Steak - Mark Schatzker [85]
I wanted to see a black Wagyu. I wanted to hold the bucket as he drank beer, and watch as his keeper poured rice wine over his back and massaged it into his muscled flesh, each finger pushing the marbled fat into ever more tiny flecks.
The next morning, Chada-san and I were seated on a train headed into Wagyu country. Next to us, a young child was sitting in a stroller, munching a rice ball while his mother read a magazine. Outside, Japan’s unbroken urban sprawl was giving way to plowed fields, slow-moving rivers, and geometrically arranged rice paddies. In the distance, a ridge of mountains crinkled up and down on the horizon.
We were nowhere near Kobe. We were traveling south out of the city of Nagoya—famous for its chicken—to seek out a brand of Japanese beef that many consider to be superior even to Kobe. The brand is called Matsusaka, and the reason foreigners seldom discuss Matsusaka beef is that there isn’t much of it, and what little is produced, the Japanese keep to themselves. No beef exceeds the price of Matsusaka beef.
By this point in the tour, I was pointing out examples of Japanese peculiarity at random—a man riding a bike wearing a doctor’s mask; yet another grown woman wearing a Hello Kitty backpack—and Chada-san would attempt to place it in context. On the train, seated directly across from us, was a middle-aged man who looked in every way average but who was reading a book with a large drawing of a friendly cat on the cover called Have a Nice Time. The man put it in his bag and retrieved a different book, The Ukulele Chord Book. Chada-san was not blind to the humor. He said, “I cannot believe that of all the trains for this strange man to sit on, he would have to sit across from you.”
Small-town Japan strikes an almost Zen-like contrast with the backlit bustle of Tokyo. The streets in downtown Matsusaka were quiet, and the houses were well kept and fronted by prim lines of hedges as superbly rectangular as the pound cake back at Kinokuniya. Cars were parked in neat long lines by the side of the road, evoking a sense of serenity. Going out for steak in Matsusaka could not be easier, because there are signs on the street pointing out the steak houses. The first one we visited was a near shocking disappointment: the chef did not sell Matsusaka beef, explaining that it was too expensive. And then he dropped a bombshell: “People can’t tell the difference, anyway.” We did not eat there. We sat down at a refreshingly down-market yakiniku spot and ordered some A3 steak of unknown origin, and also a plate of A3 Matsusaka steak that cost double. Despite having received the same quality grade, the Matsusaka meat was more marbled, tasted sweeter, and was undeniably more tender. Its behavior was also exotic and unsteaklike: unlike the generic A3 beef, the edges of the Matsusaka A3 did not curl when cooking, and the meat didn’t stick to the grill. The generic steak, however, did something that the Matsusaka steak did not do, something I had not, as yet, seen any steak do in Japan: it beaded. This is a word I have coined to describe the little droplets of meat juice that form on top of steak as it grills. Heat causes a steak’s connective tissue to squeeze, forcing liquid to the surface where it sits in tiny puddles. The brand-unknown steak, in other words, was juicy.
The Matsusaka steak was juicy, too, but in a different way. Juiciness comes down to two different kinds of liquid. There is melted fat, which feels luscious and smooth in the mouth and induces salivation, creating the illusion of what sensory panels call “sustained juiciness.” But there is another kind of liquid that constitutes juicy, namely juice, the blood-tinged, umami-rich, water-based savory nectar that reddens a plate after a steak is cut. The steak world affords juice no respect. Everyone talks about marbling and tenderness, but juice must not be underestimated. The only ones who discuss juice seriously are meat scientists,