Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The Best Grilled Beef Tongue

Even the food at the Sendai JR station was good.

There is a "sushi street" and "beef tongue street" in the JR station. They are actually just a row of shops.. rather than a real "street".. but there are some really good restaurants in these "streets".

Beef tongue is a speciality in this particular part of Japan, so it was on our itinerary to try it out.

And we had the yummiest grilled beef tongue I've ever eaten in one of the shops on the "beef tongue street" at the train station, even before we got to do any sight-seeing in Sendai.

If you ever go to Sendai, you have to go to this shop. It is call Rikyu.

 Rikyu, 利久

The beef tongue is thick, juicy and very springy, and also lightly but well-seasoned. It is grilled to perfection on top of a charcoal flame so it has that nice charcoal taste to it... and the meat is well-grilled on the outside and slightly pink in the centre.

I could easily have half a bowl of rice with just a slice.

Rikyu's thick-cut beef tongue - see how they sliced the surface of the meat to 
ensure the beef tongue doesn't curl up and gets grilled to perfection?

They served the grilled beef tongue with a really clear and yummy ox-tail soup and a bowl of Japanese rice cooked with barley.

The very yummy ox-tail soup. I wonder how the soup stays so clear 
when the ox-tail was literally melt-in-your-mouth

There is perpetually a queue (pretty fast moving) outside the restaurant. I would go back to Sendai just to have this dish again.

 I am not a big fan of beef tongue.. but this is really good stuff!

Note: Rikyu is a chain store and with all chain stores, the standard of food may not be consistent in every store. (Just my guess.. I don't know that for sure..) The one I went to was at the train station itself.. but there have outlets all over Sendai and there are some outlets in Tokyo too. Check their website for more.

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