What’s Your Beef?
Kobe beef is the best in the world, with cattle fetching up to $143,000 each. Lisa Markwell goes behind the scenes of a culinary phenomenon.
Aplate is thrust towards me across a counter, on the chef’s arm. He pulls his other hand towards his face and fixes me with an intense gaze that has been well practised. “Eat and shout,” he hollers at me in Japanese — it’s the restaurant’s signature toast. Um, thanks, I guess. So this is the experience everyone from David Beckham to Ed Sheeran to World Cup rugby players seek out while in Tokyo. It’s like nothing I’ve had before — and vegans and the virtuous look away now, because the plate contains a £140 (NZ$300 approx) steak sandwich.
If you’re poised to write in to complain about this ostentatious display being everything that’s wrong with the food world today, hold fire. There’s a remarkable, often misunderstood backstory to wagyu beef — for that is what’s in the sandwich — that takes me far away from the ear-bleed volume rock music and theatrical, flame-roaring grills of Tokyo restaurant, Wagyumafia. It requires what has become known as a “deep dive”. There’s a farm in remote Hyogo prefecture, a slaughterhouse in Himeji, a historic livestock auction in the hills outside Kobe.
First and foremost, I’m here to learn about Kobe beef. Wagyu is a generic term for Japanese beef; Kobe is a very specific beef of the highest quality. It comes from one pure breed of cattle, Tajima, of the Japanese Black variety, that is found only in the Hyogo prefecture. To qualify for Kobe recognition, and an all-important chrysanthemum stamp, it must fulfil strict criteria.
My guide is Hisato Hamada, the charismatic owner of the Wagyumafia restaurants — four in Tokyo, one each in Hong Kong and Manila — and with more in his sights. He and Beckham are drinking buddies but although he showboats shamelessly with the restaurant’s dishes and swaggers around in a top with “chateaubriand” emblazoned across the back, he is earnest and passionate about the provenance and care of the cattle that end up as beef on plates.
“Kobe is strictly regulated as a geographical region, like the Champagne denomination,” he says as we travel by bus to a remote farm. “This area is the only one for pure-blood breeding, which makes it very high quality.” He explains that elsewhere cattle are cross-bred, which is why you might have seen wagyu beef from Scotland, or in other parts of the world.
Small-scale farming and breeding of these cows, which are traditionally quite compact in size, is a hard life. “Calves that 10 years ago would have cost $2300 now cost $8000 (£6,178), because of the scarcity of breeders,” Hamada says as we enter the farm, clad in protective suits, shoes and masks (all for the cows’ protection, not ours). This life also requires great skill — knowing exactly how much to feed the mothers, with which of the 12 super-steers to breed, at what age to auction the animals and so on. Owners of Tajima cattle can spend $300 a month on each animal and have just 100 or so on their land.
Are the cows massaged and fed beer, as urban legend would have it? “Not true,” Hamada grins. “But they are washed with Shiseido shampoo before the auction.”
They are regularly combed too, their stalls kept immaculately clean and there is the faint sound of classical music in the barn.
Each animal has its own record pinned up, with its name and breeding history.
For reasons of health, they are sometimes fed malt waste (hence, perhaps, the beer rumour); grass does not make up a large part of their diet. Pure white fat is one of the indicators of the very best quality meat and the beta carotene in grass turns it yellow, Hamada explains. “It’s the toughest pedigree to farm,” he adds. “For the best marbling, 60-65 per cent is genetic, the rest is the skill of the farmer. But if you succeed, the meat will be outstanding.”
Which leads us out of our protective gear and off to the 101st traditional annual Kobe beef