A Fantastic Dinner at Yakiniku Great

Following up on my previous post, Michael and I finally had the chance to try out the premium cuts of beef at Yakiniku Great in Sheung Wan last weekend.  I was working even though it was a public holiday, but we managed to squeeze in some time between my drafting and conference calls.

This place is all about the red meat.

It was so delicious.  I'm already thinking about the next time we are going to go.  The interior is very simple, with bar seating and booth seating.  There is a grill in the middle of the table, and each person gets a soy ponzu sauce and a sesame sauce.

 

Super excited for the meat.  Sadly, the phone was out and about.

Corporate lawyer at work on a holiday.  Exhibit A.

But I made sure to put it away and focus my undivided attention throughout the meal for this guy.  Oh yeah, I love it when a restaurant gives you apron bibs!

 

I've been trying to be better about my phone.  Having been on the receiving end of lawyer friends who cannot ever finish a complete sentence without pausing to respond to an email, I understand how frustrating and awful it is to be part of half of a conversation.

They served us a small appetizer of (what else) beef:

Michael got to it before I could take a picture.  This one was all him, and he enjoyed it immensely.

Our "Great Salad" came.  It was very fresh and reminded me of the salads we would get in Tokyo.  In fact, this whole place really reminded me of restaurants in Tokyo.  It was incredibly delicious, fresh and authentic.

 

We had to prep the grill with a nice juicy piece of fat.  We found it best to do this before each piece of meat was grilled, because the cuts were so thin and tender that without the fat prep, the meat would stick to the grill.

 

We ordered the tasting menu, which came with seven cuts of meat.  The first three, from right to left.  Each meat came with very precise instructions on how long to cook it (e.g., 3 seconds on each side, two seconds on one side, cook to medium rare, etc.).

Each meat also comes paired with dipping sauces.  When there was no instruction, my default was the sesame sauce.  Yum!  This one came with a special green onion sauce.

The only tricky thing is, your meat can really cook fast!  Don't get sidetracked - focus on the food!

  Meats number four and five in our tasting menu.  We forgot to get a picture of six and seven.  Whoops.

We also ordered a medium bowl of rice and a spicy udon beef (kalbi) noodle.

For dessert, we got a vanilla ice cream in a clam-shell cracker, paired with rice glutinous dumplings. 

We already can't wait to go back!  Next time maybe we'll try their special cuts of beef, which will include a chateaubriand.  The quality of the meat was spectacular, everything tasted amazing, the staff were very nice, and you could just sense that things were done to a very careful, exacting (and clean) standard.

Yakiniku Great
255 Queens Road Central
Sheung Wan, Hong Kong
+852 3565 6129