Quatre Lapin Kita Umeda

I visited Quatle Lapin Kita Umeda, the third branch of the French restaurant famous for its super cheap steak lunch. Founded in March 2017, the restaurant is located in a quiet residential area in an alley off the main street leading from Umeda. Actually, I have been wanting to order 3 pieces of meat at Cattle Lapin ever since I saw the reviews on the Tabelog before.

In fact, I was not so sure… because at the main restaurant in Kitashinchi and the Kobe Sannomiya restaurant that I have been to so far, the max was 2 pieces of meat (400g). This review is a bit old as it is from 2019, but can you still order 3 pieces of meat back-to-back? I was excited to imagine a situation where 600 grams of steak meat would appear in front of me…

The most casual of the three affiliated restaurants…Quatre Lapin Kita Umeda is this kind of restaurant…

I arrived at Quatre Lapin Kita Umeda at around 11:15 on a weekday. Fifteen minutes before opening time, there was a short line of five customers waiting for the restaurant to open. After that, the line grew to a little more than 10 people in 15 minutes until the opening time. At this point, all the customers in line were able to enter the restaurant on the first round.

The restaurant is about the same size as Quatre Lapin Kobe Sannomiya, with an L-shaped counter with 10 chairs and 4 tables for 2 people. The chef and his wife seem to run the restaurant together, giving it a more family-like atmosphere than the other two restaurants. It is not a battle to sell out immediately like the main restaurant in Kitashinchi, and of the three restaurants I have visited so far, this restaurant seems to be the easiest to get a steak lunch at. The chef also seems very personable, so I’m sure he won’t be offended if I order three pieces of meat…

It’s not on the menu, but can it still be? I ordered the forbidden 3 pieces of steak meat at Quatre Lapin Kita Umeda…

So this time I ordered three pieces of steak lunch, which is not on the menu, at Quatre Lapin Kita Umeda. According to the lunch menu, one piece of meat is priced at 900 yen (tax included), and two pieces costs 1,550 yen. If you order 3 pieces of meat OK, it would be a little over 2000 yen. 2000 yen for a 600g steak meat lunch is still too cosy, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, however, the restaurant refused to accept 3 pieces of steak for lunch. Well, it couldn’t be helped. There was not that much meat available in the kitchen, and if they sold out too soon, it would have caused a lot of trouble for the customers who would come later. After about 10 minutes of waiting, two pieces of steak lunch meat arrived in front of me, but…

I was surprised. It was clearly more meat than that of the customer who had ordered two pieces of meat earlier. I don’t know if you can tell from this picture, but there is actually another layer of meat under the one you can see. I think the weight of the meat is far more than 400 grams, if not 600 grams. Perhaps I was lucky this time, but I would like to think that the chef served it to me in secret.

Unlike the Quatre Lapin Head Shop in Kitashinchi, the seasoning is a steak sauce with a slightly pungent onion flavor. The sauce is Japanese style, not too rich, and the spicy onion flavor keeps the taste tight, so you will never get tired of it. The meat was grilled rare like at other restaurants, with a crispy and savory surface, and the meat was cut into bite-size pieces in advance, and the juices were flowing from the cross section. What else is there to complain about? The meat has almost no stringiness or fat, so even though it weighs in at over 400 grams, you can easily eat it all up.

After discovering the existence of Quatre Lapin, I no longer go to the chain restaurants specializing in steaks that used to be so popular in the past. This restaurant is far more cost-effective than the other ones in the same price range, and the meat quality is superior, although it is not as wild. Quatre Lapin should be our first choice when we are craving for meat in Osaka or Kobe, right? If you are in such a mood, I strongly recommend you to rush to the restaurant before they run out of meat.

The fourth rabbit is in Nishi-Ohashi? To get to Quatre Lapin Kita-Umeda, walk 3 minutes from the nearest station, Nakatsu Station on the OsakaMetro Midosuji Line.

Well, this concludes my pilgrimage to the three Quatre Lapin restaurants. Quatre Lapin means “four rabbits” in French, so there must be another rabbit somewhere in the Kansai region. The store is called Quatre Lapin Deli, which opened in Nishi-ohashi in February 2023. As the name “Deli” suggests, it is a delicatessen, but its specialty, steak lunch, has been transformed into steak donburi and is now on sale. French delicatessen dishes are hard to come by, and don’t you think it would be interesting to see what kind of food they serve? If you have a chance to be near the restaurant, try the taste of Quatre Lapin for takeout.

Here are the details of the restaurant…

It is also a 12-minute walk from Osaka Umeda Station on the Hankyu Railway.