Restaurant: Yakiniku Yama Oku | Location: 3/F, CUBUS, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong | Rating: ★★★★★
With just 12 seats, two Fukuoka-born chefs and a wagyu tasting menu of rare precision, Yakiniku Yama Oku is Hong Kong’s most exciting new arrival.
Some restaurants announce themselves with grand soirees, soaring dining rooms and dishes laced with opulence. Yakiniku Yama Oku does not. Tucked away on the third floor of Causeway Bay’s CUBUS complex, this new Wagyu omakase hotspot seats just 12 diners at a single counter, and finding it feels less like booking a table than being let in on an insider’s secret. After a night at that glossy countertop, we can safely say this is a new firm favourite.
The pint-sized restaurant’s name translates roughly to “deep in the mountains,” a nod to Japan’s Shogunate era, when villagers grilled meat over hidden hearths at a time when Buddhist priests forbade it.
That sense of secrecy carries through the room itself thanks to the use of dark textured wood, wave-like ceiling panels casting a warm red glow, and crimson counter stools facing a show kitchen where Fukuoka-born chefs Koji Takazono and Koichi Kuga work as diligently as precision watchmakers.
Dinner opens with a highball made with Kanosuke, an award-winning whisky that’s clean and just smoky enough not to detract from what is to follow, the Sui omakase (US$150++), a tightly paced procession of Wagyu courses that never wastes a beat.
Oita Wagyu rump arrives tartare-style with fermented egg yolk, and is rapidly followed by a Wagyu-and-flounder sushi roll finished with lip-smacking sea urchin, and a slow-cooked Wagyu cheek elevated with house-made onion jam.
Beef tongue (not something I would order independently), shaved to the thickness of Xerox paper, is topped with a zesty fermented lemon salt, adding a touch of summer to what would otherwise be an earthy flavour profile.
As if shifting season, I’m then presented with a large clay pot from which clouds of steam emerge as the chefs present a 72-hour beef bone broth, into which a ribbon of dry-aged ribeye is briefly submerged. While the broth isn’t as impactful as I expected (I guess I was thinking ramen stock?), the silky lighter-than-air texture of the beef is extraordinary.
The evening’s centrepiece is a dry-aged Chateaubriand, grilled almost lovingly over charcoal at the counter and served simply with pink salt, wasabi and more of that onion jam. It induces a sign of contentment from more than a few diners.
Just as memorable is the signature Yamaoku-Yaki, a wafer of soy-and-sugar-glazed beef wrapped around aged egg yolk and sushi rice. It’s sweet, savoury and truly worth the reservation alone, a dish so simple and yet so indulgent I mutter a Hail Mary afterwards.
In a final flourish, another claypot, this time filled with steamed Koshihikari rice, is presented; the rice is topped with Wagyu tartare, salmon roe and a healthy dollop of sea urchin. The ingredients, which you think might not be the best bedfellows, infuse themselves together seamlessly, in a dish that tickles your palate and hugs you from within all at once.
What makes Yakiniku Yama Oku exceptional is not abundance but restraint. Every course is precise, unhurried and unmistakably confident, delivered in a room small enough to make you feel like you’ve been invited into the chef’s own home. There are no velvet ropes, no clipboard-wielding reservations staff, just honest, deceptively simple cuisine that pays homage to a culinary legacy that will outlast even the fanciest of Michelin-starred dining rooms.
