
Aussie Challengers Closest to Perfecting Japanese-Style Beef - aubergineau
http://www.nippon.com/en/behind/l00119/
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mikekchar
Wagyu is really amazing, but benefits from Japanese cooking styles (or Korean
;-) ). Although some people with a lot of money eat wagyu steaks, I would
readily trade one for a well hung British steak. The texture and depth of
flavour is better as far as I'm concerned. But if I'm eating yaki niku,
nothing is going to come close to wagyu.

A colleague in London mentioned to me that there is a hamburger restaurant
that is offering Australian "wagyu" burgers. That seems completely messed up
to me as I can't see any advantages (other than marketing) to doing that. You
just get an expensive burger where most of the money has melted away and been
deposited in buckets under the grill.

Personally, I'm happy to see Australia get in on raising this kind of beef.
There is quite a lot of demand for wagyu and there is no way that Japan can
supply it. I would like to see an appallation for wagyu, but even now
everything in my supermarket clearly indicates where everything is from (in
some cases down to having a picture of the farmer!), so it's not such a big
deal in Japan.

One interesting point in the article is the ever present US complaint about
the Japanese not buying their farm produce. Especially for iconic Japanese
food like wagyu, nobody is going to buy anything foreign. The best you will
get is some big beer garden restaurants buying it to save some money. Even
then, it's unlikely because Japanese people either demand local produce or
produce produced in famous areas. If it is the latter, they are willing to pay
truly exorbitant prices for it.

~~~
achamayou
They do it in Japan with Japanese beef too, give it a try sometime:
[http://www.eataku.com/post/15570448565/is-this-the-
greatest-...](http://www.eataku.com/post/15570448565/is-this-the-greatest-
burger-joint-in-the-world)

I personally agree, every time I go back I eat there at least once.

~~~
mikekchar
Interesting. I'll have to try it next time I'm in Tokyo.

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crocal
It's funny. I recently considered investing in breeding Wagyu cattle in
France, because the price for this is outrageous here, and it is next to
impossible to find. Also, discussing with my butcher, I learnt that the know-
how existed in the past about how to breed such marbled meat, but for some
reason was lost. Reading this makes me think I should really push the idea
forward.

------
DanBC
I'm always a bit frustrated with articles like that when they don't talk about
any double-blind testing.

Without knowing whether the assessments are double-blind or not I have no way
if they have any credibility or not.

~~~
mikekchar
I have never eaten any top class wagyu, but I occasionally eat Shizuoka wagyu
and I have a very good butcher in my town (in Shizuoka Japan). I have also
eaten wagyu style beef from Australia. I don't know if it was representative
of the quality that Australia is producing, but it was quite a bit cheaper
than the wagyu I can get in my local area.

For the beef I ate, there would be no need for double blind. The texture is
quite different and anyone could pick it out. I do not know what cut it was,
though. Wagyu tends to be sliced very thinly in Japan, so it really could have
been anything.

I've seen some Australian wagyu style steaks in the super market, but I'm not
a fan of that style of steak so I've never bothered to try it.

 _If_ what I tried was representative (and the article seems to suggest that
it might have been), they still have a ways to go. However, there is wide
range of quality in wagyu in Japan too. I can believe that it is possible that
there are individual foreign producers that can produce top quality wagyu. I
suspect that the low price, high volume fare will probably never quite make
it, though. Just looking at the cattle farms near me (if you can call the back
yard sized lots "farms"), I'm not sure that a large producer would be capable
of replicating the conditions. Some of the farms near here have 10-20 head of
cattle! They have attention lavished on them by the farmer. And I don't live
in a famous wagyu area by any means.

Anyway, it's just a data point, but I hope it proves interesting.

~~~
chris_wot
You might be surprised by how much money the Australian government spend of
agricultural research. They spent $50.2 million alone on just meat research in
2013-14 [1].

This is a key market for Australia. We'll crack it eventually :-)

1\.
[http://www.industry.gov.au/AboutUs/Budget/Documents/SRIBudge...](http://www.industry.gov.au/AboutUs/Budget/Documents/SRIBudgetTables2014-15.pdf)

