Wagyu. It is, they say, the finest beef on Earth, and most expensive too. Not so much a lump of meat as the stuff of culinary legend; a Japanese cow so worshipped, adored and exalted that it lives the life of a gilded millionaire.
There are tales of the massages to keep the muscles relaxed, of course. And opera, preferably Puccini, piped in while they lounge in their custom-built sheds. Then a diet containing a lavish spread of the sweetest corn, barley and rice grass, punctuated by swigs of beer, and cupfuls of sake.
All this exquisite indolence, though, the coddling and cossetting, the preening and the primping, is expressly geared towards one ultimate goal: to forge a piece of meat so lasciviously, fantastically rich that it melts like butter on the tongue.
Seriously, though, can any piece of steak, however heavenly, really be worth £100 for a mere 100g? The weight of two Snicker’s bars. And if so, then what in Godzilla’s name is Wagyu doing playing a starring role in a fast-food chain burger? And even more bizarrely, how are so many shops on the High Street peddling Wagyu products for a fraction of that steep price.
Shoppers are now inundated by options; from the British Wagyu Beef Burgers of M&S (£6) to the Waitrose Wagyu Beef Meatballs (£5.25), even Aldi’s Specially Selected range has an 8oz Premium Wagyu Flat Iron steak (£6.99). Burger King also released The Wagyu burger, endorsed by Gordon Ramsay no less, that cost customers only around £10.99.
Surely this is the ultimate triumph of hype over common sense, a Japanese term for ‘I saw you coming, guv’.
And while the proliferation of products is mainly down to its exclusivity and the fact the name is now synonymous with quality meat – is all Wagyu created equal?
As is so often the case, the truth can be obscured behind a maelstrom of marketing, myth and misinformation.
Wagyu, the Earth's finest and most expensive beef, is meant to be so lasciviously, fantastically rich that it melts like butter on the tongue
So how have high street shops been peddling it at such low prices? Fast-food chain Burger King even released a Wagyu burger for £10.99
Wagyu means ‘Japanese cow,’ and refers to four native Japanese breeds, born, raised and finished in the country. But the Japanese Black is the most renowned and widely bred
So let’s start at the beginning. Wagyu literally means ‘Japanese cow,’ and refers to four native Japanese breeds of cow, born, raised and finished in Japan. The other three are fine beasts, but it’s the Japanese Black that is the most renowned and widely bred, accounting for 97 per cent of all Wagyu raised in the land of the rising sun.
It has a deep flavour, exquisite texture and the most incredible intramuscular fat marbling. The Black is the king of Wagyu.
These cows were not originally bred for food, rather endurance and power, to work the rice fields, haul carts and toil in mountainous terrain. The bovine equivalents of JCBs, they were far too valuable to be eaten. Not that this was ever an option, as meat consumption was taboo in a predominantly Buddhist society.
These cows were also remarkably pure blooded. During the Edo period between 1603 and 1868, Japan implemented a strict policy of sakoku, or self-imposed exile, pretty much shutting down contact with the world. Wagyu cattle could evolve in relative genetic isolation, meaning those qualities already possessed by the cows – namely a predisposition to intense fat marbling of the flesh, as well as tenderness and unique flavour – were not only preserved but amplified over the generations.
In 1853 the Japanese were forced to open their borders once more and by the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the country ended its taboo against eating meat.
The government encouraged the select breeding of the Wagyu cattle with Western cows to increase size, rate of growth and meat production. But as interbreeding stopped in 1910, owing to the weakening of their unique genetic traits, a beast of burden was slowly transformed into gourmet delight.
‘Japanese Wagyu is different from the very first look,’ says Hisato Hamada, chef and co-founder of Wagyumafia, which has 24 restaurants around the world. He’s a Wagyu master and fanatic, and sources from the very best farms in both Kobe and Ozaki beef.
All of his Wagyu, like all the best in Japan, has an A5 grading, the gold standard, the beef that commands the very highest prices. It takes a huge amount of time, work and dedication to raise a Wagyu cow worthy of that grade.
The Japanese Meat Grading Association ensures that standards are kept consistently high. The meat-to-carcass yield is graded from A to C, while the quality of the meat (graded on marbling, meat colour and brightness, firmness and texture, and fat colour and quality), is scored from one to five.
Great Wagyu always starts with the finest genetics, and bloodlines are everything. Feeding is every bit as important, starting, as calves, on grass, before moving to a highly specialised grain-based diet. The key is a slow, steady fat accumulation.
‘I think a lot of supermarket Wagyu is a bit of a gimmick,’ says Elliott Grover, culinary director at Cut by Wolfgang Puck, at 45 Park Lane – one of London’s best places to try Wagyu. ‘Just because something has Wagyu written on the packaging doesn’t automatically mean it’s exceptional beef. A lot of these products are crossbred cattle. It’s very different from genuine Japanese A5 Wagyu.’
Wagyumafia's cutlet sandwich. The restaurant, founded by Hisato Hamada, serves expensive, gold-standard Wagyu beef, due to the effort that goes into raising their cows
The quality of the meat is scored from one to five by the Japanese Meat Grading Association, based on factors like marbling and texture. The meat-to-carcass yield is graded from A to C
He explains that genetic mixing between Wagyu breeds and domestic cattle reduces the expense of the meat, as does raising the cows locally, thereby slashing transport costs from Japan. Supermarkets do not need to sell A5-quality beef to call it Wagyu.
He has a particular problem with the burgers: ‘Once you’ve minced the beef, I think you’re losing much of what makes Wagyu so special in the first place.’
The quality – and price of the meat – will also rely on how the cow has been raised.
A few years back, I visited a Wagyu farm just outside Kobe, the capital city of Hyogo prefecture, home of the famed Kobe beef.
‘Kobe Beef is defined by being limited strictly to pure Tajima cattle,’ says chef Mr Hamada, ‘with rigorous control of quality, individual animals and bloodlines. It comes from just a relatively small number of farms in Hyogo prefecture and carries a regional Geographical Indication.’
All Kobe beef is Wagyu, but not all Wagyu is Kobe. It’s rather like champagne and sparkling wine. Same process, same product but only wine produced exclusively in the Champagne region of north-east France can bear that name. The same goes for Kobe beef.
The area is lushly green, filled with forests, and rolling, mist-wisped hills. Calves forage in the pastures while older cows lounge about in vast, open-sided barns. Opera plays from the speakers. ‘They like it,’ says the farmer. ‘It keeps them calm and happy.’
They’re certainly laidback, lounging indolently on the soft soil, horned, compact, with a deep black coat. Stress is very much the enemy, releasing hormones which not only taint the meat but hinder intramuscular marbling. Which is why some farmers may brush their cows, even massage them. But it’s not standard practice, just as feeding them beer and sake is more myth than reality.
After our trip around the farm, we break for lunch, at a traditional Wagyu restaurant, to try the beef. The meat is astonishingly marbled, beautifully intricate rivulets of fat running through the flesh like alabaster flurries. We eat it sliced into tissue paper-thin ribbons, shabu shabu-style, simmered briefly in bubbling stock. Next, small lozenges of sirloin, cooked over charcoal, the texture more like foie gras than beef.
Black cattle can be raised all over the world, as Hamada says: ‘You can taste the land, the climate and the way they’re raised. Seeing Japanese cattle thrive in new places is a good thing, much like how wine spread around the world.’
And yet while Burger King’s offerings may well be ‘100 per cent Wagyu beef, sourced from crossbred herds on local UK farms’, it’s dry, bland and deeply boring, little more than a cynical gimmick. If that’s true Wagyu, then I’m Kate Moss.