Indulging in Wagyu beef yakiniku

Yakiniku means grilled meat in Japanese, and is a type of cuisine where you have a little grill on the table to cook bite size meat.

Oretachi Nonikuya is one of these restaurants in Taiwan serving wagyu beef, meat lovers will know this is the best beef. Once you've tried it, you will never forget it. I used to pass by Oretachi Nonikuya all the time as I live 5 minutes away. It's a very small place, always busy with lots of customers because it is well known for its quality produce. And that was before it even got a Michelin star, which they've held for three consecutive years since 2020!

The other month when I was back in Taiwan for 7 weeks, I figured it was a now or never opportunity to indulge myself in this amazing restaurant. The earliest booking I could get was three weeks later!! Luckily I had booked well in advance otherwise it would have been another lost opportunity.

The restaurant buys one whole cow from Japan every month and once they de skin, de bone and butcher it, only about 50 - 60% of the cow is available for consumption. The meat is all prepared and kept in the fridges in the restaurant. You can see a fridge in the front of the restaurant, and another one behind the counter where staff is prepping them for guests. I imagine they have more fridges as a cow is massive and won't fit in these two fridges alone

Despite this being an expensive restaurant, the price guests pay goes on the produce consumed and not the decor. You can see the decor is pretty basic, nothing fancy and the whole place is pretty small. This is the downstairs and sits around 30 - 40 customers. I think there's an upstairs as well, but I didn't go up. Every table has an extractor fan because the grill is right in front of you and this helps to keep the inside less smokey.

That said, each quest still gets a bib to protect them from the grease👶

They have set menus there which works out at about £90 per head. It includes appetisers, soup, veg, rice, drinks and five different cuts of wagyu beef. Our objective was the yummy wagyu beef, and we weren't too bothered about the other bits of a supposedly all rounded healthy meal. So we skipped the set meal and ordered a set of wagyu beef only. That cost 2/3 of the price and also included 5 different cuts weighing 400g in total. You can also order them separately and each cut was priced differently. I believe these are per 100g prices (on the left) ranging from £60 for rib eye to £20 for (I think) flank.

We also ordered a round of raw wagyu beef and uni (sea urchin) sushi. Both are my absolute favourite food. To have them both together in a mouthful is heaven!!

Now for the wagyu beef. The five cuts of beef were chosen for us, and the waitress explained each cut to us. Where abouts it is on the cow, its properties, how best to grill it and how to eat it ie whether straight or with condiment. Each of these three cuts were the mid range price ones, so it was good that the restaurant didn't rip customers off by giving them the cheaper cuts only. And the best thing, was that it was all cooked for us, at our pace. With such expensive meat, if you don't know how to cook it, you can easily over cook it or even burn it and all that would go to waste in a matter of seconds. I can't remember which cuts these were, but boy, were they good!!!

The pièce de résistance was this piece of rib eye. It was the most expensive cut priced at £60 per 100g on the menu. This piece is about 80g and was part of the 5 cut set we ordered. Must look at the marble on it, isn't it just beautiful!!!

The waitress said this piece was a little on the thick side so she was going to lightly grill it on both sides first, then let it rest for a few moments. If she cooked it in one go, the outside would be over cooked whilst the inside is uncooked. By warming it up first and let it rest, the heat would slowly penetrate inside. Then she'd quickly flash it on the grill for the second time to finish it off perfectly. Who would have thought there would be so much art and technique in cooking a piece of beef! I'm glad she did it for me as it was cooked to perfection. It was soft and buttery, I could bite straight through, and the flavour, was soooooo good. The tenderness, the flavour, the juice, the melting marble, the truffle salt, the aroma, the sizzling sound, even the grease it's all coming back to me again 🤤

The last of our 5 cut of wagyu beef was this plate priced at £26 per 100g. After having the best cut just now, it was really difficult to drop back down. Like if you flown in first class, cattle class will never be the same again. But then flying British Airways cattle class is still better than budget airlines. This plate of wagyu beef was still very delicious, definitely a cut above the beef I normally have. Not complaining at all.

This was a lovely meal and after sampling the 5 different cuts of wagyu beef, plus some other extras we ordered, we were feeling extremely satisfied. However, we still had room for a little bit more, and we couldn't resist ordering another plate. We didn't want to repeat any of the ones we just ate, so asked our waitress for a recommendation. She asked us which one we like from the previous five, the answer was pretty obvious, but how could you top the best? I was indifferent with the others, they were all delicious and frankly speaking I was busy indulging that I couldn't tell left right and center. Hubby told her his next preference and she made a recommendedation. This is one of the mid range cuts that cost £28 per 100g. It was perfect to round off the meal.

Overall, we spent about £80 per head on this meal. It may sound like a lot, but trust me, it's not considering the quality of the food. Plus I would never be able to get this value in UK.

Take me back to wagyu heaven please!!