Wagyu beef

[Guilty Glutton]

Are there any restaurants in Boston that offer wagyu beef, besides O Ya? On the Japanese Beef Marbling Scale, which runs from 1 (worst) to 12 (best), USDA Prime rates a middling 6. Wagyu reaches 11 and, if you travel to Japan, a transcendent 12.

The New York Times ran a good article on wagyu beef last year: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/style/tmagazine/16cattle.html

Wagyu beef is beautifully marbled: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:4_Kobe_Beef%2C_Kobe_Japan.jpg

USDA Prime, the highest domestic grade, is woefully lean by comparison: http://www.kansascitysteaks.com/_File...

[FastTalkingHighTrousers]

Call up John Dewar in Wellesley, ask if Vinnie or John can get you a Kobe or Mishima rib or sirloin from Japan and cook it up yourself.
The quality of that beef is better than anything I've seen at any Boston restaurant.
It is practically white and will start to melt at room temp. When I used to cut there seeing that used to bring a tear to my eye and drool to my cutting block.

[snifflyfro]

I was just at John Dewer in Newton Centre today and they had some nice looking cuts of Kobe labeled "Kobe Wagyu" (I believe). I think it was $49.99/lb if I recall.

[FastTalkingHighTrousers]

Yeah they'll usually have that on hand. That's the domsetic stuff. It's very nice but the import from Japan (either Kobe or Mashima) is much better ... and literally 4x that expensive.
I had to buy a new laptop because of this thread and apparently "drool damage" isn't covered under most warenties ... FYI

[eastieboy]

i happened to be in Bonfire for tacos and saw that they had a steak called Washugyu (or something that effect) that was a cross between Japanese Wagyu and Black Angus. it was 8 oz for $69. everything we had was great, i would definitely go back to try it for a special occasion, i think they have a new chef.

[almansa]

Snake River Farms, by far the largest purveyor of domestic wagyu, crosses their japanese-descended cattle with angus to create a better yielding carcass. This is why angus is such a catchword here - it yields well; hence we have been taught to think it's the best. I'm not an angus fan, and thus not a Snake River fan, but it does beat most of what's out there, anyway. They have two feeding programs resulting in three labels: 350 day fed and 550 day fed. The former results in most of what you see here, while the latter mostly gets shipped abroad to places like Japan where it sells as Kobe beef. They also raise cattle in Australia where animal cruelty and fabrication laws are comparably lax, and there they have a 100% wagyu animal that scores highest on the Japanese marbling scale (meaning that the animal was excruciatingly diabetic.) The various breeds of wagyu are genetically prone to yield delicious speckled fat marbling in the meat, more similar to Holstein and Freisian cattle than anything else. However those breeds, like wagyu, yield poorly, so their use as beef cattle has really diminished. Too bad, because I'll eat a Holstein steak over a streaky-marbled angus steak any day.

[lycheefloat]

Oishii also carries Wagyu

[bigred]

Shabu Zen offers Wagyu for ~$80.

[almansa]

Both KO Prime and Mooo.... offer Japanese beef for $30/oz. American wagyu is a very different product as the Japanese method of raising the cattle would never pass our animal cruelty laws.

[Ralphie_in_Boston]

A lot of people don't realize that (the cruelty thing). They think that it's nice that the cows get massaged by hand, and don't hear the dark side of the story.

[treb]

American Kobe is very different than Japanese Kobe which is not avail. in the US.

[9lives]

Japanese Kobe/Waygu was made available in the US last year. See the NYT article linked to above.

KO Prime lists it on their current menu.

[kweesee]

on 2 separate occasions, my friends and i have been extremely dissapointed with KO prime's "kobe." My bf only eats meat and carbs (and has had a lot of kobe beef in japan) and he could tell after the first bite that it was completely not kobe. it was so bad he didnt even finish it.

[kobuta]

I've had supposedly prime beef in Japan and I swear it tastes almost the same, but maybe I'm not much of a beef connoisseur. It's good and definitely good quality beef, but not out of this world for me and certainly not worth the out of this world prices.

I thought KO Prime or Moo (or both) was touting their wagyu beef when they first opened.