I do most of my grocery shopping at the local Safeway. However, when it comes to nicer, non-everyday ingredients I often go to a more upscale supermarket that tends to have far higher quality meat. In their butcher case, they invariably have some nice looking steaks including your typical ribeyes, NY strips, etc. As with most grocery stores, each tray of cuts is market with the cut and price per pound. Quite often, they have a tray of “Wagyu” ribeyes in the display case at a nice mark-up. They don’t, at least to my untrained eye, look like what one would think “Wagyu” steaks should look like. While they look nice and all, they appear to just be normal old USDA prime ribeyes. How loose can businesses get when it comes to the use of Wagyu (or similar) when it comes to selling beef?
USDA regulations require only 46.9% Wagyu genetics for beef sold at retail. Exempt from these labelling requirements, restaurants can call any beef Wagyu, and often do.
Basically, if the guy who writes the menu for a restaurant can spell “Wagyu” he can call it Wagyu.
Dang. I figured as much. I, perhaps naively, hoped that this particular store, which is one of the better stores around, would have been above this deception.
Yes, those were the most interesting parts of the posted article. I wonder how the settled at 46.9%? It would seem that it should be AT LEAST 50%, maybe closer to the wine varietal 75% threshold. I’ve always wonder how much cross-breeding a known, higher-end operation like Snake River Farm does. I took a look at their website, the state that their beef is cross-bred, but don’t state any indication of extent.
I’m really discouraged to here that a restaurant can do what ever they want.
Oh yes, that stuff is unreal. It’s hard to rank “best ever” but Curtis Duffy, ex-Grace in Chicago served some M-A5 that may have been the best piece of beef I’ve ever had.
Matsusaka is our personal favorite as well, and usually what we seek out in Japan. It strikes me as having a deeper flavor, perhaps a touch funkier. All the best beef in Japan is terrific, though, and I’m splitting hairs on this preference.