Sannomiya Ikkanrō - Main Store — Restaurant in Kobe

There is always a long queue so we decided to join it. As I didn't want to have so much wheat in my diet, we bought 10 pork Shu Mais for 800 JPY. The staff was efficient and polite, and service was fast.

Not sure if it's a norm in Japan for Shu Mais to be starchy. Although they were served steaming hot and juicy, the meat portion seemed to be mixed with a lot of starch, resulting in a floury and mushy Shu Mai. I have tried 551 Horai's pork Shu Mai and the result was similar. Ikkanro's version is already the less starchy of the two.

The Shu Mais were not heavily seasoned so you can taste the sweet taste of pork, with some gingery notes...

It doesn't matter if you like dumplings or not, if you wanna see how they are making them by hand, just look through the window. It's a craft, for sure. I don't think it's worthwhile making them yourselves. For a couple of yen, 180 to be precise, you have a nice fresh warm dumpling, served on just a single pieces of paper. No unnecessary waste, I like that. Although the place is quite far from the bustling china town a couple of blocks away, this seems to be quite popular looking at the...

I no longer know their pork buns are good or bad but this is it, this is the pork bun for Kobekkos (who were born and raised in Kobe). Kobekkos judge all other pork buns based on Ikkanro’s pork buns. So, I don’t say their pork buns are the best in the world but the taste is definitely what we imagine for pork buns. Ikkanro’s pork buns are already part...