Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Kobe beef



One of the famous Japanese dishes die-hard foodies must try when they are in Japan is undisputedly Kobe beef!

On the second last day of our Hokkaido tour, the tour guide took our group to a seafood restaurant selling various kinds of seafood, which includes the very popular Kobe beef for lunch.

Of the 21 members of our tour group, there were only 3 groups of ‘takers’ for the Kobe beef and this was understandable as the price tag for a dish of Kobe beef: 10,000 yens, which translates to slightly more than Singapore 150 dollars!

My mind has been hardwired not to spend such astronomical sum of money on food, hence my wife and I did not order Kobe beef. Nevertheless we did pose for a shot with the giant beef plate.

Though we did not order and try Kobe beef, we believed that the beef we partook of during the one of the nights of our buffet dinner is Kobe beef as the beef is really thick, juicy, succulent, yummy and the best beef we have eaten so far!

We ate so much meat in Hokkaido: pork, chicken, fish, mutton, seafood but it is surprising to me that Japanese do not seem to take duck meat as there is none in the buffets throughout our tour.

Do Japanese eat duck meat at all? I did a search on Google, it seems that there are some Japanese duck meat dishes, Japanese eat duck meat it seems. Then the next question to ask is whether the residents of Hokkaido consume duck meat? If they do so, why is duck meat not featured in our buffets?