298 PREMIUM

298 (NIKUYA), an all-you-can-eat yakiniku restaurant that operates stores in Osaka and Kobe for 1,000 yen, also operates a restaurant called 298 PREMIUM, which offers a higher grade of meat than its other stores. This restaurant offers “all-you-can-eat Wagyu beef,” and if each customer has a 5,000-yen bill, they can enjoy 100 minutes of all-you-can-eat Wagyu beef barbeque.

Well, I don’t know how much meat this restaurant serves as “specially selected Wagyu”, but I was satisfied with the meat quality when I had yakiniku alone at 298 Sannomiya in the past, so I thought, “At least, I should be able to eat better meat than that…” and went to Namba to get covered in meat. 

So, how was the all-you-can-eat special all-you-can-eat wagyu beef at this restaurant really? Please continue reading the rest of this article as I will now introduce the contents of the all-you-can-eat…

How much can you eat at 298 GOLD, 298 PREMIUM’s top-of-the-line yakiniku menu?I found out!

This time, I ordered 298 GOLD, the highest quality yakiniku menu at 298 PREMIUM. 298 GOLD offers a total of 14 items of yakiniku, including the signature dish, thick-sliced beef tongue, for all-you-can-eat within the time limit.And it’s not just yakiniku…

You can also get an all-you-can-eat buffet of salads, fried foods, rice, soups, curries, and more. The time limit is a generous 100 minutes (20 minutes before last order), so there seems to be no need to worry about ending up incomplete without filling up.

Large-sized Green Onion Salt Tongue, Thick-sliced Beef Tongue, and Salt Grilled Beef Tongue

Now, order 298 GOLD, and a short while later, the three types of yakiniku that form the centerpiece of this course are brought to the table. From left to right, they are Large-sized Green Onion Salt Tongue, Thick-sliced Beef Tongue, and Salt Grilled Beef Tongue. Is it just a coincidence that they are all beef tongue? But…

To be honest, the quality of these three types of beef tongue was not very good. The Salt Grilled Beef Tongue is just ordinary beef tongue, the Large-sized Green Onion Salt Tongue is a bit difficult to eat, and the signature dish, Thick-sliced Beef Tongue, is very tough! The meat is so tough that it cannot be chewed with the teeth. I had a particularly good impression of the thick-sliced beef tongue at Kyo no Yakiniku Restaurant Hiro, and at first I was thinking about repeating my order, but after eating one slice, I lost all interest in ordering more.

Beef tenderloin Kalbi, Specially Selected Kuroge Wagyu, and thick-sliced Harami

But the next meat I ordered was a winner. This is a combination of three kinds of meat: Beef tenderloin Kalbi, Specially Selected Kuroge Wagyu beef, and thick-sliced Harami (I can tell that the bottom right is thick-sliced Harami, but I cannot be sure which is which for the other two. (I know that the top one is probably the Beef tenderloin Kalbi, and the bottom left one is the Specially Selected Kuroge Wagyu beef). Isn’t the sashi (marbling) of the meat on the top and the bottom left amazing? The meat quality is just as it looks. The top meat is a bit fatty and rich, but both are very tender and easily fit in the stomach. This meat is definitely beyond the level of all-you-can-eat yakiniku.

Yakishabu with grated ponzu sauce and Sukiyaki Kalbi

Next, I ordered Yakishabu with grated ponzu and Sukiyaki Kalbi. After eating the fatty meat, I had a mouthful of the thinly sliced meat with a refreshing ponzu sauce to cleanse my palate. Well, for better or worse, it tastes just as I imagined.

Sukiyaki kalbi is now becoming a popular yakiniku dish. Not only is the meat dipped in beaten egg and eaten sukiyaki style…

The idea is that the leftover beaten egg can be used to make a tsukkakegohan (TKG) afterwards. I first learned of this idea at Yakiniku Yazawa Kyoto, but I wonder which restaurant was the first to offer this as a yakiniku menu item? I think that the restaurant should be given a Nobel Prize.

After that, I repeated the Beef tenderloin Kalbi, Specially Selected Kuroge Wagyu, and also got a salad and curry from the buffet and ate them until the time limit. As for my impression, I felt that I did not need the tongue after all…. With the quality of the meat today, I honestly do not recommend ordering 298 GOLD for the thick-sliced beef tongue. On the other hand, if I think about it without the beef tongue, I would say, “As expected of an all-you-can-eat special selection of Japanese beef”. Fortunately, 298 PREMIUM offers an “Special all-you-can-eat wagyu beef course” priced at 3999 yen per person without the beef tongue, so I would definitely choose this course next time I have the chance to visit the restaurant.

Regular all-you-can-eat Yakiniku course is also available… Access to 298 PREMIUM is a 4-minute walk from the nearest station, Nippombashi Station on the OsakaMetro Sakaisuji Line (Kintetsu Line).

Incidentally, 298 PREMIUM also offers a regular all-you-can-eat yakiniku course, which I tried at 298 Sannomiya Branch before. The “Standard 298 All-You-Can-Eat Yakiniku Course” is 100 minutes long and costs 1,980 yen per person, tax included.This course allows you to eat 298’s standard menu items such as thick-cut jarred kalbi and garibata king kalbi, so you can further reduce the price of the meat you eat. So, when you want to eat yakiniku at a reasonable price in Namba, Osaka, please think of 298 PREMIUM.

Now, here are the details of the restaurant…