Yoshokuya Yuuki

I went to Yoshokuya (Western-style restaurant) Yuuki, a restaurant in Shinkaichi where the great actress Yuko Asano once raved about its beef cutlets on TV. Founded in 2010, this Western-style restaurant has a much shorter history than the famous Grill Ippei. Despite this, it has gained such popularity that it is now said to be “a restaurant that every Western food lover in Kobe has been to at least once,” and was finally selected for the first time as one of the 100 best Western-style restaurants on the Tabelog for the year 2023.

I visited the restaurant at around 10:45 on a weekday. I arrived 15 minutes before the opening time, thinking that the restaurant would not be too crowded at 11:00 a.m. on a weekday, but when I actually arrived at the restaurant, I found that it was quite dangerous. Let me start by telling you about the line before opening time…

Even before 11:00 a.m. on a weekday, there were quite a few people in line… This is what the popular Western-style restaurant Yoshokuya Yuuki in Shinkaichi looks like.

When I arrived at the restaurant at around 10:45 a.m., there were seven customers sitting on benches in front of the restaurant. Since Yoshokuya Yuuki seats 18 customers, including 6 at the counter, I was confident that I would be the first one to enter the restaurant at this point, and joined the line with a smile on my face. People started gathering one after another just after me, and within a few minutes there were less than 20 people in line. Some people gave up on the line and went home, so I could see that the line was quite busy.

But actually, I was pretty close too. Because, in addition to this line, there was another group of customers who had reserved seats in advance. They arrived about 10 minutes before the restaurant opened and stood by the side of the entrance chatting with me while I stood in line.

So, in truth, I was the 13th person to enter the restaurant, which meant I was pretty much right on the edge of the first round. Even when the restaurant was crowded, there was no sharing seats, so there was a possibility that I might have been passed over depending on the availability of tables… By the way, when I left the restaurant after finishing my meal at around 11:20, there were still nearly 10 people in line at the restaurant, even though lunch time had not yet started in earnest.

Yoshokuya Yuuki’s very economical lunch of the day, featuring Yuko Asano’s highly acclaimed beef cutlet

In addition to the grand menu, Yoshokuya Yuuki offers a daily special service lunch…

Luckily, my target this time, Beef Cutlet, is on the menu. The menu list in the restaurant says “Beef cutlet, 1,500 yen (price includes tax),” which means that the price is 300 yen less than a regular order. Of course, it is not a single item price, but comes with salad, rice, and soup. I myself never thought I would be able to enjoy Kobe’s famous beef cutlet for only 1,200 yen.

After placing your order, you will be served consommé soup and a fresh vegetable salad. I waited for about 5 minutes while eating these…

Beef cutlet, a specialty of Yoshokuya Yuuki, which Yuko Asano had praised highly, appeared with rice. It is covered with a generous amount of demi-glace sauce, and looks very appetizing, doesn’t it? And it is huge! Perhaps this size is one of the best beef cutlets among the famous Western-style restaurants in Kobe.

Now, let’s take a bite of the beef cutlet… The cross section looks like this, and the meat is about 1 cm thick. The thickness of the beef cutlet is a little thinner than at other restaurants (although the overall volume is still larger than at other restaurants). Even so, the center of the cutlet still has a rare color, and you can feel the high quality of the beef cutlet.

When you actually put it in your mouth, you will notice that the batter is quite thin, and the demi-glace sauce is absorbed by the meat, making it soft and tender. The meat inside is said to be made from sirloin, but it was more like lean meat with a light flavor. The meat is tender and very easy to eat since it is originally made thin. It is a fairly large piece of meat, but thanks to that, you can eat it all the way through without any resistance.

On the other hand, the demi-glace sauce poured generously over the beef cutlet tasted, roughly speaking, like “the flavor of the marrow concentrated in the bone marrow. It was thick and rich, but the components of taste such as sourness, sweetness, and bitterness were subdued, so it might be a little difficult to recognize at first bite. At the very least, it is not a sauce that you would want to eat over white rice. However, because of this, the taste of the beef itself can be felt directly, and the demi-glace sauce adds a delicious animal flavor to it.

The beef cutlet at Yoshokuya Yuuki is as good as the ones highly praised by actresses…but it is not the type of dish that children will like because the sauce taste is a little difficult to understand. If you are taking children, the beef cutlet at Yoshoku no Asahi, another Western-style restaurant located one station away, would probably be more suitable…

However, if you can eat a beef cutlet of this volume at this price, it is sure to be popular. I highly recommend this restaurant for a lunch for one person or a small group of adults.

Examples of Yoshokuya Yuuki’s grand menu (all prices include tax, rice, salad, and soup)

Advance reservations recommended if possible… Access to Yoshokuya Yuuki is a 0-minute walk from the nearest station, Shinkaichi Station (Hankyu Kobe Line), Exit #6.

As I write this article after having finished my meal, I have noticed one major problem: I don’t know the exact hours of operation. As far as I can tell from the Internet, each gourmet site has a different description. If I had realized this before eating, I could have checked directly at the restaurant…I was caught off guard.

At any rate, the store information below is based on the notation on Google Maps as of November 2023, but there is a possibility that the actual business hours may be different. At this time, the restaurant does not seem to be posting information on social networking services, so it would be safer to call in advance to confirm that the restaurant is open, especially if you are visiting from a long distance. It would be better to make a reservation for a table while you call.

Now, here are the details of the restaurant. Restaurant data is here…

P.S. If you are looking for a delicious beef cutlet in Kobe, please stop by this article…

P.P.S. I checked the Internet and found that Yoshokuya Yuuki’s beef cutlet was also featured on YouTube on the “Himitsu no Kenmin Show”…