‘Kobe Beef’
To many, Surfas is just a super-cool kitchen supply store for people looking to stock their homes or for real chefs looking to stock a restaurant. But they don’t let those supplies go to waste and have a nice little cafe connected to the joint where they can show off what they do. There are sandwiches, salads, burgers and few other things, but they had me at burger. Kobe Burger, that is.
When Great Balls on Tires first debuted last year, I was concerned that such a name for a meatball truck was a bit of a gimmick. Yet, now that GBOT has lasted through the middle of this year, I felt it was time I tried them out. When I walked up to the truck to see what they had to offer, I found there were only a few sets of balls to choose from. Yet, more than one of these balls looked attractive to me. Unfortunately, all balls came in sets of two, so I had to limit myself to only one ball type.
Kobe Beef is a world renowned form of meat that seems to have taken upon mythical status. It is exotic, yet signs for Kobe beef can be found everywhere. Technically speaking, most of the “Kobe Beef” outside of Japan isn’t really Kobe beef at all. The correct term for this is Kobe-style beef, which employs similar concepts but isn’t quite the same. Many restaurants just say Kobe beef because no one really knows the difference and to tell customers the difference would scare off potential buyers. True Kobe beef is only made in the Hyogo prefecture in Japan, which the city of Kobe is the capital of.
The best way to get real Kobe beef is to go straight to the source, Kobe, Japan. I was lucky enough to find myself in Kobe one day, so I didn’t have to add a thousand dollar plane ticket onto what would already be the most expensive steak of my life.