Miyazaki beef (gyu) comes from Japanese Black cattle produced and fattened in Miyazaki Prefecture and is Grade 4 or above in the meat quality grading standards set by the Japan Meat Grading Association. Furthermore, Miyazaki Beef has been registered as a local collective trademark. In a nutshell, it is high quality Japanese wagyu and it is kind of a big deal: in Japan restaurants that are allowed to offer Miyazaki Wagyu on their menus are requested to put up an authorization notice in their store.
The visit
I went on a Saturday evening to a restaurant specializing in this kind of wagyu called Tennosachi Yamanosachi (天の幸 山の幸) in the basement of a hotel. My visit was impromptu, as other places I was interested to go were full.
I was the only customer at that time and the staff, for good measure, reminded me the closing time.
The menu was only in Japanese, but it was not a problem since they were mainly offering set menus, along a format that is popular also in Kobe. I chose one.
The course dinner started with three cold appetizers: roast beef on eggplant (center), beef stock jelly uni and beef (left), somen noodles with marinated beef (right).
The second dish was also an appetizer: two cubes of stewed beef. As you may expect, it was really tender.
The center-piece of the dinner was 150 grams of Miyazaki beef with vegetables and sauces nicely laid down on the plate. It was excellent, even if it was not top-grade in terms of marbling.
The final amount of starch was provided through some Inaniwa cold udon noodles.
The dessert was a forgettable lemon sorbet.
The check
All in all, the check 6,901 yen (64 USD). The set meal was actually pretty good, notwithstanding the ghastly atmosphere of the empty restaurant. I cannot complain about the value: a similar menu in Kobe with their wagyu would be easily above 100 USD with probably a lesser amount of meat and a similar quality. They also had a gyukatsu set menu that was pretty interesting.
Where in Osaka:
4-2-7 Kouraibashi, Chuo-ku (basement of Unizo hotel).
In Japanese: 大阪府大阪市中央区高麗橋4-2-7 ホテルユニゾ大阪淀屋橋 B1F.
(There is also a main branch of the restaurant in Umeda.)