Where to find affordable Matsusaka Beef in Tokyo, Japan?

Matsusaka Beef is one of the most popular beef type in Japan, along with Kobe beef and Yonezawa Beef. It is prized for its high fat to meat ratio, and it literally melts in your mouth.

Tokyo, a bustling metropolitan, is famed for its Michelin Star restaurants like Joël Robuchon, Ishikawa, and Kohaku, to name a few. It also has fans who would queue for hours just to taste the omakase at Tsukiji's Sushi Dai. Matsusaka Beef's famous M restaurants doesn't have a branch in Tokyo, but with the high price tags, it perhaps deters many from trying this amazing beef.

Veterans to Tokyo would know better to go for lunch at their favourite restaurants as they would get a better deal as compared to their dinner counterparts. During my last trip to Tokyo, I found a great restaurant that serves Matsusaka Beef for lunch.

Rokkasen, Shinjuku, Tokyo Japan

Sunflower Building 6 F / 7 F, 1-3-1

Nishi-Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku,

Tokyo,160-0023, Japan

Opening hours: 11am - 5pm daily

Telephone number: 03-3348-8676 (inside Japan); +81-3-3348-8676 (outside Japan)

Matsusaka Beef Lunch Set at Rokkasen in Shinjuku

Rokkasen is situated in an unassuming building right at the doorstep of Tokyo's Shinjuku Station. It is a building at the junction right opposite Ibis Tokyo Shinjuku and Studio Alta.

Studio Alta, Tokyo, Japan

Click here for a step-by-step guide to the restaurant from Shinjuku Station

They used to accept online reservations, but they have since stopped doing so and the only way to get a place is to phone them, or to walk-in.

When you arrive at the 7th floor of Sunflower Building, you will see a queue. Before you join the queue, do proceed to write down your name, as well as, the number of people on a list at the entrance of the restaurant. The staff at Rokkasen will follow the queue on the list, and not whether you are in the front of the line or not.

We arrived 5 minutes before the opening at 11am and scored seats immediately! :)

The polite waiters and waitresses will usher you to your seats and will hand you a lunch menu.

Lunch Menu

Rokkasen Lunch Menu

If you are feeling famished, do try their All-You-Can-Eat Yakiniku, priced from 7,700 yen (~94 SGD). Since we wanted to have the stomach for more of Tokyo's delicacies, we went for their lunch sets. We went for the high quality Matsuzaka Beef Short Ribs which included a portion of their prized Matsuzaka Beef, slices of chicken, some side dishes consisting of kimchi, salad, and assorted picked vegetables, rice, soup, and a drink, all for 3,780 yen (~46 SGD).

Matsusaka short ribs on the grill

Look at that marbling! *drools*

We also ordered the normal short ribs for comparison and that was a significant difference in terms of the taste. Not that the beef short ribs weren't good, they were delicious too, but the Matsusaka beef had a nice layer of fats, meat, fats, meat such that it literally melts when you place it in your mouth.

Cooking the matsusaka beef!

Even though we were quite sad that charcoal wasn't used, but we were still able to get the charred beef flavour.

Service drink with a popsicle

The lunch set ended off with a choice of fruit juices, tea, or coffee. I ordered the grapefruit juice which also came with a sweet popsicle to wash down the bitter taste (which was such as nice gesture!).

We were very pleased with our meal and would definitely try it again when we return to Tokyo.

#Beef #Charcoal #Grill #Food