I tasted Kobe beef, at last!

As the wife and I really had no ties to keep us here in St. Louis for the holidays, we booked a dirt cheap rate on a fancy hotel using Priceline, and spent the Christmas weekend in Chicago last month. The majority of restaurants in the city were closed, as you can imagine, so we drove up to Koreatown to have a Christmas dinner at Chicago Kalbi.

Interestingly, the Chicago Kalbi Korean Restaurant seems to be run by Japanese people, at least, that's the impression I get from all the autographed pictures of Japanese baseball players lining the walls and the Sapporo beer on tap. This place seems to be a frequent stop of Asian ball players whenever they're in town to play the Cubs or the Sox. Considering all the animosity I've heard and read about between Japan and Korea, it's always seemed a bit strange to me that Korean food would be such a hit with the Japanese (or Japanese food being well liked by Koreans, for that matter).

Scootypuff, I'm sure, is well versed in Korean restaurants such as this place. For those of you who haven't been to a Korean BBQ, basically you order a bunch of marinated sliced meats such as beef ribeye, short ribs, pork, chicken or squid that they bring to your table raw. They then put a hot cauldron of burning coals to sit in the center of the table (or at other places, a propane-heated grill), and you cook up your meats to your liking. A huge exhaust fan hangs overhead to try and expel some of the grill smoke, although you'll come out smelling like a barbecue anyway.

Usually, we just order plain old beef in the form of bul-go-gi (marinated slices of ribeye) or kalbi (beef short ribs), but the word "Kobe" caught my eye this time around. I've mentioned the almost legendary properties of Japanese Kobe beef before. Raised in the Japanese region of Kobe, wagyu cattle are said to provide the most succulent form of beef in the world.


Whether it's their diet of high quality grain and beer, the frequent massages, or the baths of sake, the end product is an extremely well marbleized piece of meat that virtually melts in your mouth.
Since this was Christmas, and I've always wanted to actually taste firsthand a sample of Kobe beef to see what all the fuss was about, we decided it was OK to splurge a little, and get the Kobe beef. Unfortunately, the buildup of anticipation in my mind didn't quite live up to the end product. What I had imagined would be a sizable amount of meat, ended up being six wafer-thin slices of beef about the size of a Club cracker. Granted, you could see the marbled fat well distributed throughout each piece, but I thought I could almost put all six slices in my mouth without trouble, and call that one bite.


After searing quickly on the grill, though? Like butter in my mouth. You really don't even have to chew all that much--it's that tender. It wasn't much meat, but what little I got, sure was good. I'm still not quite sure I'm totally convinced it was worth the money, but as good as it tasted, I'll probably be tempted to get some Kobe beef again if I ever come across it in the future. I've seen Kobe beef hamburgers around, but I don't see how that would be any good, considering all the beautiful marbling of the fat would essentially be ground up. But a nice piece of steak? Mmmmmmm!