We know you’re going to be looking for affordable Kobe beef in Kobe. That’s why we want to tell you about Kobe Tanryu the place wher eyou can get a filling meal for as low as 1800 yen! Kobe Tanryu has several locations and we went to the Higashimon location. This branch is walkable from the Shin-Kobe JR station if you arrived by shinkansen (bullet train). We had just left Tokyo that morning and we were ready to eat lunch!
THINGS TO KNOW
At Kobe Tanryu, every table has a mini grill for you to grill the meat on yourself. After you order the beef, your serveer will bring it to you raw. There’s plenty of English signs all around the restaurant and the staff will give you English menus as well. Our server could speak some English and we had no problems ordering from her. You might have to wait for a bit because this restaurant seems very popular with locals. We arrived at 1:30pm and had to wait for about 10 minutes. FYI on the first 3 days of the New Year, they have a 10% service charge automatically added onto your bill.
Here is the menu for if you want to order the beef seperately. Like we said, there’s lots of English and they even have Chinese printed on these menus. We mused over this menu for a bit, not quite sure what to get and how much we would eat. These prices are very similar to what we’ve seen at other Kobe beef restaurants in the city. Our server came up and recommended we order from the set lunch menu because the value was better.
She recommended Howie get the set on the left for 3800yen and that I get the 1800yen meal. These set meals include a soup, salad, rice and 3 mini appetizers along with your meat. This menu shows how affordable kobe beef in Kobe can be. Kobe Tanryu was very smart to make a significantly cheaper lunch menu. We didn’t see the same set menu for dinner so we recommend coming here for lunch if you can.
APPETIZERS
We were grateful for a bit of greens in this meal because we knew we’d be having so much meat! The salad was very fresh and the vingeratte had a nice sharpness to it. The trio of mini appetizers is more like a bite each. We got spinach, beef and pickled veggies. The beef obviously wasn’t the best cut but it was in a nice marinade sauce wih green onions sprinkled on top. Very tasty and a good sign.
The soup we got was a clear broth with a bit of seaweed at the bottom. It was extremely fragrant and served hot to us. There wasn’t any beef in the soup. Your server will also bring over a plate of soy sauce, bbq sauce and salt. You’ll also recieve a bit of wasabi (which we didn’t use) and a block of fat. You’re to use this fat on your grill so the meat doesn’t stick. Don’t worry about the grill, your server will set it up and do everything for you. The only thing you have to do is put the meat onto the hot grill with the metal tongs and cook until you’re satisfied.
THE SET LUNCHES
Here is the amount of meat I got in my 1800yen set lunch. I was worried that this wouldn’t be enough meat but after having this with the rice, I was satisfied for lunch. Definitely choose this set if you’re not a big eater like I am. I know the cuts of meat they gave me wasn’t the most premium cuts but I still thought there was a nice sweetness to the beef. We have definitely found affordable Kobe beef in Kobe!
Howie got more meat in his lunch set compared to me and also got 3 pieces of beef tongue. The beef tongue itself was worth the price jump from my set. It was the softest beef we’ve ever had yet had an explosion of flavor. You shouldn’t overcook this as it’ll get touch. The beef tongue also doesn’t need a lot of sauces as it already comes drizzled on. Just dip it in a little bit of salt and you’re good to go. For the other cuts of his meat, we didn’t feel that there was such a huge difference between the cuts I ate. However, he does get more meat. This meal was our server’s preferred set lunch and we recommend it because of how good the beef tongue is.
OVERALL
We were given this plague to take a picture with – we guess it’s a certification of where the beef comes from. This was the first time we’ve been given a plague! Overall, we had a great time at Kobe Tanryu Higashimon. We felt the best value was spending 1800 yen on a Kobe beef lunch. You truly can’t find a cheaper place than this. There’s also a certain fun to grilling your own meat. We liked being able to control cooking the beef – makes us feel like we’re the chef!
The service was very good – there’s a little button in the shape of a piece of meat that you press to call your server. If you’re looking for an affordable Kobe beef place, be sure to check out Kobe Tanryu.
You can always check our more pictures from our trips to Japan on our Instagram!
