* Otsu Garden 大津苑 横須賀

Excellent restaurant for Yakiniku and some great Korean style dishes. The beef sold here is a type that many say rivals Kobe beef.

Otsu-en or Otsu Garden is named for the area in which the restaurant is located. Otsu 大津　means big harbor, and you can see they are near a harbor like feature in Tokyo Bay. En 苑 is the garden part of the name and is related to another "en" 園　for park.

You can take a local train and get off at Keikyu Otsu station or just drive down Hwy 16, which would be faster, but parking is not guaranteed. The restaurant is only about 500 ft from the train station. It's the 3rd stop on the local Uraga line coming from Yokosuka Chuo.

It's probably best that you make reservations to visit. Have someone call for you (046-833-7510) or you can stop by yourself and provide them with your request on paper. See the Key Food Kanji page for a section you can print out and use at any restaurant to help you make a reservation.

Otsu En's second floor entrance

This is going to become a special place to go back to for special occasions. It's a bit too pricey for us to visit with any regularity  The interior is very relaxing, and the food top notch.

Otsu Garden is just across the street from Kani Koura, Negiri-Icho Sushi, and Kalbi House. So you have a lot of good restaurants all in one area. See blog map for it's exact location or by clicking on the location link at the bottom of this post. If you're driving, there are three spots on the right side of the building and possibly some additional spots on the left but didn't confirm. Since they likely fill up fast, taking the train may not be a bad idea. Another parking option is to use the parking lot of Kani Koura, Negiri-Icho, etc. just across the street. This may be frowned upon since you're not eating at those restaurants, but that parking lot often does have a lot of room.

Otsu Garden is the #1 kalbi place in Yokosuka as listed on Tabelog.com. The Yokosuka area is defined as the entire Miura peninsula. Tabelog is a well known Japanese restaurant review site. It's the 26th most popular website in Japan and 576th most popular website in the world based on both visitors and page views. The Tabelog review for Otsu Garden can be viewed here and if you click the camera icon once on that website you'll see many more pictures.

Chef and owner at work

The chef is not listening to music in the photo above, but he's wearing a radio system that the employees use to communicate. This also helps out since Otsu Garden has an upstairs and a downstairs. You can tell from the soups and the salads that they have great recipes and use good quality ingredients. The owner takes great pride in his restaurant ensuring customers are served properly and are satisfied.

Green Salad

Choice sirloin

I found out the owner buys a whole head of Matsuzaka beef for his restaurant. I don't know the periodicity of this purchase. You can see the excellent marbling in the photo above. Matsuzaka beef is black haired wagyu.

So great, Matsuzaka beef! Eeevvverrryone knows about that! I mean, who doesn't know that it's one of the top three brands "Sandai wagyu" including Kobe and Tajima beef?  Well, I for one did not know...and had no idea what we were eating. There's Kobe, and there is Kobe right? What else is there? Revelation: According to a New York Times article, Matsuzaka is arguably better than the legendary Kobe beef. 


The reason Matsuzaka beef is a relative secret and Kobe is well known is more based on location of the two cities. Kobe is a port city and visitors/travelers/merchants spread the word about the excellent beef in the area. Matsuzaka on the other hand is landlocked (not by much, but it is) and doesn't get the same publicity. Matsuzaka is about 60 miles east of Osaka, while Kobe is about 15 miles west of Osaka.

Matsuzaka Beef - Sirloin Steak -  $52 for about a quarter pound

The farmers who raise the cows say the secret is largely genetic and not related so much to their diet, although their diet is important. Yes these cows too drink beer, are massaged, and raised with care and love. They are fed beer to encourage them to eat more, a process that seems to work well on their human counterparts. The massages help to distribute the fat more evenly, although that technique does not seem to work on humans.

Matsuzaka beef is "beefier" than Kobe beef, and many say they prefer it to Kobe. Only about 2500 head are raised every year, so the number of restaurants serving it is limited, even in Tokyo. So for Yokosuka to have a restaurant that serves it is pretty special.  A head of this beef cost about $10,000. If the cow is a finalist in the annual competition, it commands about $25,000, and a winner of the contest about $90,000.  So if you were wondering about some of the prices on the menu, this may explain it. The farmers that raise these cows hope to have an occasional finalist and dream of a winner, since it costs a lot of money to raise one of these cows.

Just to enter a barn that raises Matsuzaka beef takes more controls than a typical radioactive contamination worker has to go through (not that I would know that however). They are careful to protect their investment against disease.

The menu is below. Yukke is generally a seasoned raw beef, so be careful what you are ordering. Yukkejyan on the other hand is a spicy beef and vegetable soup. There are plenty of items that are safe for the normal palate though so enjoy this place as it's all very good.

Cooking at the table

A charcoal grill will be set up at your table for you to do the cooking.

Vegetable plate

Kimchi

(Part of) Wakame Soup

Niniku butter - Garlic in butter

You cook the garlic until the butter is boiling and then some. It will be nice and tender and it's sharpness will be cut down a lot. Eat it with the meat and veggies.

Kalbi Soup - really tasty and well done

2nd Floor

The second floor is more refined than the first, and includes a tatami like room for larger groups. The first floor has individual booths and you're more likely to see kids down here. One of the best things is that this is a no smoking restaurant (at least upstairs it is).

Storefront - You can see the parking on the right

There is a stray "bean sprout" on the upper left - just ignore it as it's trying to get attention. Gukbap is soup made with rice and other ingredients.A shout out to my menu assistant ("b.s.") who helped me on these challenging menus.

 The below menu is similar to one of them above, but I think one was from lunch and the other from the dinner menu.