Get your fill at Outback Steakhouse
by Marie Teather
Outback Steakhouse does exactly what it says on the tin. It fills you up. Expect huge slabs of meat—enough to keep any intrepid bushman nourished for an indefinite time, before stepping back into the harsh Australian wilderness. The only difference being, it’s here in a very urban Tokyo.
Like any Australian diner built on its expanse lands, the Outback is all about size. Restaurants are large with earthy reds and hues of brown burnishing the interior, and with an obligatory boomerang or didgeridoo hanging there too, for good measure. The menu is large covering everything from rib eye steaks, big steaks, filet steaks, chicken and pasta, plus a salad or soup thrown in too. Then the food; from 225g of flame grilled Aussie sirloin to the 455g of prime ribs and every variation in between, you certainly won’t be going home hungry.
On a Saturday lunchtime you’d be forgiven for thinking this was peak Saturday night date time. The restaurant was surprisingly full as couples, mainly Japanese females and their foreign counterparts, enjoyed the laid back ‘no worries’ atmosphere that a weekend requires. Clientele and staff alike were international; our waitress spoke English and all menus were in English too. Make no mistake; this restaurant does not draw attention to which country you are really in.
According to the Outback website, all sauces, soups and dressings are prepared every morning and scrupulously tested by the kitchen manager, with twenty different spoons. Each restaurant has its own crouton chef who prepares the days croutons from around 20 loafs of bread. 16 onze onions are prepped to make the famous Bloomin’ Onion. (Note an extremely large onion decoratively cut into rings with a bowl of sauce resting in the centre of it’s ‘bloom’.) Potatoes from Idaho are baked every ten minutes and for the steaks, it has to be Aussie Beef.
We had the Bloomin’ Onion and a Queensland Salad for starter. A salad, as large as the state it was named after, predictably raised questions about having enough room for anything else, but the warm and hearty vegetable soup that followed was the sure-fire hit of the day. The main course came next; luckily we had had the foresight to share the 350g steak between the two of us. For dessert we devoured a very large, strawberry cheesecake. At which point it felt like we couldn’t possibly eat again, for a week.
The Outback Steakhouse conveniently has numerous party plans and with a fully stocked drinks bar it would make a great venue for an after soccer party or even a works celebration. And, if you can’t bear to venture through the metropolis yourself, you can even get the Outback catering to come out and back to yours.
Outback Steakhouse can be found at many locations in and around Tokyo. For more details and a comprehensive list of locations see: www.outbacksteakhouse.co.jp/en.
