Wakana beef restaurant in Morioka

Inside Wakana

Wakana is a quiet, relaxing restaurant with a certain 1980s Western feel to it. The main room is built around a circular teppanyaki counter with seating all the way round, and there are a few smaller rooms arranged the same way. Each customer or group gets their own chef, who cooks right in front of you and hands the food across as it's ready — dinner doubles as a bit of a show.

The food

We took the "Special steak course" at ¥8,000 per person: a starter course, your choice of steak (150g sirloin or 100g filet), a salad, grilled vegetables, excellent garlic rice, miso soup, and fruit. The vegetables, meat, and rice were all cooked in front of us by the chef. We paired it with a bottle of Fontanafredda Barolo 2014, which went perfectly with the steak. The evening flew by — chatting, watching the chef work, and eating extremely well. The meat was excellent and the setting very comfortable: a solid 10 out of 10. On our way out, the restaurant gave us a small bottle of sparkling wine as a parting gift — Japanese hospitality at its best.

Maesawa beef and A5 wagyu

Maesawa beef comes from the Japanese Black breed, raised in northern Iwate, and rivals the more famous Kobe beef in quality — fine-grained, well marbled, and moist. According to Japan Geographical Indications registry, the cattle are fed high-grade rice straw grown locally, and each animal is raised with individual care by its breeder.

That quality is formalized in Japan's wagyu grading system. Wagyu 和牛 comes from four native breeds — Japanese Black, Brown, Polled, and Shorthorn — and is graded on two axes: yield (A to C) and quality (1 to 5), with A5 the highest rank of all. The grade comes down to marbling (the intramuscular fat) and yield (the proportion of usable meat), and it's that marbling that makes the beef so tender, juicy, and rich once it's cooked. Worth trying at least once.