Today sees Japanese Wagyu, the world’s most expensive beef, go on sale in London for the first time since 2001.
Diners at Wolfgang Puck’s CUT at 45 Park Lane
restaurant can now tuck into a six-ounce (170g) Wagyu steak for £150, not including sides. It is the first British restaurant to purchase the meat following the lifting of an import ban dating back
to the BSE crisis.
Although Wagyu beef has remained available in London throughout, making appearances on menus at restaurants including Nobu and Goodman, it has come from Wagyu farms in America, Australia or Wales rather than Japan.
Wagyu is the name of a breed of beef and literally
translates as ‘Japanese cow’. The animals are genetically predisposed to high levels of fat marbling, which leads to very tender and rich meat. To look at raw, the beef appears as white as it does
pink, due to the high level of fat (see right).
Price and demand of the original Japanese Wagyu still outstrips that of other countries, with rumours claiming the cows are treated to massages and fed sake in order to create a finer beef. CUT
head chef David McIntyre tells us that this isn’t the case, saying ‘that is just an urban myth... but it is rich and moist with beautiful flavours’.
There are only around 4,000 Wagyu beef cattle available for export from Japan each year, and CUT has already bought three of them.
Square Meal sampled the Japanese Wagyu fillet
steak offered the Park Lane restaurant, alongside equivalent cuts of prime US beef and Australian Wagyu. Its incredibly soft texture and rich flavour was reminiscent of pâté, and it was indeed
wildly different from the other two cuts, of which the Australian Wagyu was closest but still far removed in terms of tenderness. The steaks we tried are pictured to the right, with the US beef on
the left, Australian Wagyu in the middle, and Japanese Wagyu on the far right.
It remains to be seen how many Londoners will be willing to fork out the price for this super-premium steak, but perhaps Hawksmoor co-founder Huw Gott will be one of them. The steak-enthusiast, whose wife is Japanese, recently told
us of his fondness for the indulgent meat: ‘I’ve really got into the proper Wagyu you get in Japan, but it’s so very rich that I consider it a totally different product to the sort of British steak
we serve in our restaurants'. He adds that ‘Hawksmoor is built around British beef and we would not import foreign beef’, ruling out the chance of finding it on its menus any time soon.
Published 21 July 2014