One of the rarest meats in the world

An incredible product from Japan

People of the world, HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope you all made the most of the holidays and had an opportunity to enjoy some your favorite foods and beverages, cook a lot, and have some quiet time as well—it’s good to recharge your batteries.

If you know me, you know that I love to work with the very best ingredients and products that I can find. Everything that I cook, and everything that I put on my restaurant menus, I want it to be the best possible protein or produce anywhere. Today, let’s talk about an ingredient that I love so much, and one that we feature in many of our restaurants, especially The Bazaar New York, NoMad and Bazaar Meat in Las Vegas and Chicago…wagyu! Wagyu is one of those ingredients that you may have seen on menus, or maybe you’ve even cooked with it in your own kitchen, but a lot of people don’t actually know why it’s so rare (and so expensive!).

Wagyu translates to "Japanese cow," and these cows are incredibly special.

Wagyu is considered one of the rarest types of beef in the world, but its name translates to the very simple “Japanese cow.” The cattle are raised in incredibly comfortable environments, bred over years for a unique “intramuscular” marbling, and there is a strict grading system to ensure the wagyu you see on your plate is consistently the highest quality possible. And of course, like so many other things Japanese, raising wagyu is a fine art, and there are only certain farms and regions that are allowed to use the name “wagyu.” The bloodline of these cattle is traced and recorded, and the farmers have fine-tuned their methods for decades. The prefectures where good wagyu is made include Shiga, Miyazaki, and Saitama.

An example of the marbling in wagyu

You might have seen wagyu listed on menus or at high end markets listed as A5 or maybe A4…what does it mean? Each steak has a number and a letter in its grade—the letter indicates the percentage of meat from a cow that is actually good enough to eat, so a Grade A steak has a higher percentage, while a Grade C has a lower percentage. The number will indicate the actual quality of the meat, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. Only A grade meat is imported into the US, so you’ll never see B or C here—though in Japan, you can find all of the grades.

At The Bazaar, we have some amazing ways we play with wagyu—we try to show you the best of the best, and honor the protein, the farming process, and the traditions that led it to become one of the world’s most amazing delicacies. Chef Manny Echeverri, culinary director for The Bazaar, recently made a trip to Japan to visit some of the wagyu farms there to have a better understanding of how the cows are raised and evaluated for grading.

One farm he visited was Hasegawa Farm in Saitama, where Bushu Gyu, known as Samurai beef, is raised. The Hasegawa Family has raised wagyu on their farm for four generations, and the cattle are raised on lees (the leftovers from fermenting beer or sake…yes, people, these cows are on a beer and sake diet, that sounds pretty good to me!).. “Bushu has been on our menus for a long time…different cuts of the animal,” Manny says. “We’re not just using strip or ribeye, because we’re trying to be a little bit unique. We’re starting to use cuts like picanha, which is the top round, or the tri-tip, which we cook in the yakiniku style: we cook small pieces of meat next to the tableside on a small grill, which makes it taste really amazing—fast cooking at a really high temperature.”

“We were invited to the Hasegawa farm restaurant and we sat with the entire family. All this is generational farming, so all of the brothers are involved in some way, and one of them is the chef of the restaurant. It was really beautiful to see how they prepare their beef.” With this inspiration, Manny’s planning to add new sauces inspired by the Hasegawa family’s recipes—look for them when Bazaar Meat reopens at The Venetian in Vegas! (did you know that Bazaar Meat is moving to The Venetian later this year??)

Bazaar's Wagyu Air Bread and A5 Strip Loin

If you want to try wagyu after learning about it, Manny and our team are happy to make it happen. At Bazaar Meat in Vegas and Chicago, we have a whole tour of steaks from different farms and different prefectures, so you can understand the differences. At The Bazaar New York, NoMad, we serve a “wagyu air bread” with Manchego cheese espuma and caramelized onion jam. We also serve an incredible dish of A5 (the grade) Miyazaki (the prefecture) striploin (the cut) with charred onion jus and vegetables. Are you hungry yet?

….And, in case you’re curious about what Manny’s personal preferences are when it comes to wagyu, you might be surprised to learn that he doesn’t always seek out the highest grade of it! A5, with lots and lots of marbling, is incredibly rich and fatty, which is delicious and melts in your mouth, but it doesn’t retain as much of its beefy flavor. “To me, beef needs to taste like beef,” says Manny. “You have to eat it in very small portions and season it a lot. A lower grade is actually a lot more enjoyable to me because it has a lot more beefiness to it.” I tend to agree with him…I love all wagyu, but man, I love the taste of beef, which I find in a lot of American-bred wagyu-style steaks. Some of my favorites, which we have at The Bazaar, are from Rosewood Ranches in Texas, which cross-breeds Japanese bulls with Black Angus, and Heartbrand Akaushi, another Texas ranch that makes a perfectly rich but beefy steak.

So tell me…have you tried wagyu, or cooked with it? What did you think? I’d love for you to come in and try wagyu at The Bazaar!