue at the Satou Meat Shop just below/next to the restaurant.

Apparently this is like the most famous beef store around, and furthermore, if you arrive before 5pm, you can receive a "special offer" on the meatballs. Hence we saw a long long queue of Japanese men / women / teenages all patiently queued up for almost 3 blocks (with polite "gaps" at intersections so as not to block human traffic).

At 5.10pm, we dashed up the extremely narrow staircase up into the restaurant, only to find another 4 people already happily tucked into their meals!!! Eating here is a very fast affair. Firstly, the menu is extremely limited. You can choose from different types of steak, but that's about it. Secondly, steak doesn't take long to cook. Thirdly, while the heat, smoke and smell from the grill in the open kitchen add to the atmosphere and experience of eating excellent beef, it definately discourages people from lounging around and taking their time.

We decided to go for the Matsu Beef (270g) from the "normal beef" sets, and the Tokusen Sirloin (270g) from the "premium beef" sets. On hindsight, we shouldn't have bothered with the normal beef set. Don't get me wrong, the beef there is very good. Its just that if you're going to order from the premium beef sets, you won't be able to appreciate the normal sets at all. So if you don't live in Japan, and can only make a few occassional visits there, don't worry about your pocket, and just order the premium beef set. The price depends on the weight of beef you choose, and a 360g steak is more than enough for 2 very hungry and usually-big-eaters.

Each set came with a side salad, and a choice of drink, the selection depending on which type of set you had ordered.

There were also 2 dips provided for the beef, but we totally ignored them after we had our first taste of the meat.

The Matsu beef set arrived first, huge chunks of meat with a side of beansprouts.


Doesn't it look great? Here's a close up of one piece.


We ordered our steaks medium-rare, and you can see from the photo the different layers of doneness. We had eaten most of this, when the Tokusen set arrived.


Are you drooling yet? If not, this next close up shot should do the trick.

Can you see the alternating stripes of white(fat) and red(meat)? The cubes simply melted away in our mouths. Even the wagyu steaks I had eaten in Singapore were nothing compared to this! We regretted not finishing the Matsu set faster, because once you started on the Tokusen, you can't really go back!