Kobe Beef and Chinatown

Chinatown?

We had cravings for Cha Shu Bao (Chinese Dim Sum Pork Buns), which are surprisingly difficult to find in Japan. There seems to be a lack of true Dim Sum restaurants that haven’t been Japanized. While there are a number of Siu Mai and Shanghai Dumpling places, we can’t seem to find some of the classic dishes we enjoy back home.

On a side note, a Chinese friend once told me, ’the best Chinese food in the world is in California.’ This is after he had lived in Beijing for a while. Go figure.

So our quest to find Cha Shu Bao sent us to Kobe’s Chinatown! Which is great, we haven’t really explored Kobe yet, even though you can see it from our home. Reminds me of something Sarah Palin would say, although I’m not claiming to know much about Kobe.

Kobe Chinatown

From Osaka station, it’s about 30 minutes by train to Sannomiya Station in Kobe, which is the city center. We promptly walked over to the Chinatown area, and it was actually a bit more touristy than I expected. The cool thing about this Chinatown is that there are lots of food stands in front of the restaurants selling dim sum. The main highlights are Shanghai Dumplings, Peking Duck, Siu Mai and Pork Buns. The bad thing is that most of the vendors all sell mostly the same stuff, so much so that I suspect they source their dumplings from the same place.

We did find our desired pork buns, which hit the spot for M’s cravings. It’s one of her all time favorite foods. To be honest though, we’ve had far better in San Fran. The rest of our food was similar, they were decent and sufficiently adequate.

Kobe wouldn’t be Kobe without the beef. We’ve had some yummy Kobe steaks which will set you back some decent coin, but we couldn’t resist trying some out from the vendor here too. It was reasonably priced, and they had some beef sushi and a few other choices. I couldn’t figure out the connection to Spider Man for the store, but sometimes it’s best not to question it:)

We opted for the beef skewer, which came with sauce and wasabi. They were pretty yummy, definitely not A5 quality but great for street food.

I would say the entire Chinatown felt a bit too touristy, a little fake and was a bit crowded. I think we can get better quality Chinese food elsewhere, but it is one of the rare places that sell Cha Shu Bao so we may stop by again just for this.

More Kobe?

There is a harbor area and some other things to do in Kobe, but since we were in Sannomiya area, we checked out the shopping district there and had some coffee. The shopping area was similar to other city ‘shotengai’ (shopping alleys) so it wasn’t too memorable. We’ll have to check out the rest of Kobe on another day trip. When we got back home though, we couldn’t resist the Pikachu donuts that were a seasonal special at Mister Donuts. Mister Donuts is a large chain store, which is similar to Dunkin Donuts.