Steak - Mark Schatzker [86]
All of which explains the lack of beading in the Matsusaka beef. The generic steak delivered a meaty punch that the Matsusaka steak did not. But the best meat of all, again, was not, technically, steak: it was Matsusaka beef tongue.
If there is a secret ingredient that makes Matsusaka beef taste the way it does, the local government is unaware of it. Chada-san and I dropped by Matsusaka city hall, where we sat in a boardroom with two officials whose business cards displayed photographs of A5 beef. The younger one preferred A5 beef. The older one was an A3 man, explaining that “only the very young like A5.” Both men ate beef less than once a week—which, in Japan, still makes you a beef lover. To qualify as Matsusaka beef, they told me, a cow must be female, it must be a virgin—“Virgin females have better quality meat”—it must be finished in Matsusaka, it must live in Matsusaka longer than it has lived anywhere else, and it must be of the black Wagyu breed. There was nothing special about the local feed, apparently, because Matsusaka farmers may feed their cattle whatever they like. The single variable that unites all Matsusaka beef, according to the government officials, is that they drink the local water, which comes from one of two clear mountain streams, and which should probably be bottled and sold at Takashimaya at an absurd margin.
The Japanese secret to growing beef, it turns out, is the same as the Italian one: time. Cattle in Japan are finished for thirty months, a glacially drawn-out period of fattening compared with the five-month turnaround at a U.S. feedlot. In Matsusaka, inspectors bestow a grade even higher than A5 for cattle that are finished for thirty-five months. This beef is called Matsusaka Special Beef, and according to the officials, it is incomparably marbled and tender. But no matter how marbled and tender, Matsusaka Special Beef would never qualify for USDA Prime, because a USDA meat grader would deem the cattle too old.
The government officials arranged a farm visit. Matsusaka, which is smaller than a Tokyo neighborhood, was soon receding in the rearview mirror of Chada-san’s rented Toyota, and we began climbing a winding road that passed through manicured tea fields and along the Kushida River, which flows down the side of Mount Shirai. We parked outside a garage next to a cute house that had a well-kept garden with evergreen trees whose limbs had been pruned into bulbous shapes. A Matsusaka beef farmer of considerable repute named Kubo came out to meet us. Eight years ago, a cow named Satsuki won him first prize at a competition and was sold for 10 million yen, about $100,000. (He does not know who ate her.) The following year, he won first prize again. Two years ago, Princess 5 won him first prize for a third time.
Her sister, Princess 8, now resided in the garage, which is actually a barn, and was a few months away from qualifying as Matsusaka Special Beef. Kubo-san had not purchased her in hopes of winning another first prize—though he thinks there’s a good chance she will do so. He bought her because he missed both Princess 5 and Satsuki. The very subject causes Kubo-san to come as close to misting up as a proud Japanese man is capable of doing.
Japanese cows do not wag their tails or pant enthusiastically, but Kubo-san’s have probably considered doing so. When he entered the barn, nine horned, black, and fuzzy heads floated over the walls of nine wooden stalls, each one hoping for a chin scratch from her master. In terms of aroma, Kubo-san’s barn has no equal. It smells honey-sweet, with notes of mint, citrus, and cedar, and standing inside it put me in the mood for breakfast cereal with cold milk. Kubo-san walked over to Princess 8 and gave the cow a