Dotonbori yakiniku review: Itamae Yakiniku Ichigyu, a female Wagyu specialty spot in Osaka, Japan
One of the meals I was most excited for in Osaka was yakiniku.
There are so many great places to eat around Dotonbori, Osaka, Japan,
and just as many yakiniku restaurants, so I went back and forth for a while.
In the end, I picked this one because it had the highest Google rating.
The place I went to was Itamae Yakiniku Ichigyu Higashi-Shinsaibashi, a female Wagyu specialty restaurant.
Itamae Yakiniku Ichigyu is actually a chain with five or six locations just within Osaka.
I first tried going to the Dotonbori Namba branch,
but the wait was too long, so I ended up at the Higashi-Shinsaibashi branch instead.
It’s tucked into the alley behind the Dotonbori Don Quijote.
Dotonbori Yakiniku Review: Exterior
This is what the exterior of this Osaka yakiniku spot looks like.
At a glance, you can immediately tell it’s a serious beef restaurant.
The Higashi-Shinsaibashi branch is open from 5 PM to 11 PM,
and it’s closed every Sunday.
The Dotonbori Namba branch I first visited,
and the slightly farther north Shinsaibashi main branch,
are both open daily with no regular closing day.
Inside the Restaurant
When you walk in, a staff member shows you to your table.
The seats near the entrance, like in the photo above,
have partitions, so they feel a little more private.
We came as walk-ins, so I think we were seated farther inside
in a more open section,
but it looked like reservations might get the more private tables.
Toward the very back of the restaurant,
there were also counter-style tables like this.
We got a two-person table on the opposite side, facing the wall,
and honestly, it was a pretty decent seat.
Menu
At this Dotonbori yakiniku restaurant,
you can place your food order on a tablet.
The tablet had an English language option,
but I don’t think Korean was available.
Instead, they did have a printed Korean menu.
Their signature “luxury staircase beef platter”
The menu name was so awkwardly translated that it made me laugh,
but we ordered the 8-step assorted Ichigyu set (¥9,073, about $60).
I had already seen photos of the staircase beef platter in Google reviews,
and that was honestly one of the main reasons I wanted to come here.
Tasting the Yakiniku
With the yakiniku, we also ordered
a Hakushu highball and an Asahi Dry Zero.
Surprisingly, they didn’t have the usual Kakubin highball,
but they did have Yamazaki, Hakushu, and Hibiki highballs.
We also ordered kimchi and a cucumber side dish.
Kimchi at Japanese yakiniku restaurants
is weirdly often better than you’d expect.
A little later, out came the
signature luxury staircase beef platter.
The cuts listed were sirloin, brisket, beef tongue, tenderloin,
short rib, harami, special lean cut (?), and special marbled cut (?).
That’s what the menu said, anyway,
though I honestly wasn’t totally sure what a couple of those translated names meant.
Still, it’s a set menu that lets you try a little bit of everything,
so it seems like one of the most popular orders here.
This is what the grill looked like.
I think this one was the sirloin.
I had actually written in my notes that the sirloin was really good.
If I remember right, they told us to eat the platter from the top tier down.
They also give you a cabbage salad of some sort.
Nothing fancy, but it was oddly addictive and I kept reaching for it.
Our designated meat griller was hard at work.
The brisket was good too,
and it was my first time having beef tongue grilled like this.
To me, it tasted a little like grilled chicken gizzards…?
It honestly made me feel a bit queasy.
The tenderloin and the cuts after that
were fine, but not exactly mind-blowing.
The last cut, harami (skirt steak), was delicious.
After we finished, it still didn’t feel like quite enough food,
so we decided to give the large intestine a try too.
That was a mistake.
Seriously, I would skip it here.
For something like that, I’d rather go to a proper horumon specialty restaurant.
This one had such a strong off smell that I could barely eat it.
To end on a better note,
we ordered more of the cuts we actually liked most:
sirloin and brisket.
The extra order took quite a while to come out,
so if you start eating and realize the first round won’t be enough,
it’s better to order more before you completely run out of food.
While we were eating, a staff member came over
and shyly handed us this, asking for a Google review.
If you write a review and show them,
you get one drink under ¥600 for free.
The second I saw that, I thought,
ah, so that’s why the Google star rating is so high and there are so many reviews. I felt a little fooled.
I probably wouldn’t go back,
but it also wasn’t a terrible meal by any means.
Some of the cuts were genuinely tasty, the restaurant was clean,
and the staff were friendly, so overall
I still had a perfectly decent dinner.
There are so many Osaka Dotonbori yakiniku spots to try,
so next time, I think I’ll check out somewhere else.