They charged it to Univision because @#$% Univision

August 6, 2018 5:33 AM

My mission to ruin a $250 Wagyu steak nearly destroyed my family -- Over the course of three days, I prepared this steak five different ways and, in the process, I developed a relationship with the steak. It became my secret lover. It even caused legitimate tension between my wife and me. Drew Magary for The Takeout
posted by He Is Only The Imposter (46 comments total)

You say can Fuck on MetaFilter. Especially when it comes to Univsion and their shitty corporate behaviour. Fuck them.

Also, I now want steak.
posted by Fizz at 5:56 AM on August 6, 2018 [7 favorites]

I don't think I'll ever *get* luxury foods. This guy is great and I love his obsessive wit about the wagyu but I agree with his daughter. Mind you, I once forgot to change the setting from high to defrost on the microwave and didn't throw out the resulting grey meatish result, in fact I ate it from the plate without cutlery, so my opinion means nothing.
posted by h00py at 6:10 AM on August 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

I once stood inside of the Japanese Butcher here in NYC and watched someone drop thousands of dollars on steaks like this that he insisted on having cut like regular strip steaks for the grill. The butcher tried to talk him out of it and he just would not listen. It was hilarious NYC finance-bro douchebaggery at its finest. (those those weren't A5, which would have been even more entertainingly dumb)
posted by JPD at 6:39 AM on August 6, 2018 [8 favorites]

Wagyu isn’t “ancient;” as far as I can tell, it starts in the late 19th C, and doesn’t get really developed until the 20th C.

I like to think his family enjoys winding him up. Or, possibly, that they are entirely imaginary.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:43 AM on August 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

He doesn't say it's ancient, tho.

Also this was excellent, as Magary usually is, and I really want some of that steak, but I wouldn't trust myself to cook it properly. Maybe someday...
posted by protocoach at 7:08 AM on August 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

He doesn't say it's ancient, tho.

Um...

The true prize-winning shit comes from cattle that are raised in Japan and tended to with an ancient fastidiousness.

I suppose you could argue that it’s the fastidiousness that’s ancient, not the cattle-raising, but it still reeks of a particular approach to Japanese culture (loads of Traditional Japanese stuff dates back a few centuries at most). I guess a modern, continually-evolving culture isn’t fancy enough.

Anyway, I still say his family’s reactions are the best. I wish my dad had paid me to eat Wagyu....
posted by GenjiandProust at 7:19 AM on August 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

I suppose you could argue that it’s the fastidiousness that’s ancient, not the cattle-raising, but it still reeks of a particular approach to Japanese culture (loads of Traditional Japanese stuff dates back a few centuries at most). I guess a modern, continually-evolving culture isn’t fancy enough.

For whatever it's worth, as someone who's been reading Drew's stuff for a while, I figured that was probably him mocking pretentious foodies, but I can definitely see how it could come across as sincere, rather than sarcastic.
posted by protocoach at 7:30 AM on August 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

Seeing as how beef wasn't really eaten at all in Japan until the late 19th-century, I'm guessing he meant the fastidiousness.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 7:36 AM on August 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Real wagyu beef truly is a life-changing experience. I don't think I've eaten a regular steak since that dinner in Japan where I got to try real wagyu. I think going back to any other kind of steak would just make me sad. (Ground beef, for whatever reason, is a totally different thing from "steak", so of course I've had hamburgers and stuff since coming back to the states. Not steak, though.)

Anyway, can someone clue me in on why we all hate Univision now? I only know them as that network what does all the Spanish-language programming.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:42 AM on August 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

(Why we all hate Univision if you're interested, hopefully this doesn't derail).

I've had one bite of Wagyu and it's indeed life changingly good.
posted by windbox at 7:49 AM on August 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

That article makes me wonder if $250 for a hunk of beef might actually be worth the money, if it's so good that you literally can't screw it up in cooking.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:52 AM on August 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

Those photos of the beef, though, so marbled that it looks like individual muscle fibers suspended in butter.
posted by gauche at 7:55 AM on August 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

Yeah, the only time I've ever cried over food, like, legit, bite-down-and-tears-spontaneously-sprang-into-my-eyes-because-what-was-in-my-mouth-made-me-feel-such-joy was the wagyu sushi at Sushi Nakazawa, which is the place of the dude who spent a decade learning to make acceptable tamagoyaki in Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

I know. Wagyu sushi. It sounds ridiculous. I know it was probably on the menu for financebros.

But it was probably the most delicious, incredible thing I have ever put into my mouth, and probably ever will, unless I somehow manage to go there again.
posted by joyceanmachine at 8:18 AM on August 6, 2018 [8 favorites]

like individual muscle fibers suspended in butter
Imagine beef flavored butter, if you can, and you pretty much got it. Tasty AF, but I still find the idea of spending the kind of money they charge for it on something you're gonna crap right back out in a few hours completely ridiculous.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 8:32 AM on August 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

loads of Traditional Japanese stuff dates back a few centuries at most

To a Japanese, 200 miles is a long way. To an American, 200 years is a long time.
posted by SPrintF at 8:36 AM on August 6, 2018 [10 favorites]

To an American, 200 years is a long time.

I feel like the thing being made fun of here is partly how Americans are about that, but also how Americans are about "authenticity" and virtually anything, because lots of Traditional Anywhere stuff is only that old, but food writing in particular sometimes seems to have a hard time with the fact that the food that we like is all historically relatively recent and there is no secret millennia-old tradition of burritos, or espresso, or whatever. So 200 years is a long time but also we seem to want things from other countries to have this longer history because we assume stuff from places that aren't America must be older? But... mostly, food isn't. People eating well, especially non-VIPs eating well, is a very recent development.
posted by Sequence at 8:40 AM on August 6, 2018 [11 favorites]

I still find the idea of spending the kind of money they charge for it on something you're gonna crap right back out in a few hours completely ridiculous.

I think it'd be fun to be wealthy for a day so you can buy all the things that cost $15 an ounce plus at the fancy grocery store and just go crazy baking, grilling, and eating them all. Meat, chocolate, cheese, spices - I'm pretty sure the intensity would kill you.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:42 AM on August 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

I used to understand the appeal of luxury, having grown up dirt poor. I went through a phase where I saved more than I spent with my first adult job (based on my budgeting habits from...being poor) and would splurge on trying to replicate the grandiose foodie experiences only afforded to the rich in my tiny kitchen. Turns out what I REALLY wanted from replicating the experience of the rich was the freedom of having money without having to actually earn it and being able to travel on a whim to these experiences.

This was also the pre-foodie explosion in my local community (say 2010ish), where I could only watch TV shows about certain types of food and dream about traveling to where I might obtain them. Now I can get whatever I want (if not for myself, through a vlog or Youtube) until that bubble bursts and people stop caring (which seems to be the case). It stops being...appealing. The journey to the food itself was the point all along.

Also that pink meat looks gross to me for some reason (and I love beef)?
posted by Young Kullervo at 8:45 AM on August 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

I don't like wagyu beef. Too fatty and weird. I think I've had it prepared properly, fine restaurants and a variety of ways. Would much prefer a good lean filet mignon. Or if I want some intramuscular fat, a ribeye.

What I really want though is pork with any fat in it at all. I mean chops and tenderloins; at least pork ribs and bellies still have fat. But in the 70s anti-fat hysteria the American pork industry bred all fat out of its meat and now it's dry and flavorless and gross.
posted by Nelson at 9:12 AM on August 6, 2018 [7 favorites]

To a Japanese, 200 miles is a long way. To an American, 200 years is a long time.

You realize that 200 years ago, Japan was a feudal state with medieval technologies (with some exceptions to Western notions of those things), right? Living in RI, 200 years mean less than they do in Japan (and 200 miles more, but that’s RI for you).

Tasty AF, but I still find the idea of spending the kind of money they charge for it on something you're gonna crap right back out in a few hours completely ridiculous.

You might say the same about paying $100 or more to attend a concert or a sports event or something that will be over in a couple of hours equally foolish; if you can form a good memory of the meal or concert or whatever it will last you a lifetime. I can still clearly remember meals I ate more than a decade ago; ymmv. Now, if you want to argue that nobody should pay that much for a meal while other people are starving, we would have a different conversation.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:12 AM on August 6, 2018 [5 favorites]

What I really want though is pork with any fat in it at all.

At least in many parts of the US, there are small farmers raising heritage breeds of pigs in conditions consistent with good animal husbandry quite unlike most massive commercial pork producers. You can usually find them at your local farmer's markets and at better butcher shops. A nice thick chop from a Berkshire will transport you to a time long ago when pork tasted like it is supposed to.
posted by Lame_username at 10:02 AM on August 6, 2018 [11 favorites]

yeah - I actually think pork (and chicken) are the biggest bang for your buck when you upgrade to heritage/small scale producers.
posted by JPD at 10:07 AM on August 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

You might say the same about paying $100 or more to attend a concert or a sports event or something that will be over in a couple of hours

I probably would - that's an awful lot to go see a show. Even so, the concert or sporting event would at least last a couple of hours and not just 20-30 minutes. And I can't imagine 20-30 minutes of anything providing enough fond memories to warrant blowing a Benjamin on.

And frankly the idea that nobody should pay that much for a meal while other people are starving is worth some consideration too,
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 10:16 AM on August 6, 2018

I've had A5 Wagyu only once, at a restaurant in Las Vegas. It was served thinly sliced, with a hot stone used to cook it at the table. "Beef-flavored butter" is exactly right. It was crazy expensive (something like $30/ounce with a six ounce minimum) but it was really, really spectacular. There are plenty of ways to spend ridiculous amounts of money in Las Vegas, but this one was more satisfying than most.
posted by Daily Alice at 10:19 AM on August 6, 2018 [6 favorites]

> the idea that nobody should pay that much for a meal while other people are starving is worth some consideration too

Yeah, no.

I can get behind confiscatory taxation rates, even a maximum wage, but what people do with their own money after that is up to them.

Otherwise, how about the idea that no one should spend money on pet food while people are starving? How can I go watch a movie while children are dying of preventable diseases? Everyone should be on subsistence levels of rice and salt until those issues are resolved, no? That's not a workable argument.
posted by RedOrGreen at 10:30 AM on August 6, 2018 [14 favorites]

If you can find it, and afford it as a treat (that is an expansive block of fat and proteins), buy it and cook it yourself, at least you skip the 4x restaurant overhead. And you don't need A5, any wagyu is good. It's a rare treat for very special occasions, I've had wagyu tenderloin and it ruined tenderloin for me, all the usual tenderloin softness but with actual beef taste explosion in it.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 11:06 AM on August 6, 2018

Okay, maybe you're right about that RedOrGreen & Witchen.
posted by Trinity-Gehenna at 11:08 AM on August 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

Kinda curious what you'd get if you mixed up some ground beef, meat glue and a good dollop of beef dripping.
posted by lucidium at 11:13 AM on August 6, 2018

What I really want though is pork with any fat in it at all.

I buy pork chops from a local market and they are covered in wonderful fat. If I buy them from a chain like Kroger? The consistency of the meat is more like a weird sponge and I haven't been able to determine why.
posted by Young Kullervo at 11:13 AM on August 6, 2018

This reminds me of "The Meat Incident" from Terrace House, one of the finest bits of TV drama ever.
posted by kmz at 12:17 PM on August 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've only ever had Wagyu beef once, at the now-defunct Locke-Ober in Boston, and paid a pretty penny for the couple of very thin slices I got with my entree. IIRC, they were served carpaccio style, like Magary did with some of his steak, though maybe not with olive oil (I don't really recall, TBH). I would love it if someone handed me a big ol' slab of it to do whatever I pleased with, but I don't know that I'd do the things he did, even if it was free.
posted by briank at 12:54 PM on August 6, 2018

At least in many parts of the US, there are small farmers raising heritage breeds of pigs in conditions consistent with good animal husbandry quite unlike most massive commercial pork producers. You can usually find them at your local farmer's markets and at better butcher shops. A nice thick chop from a Berkshire will transport you to a time long ago when pork tasted like it is supposed to.

Just last week, I was at a restaurant (Seeds in La Conner, WA) that did everything from local farms. I ordered a pork chop, mainly because I was craving the mashed potatoes that came with it, but oh my god. That pork chop was thick and fatty and by far the best one I've ever had in my life. I never knew they could taste so good. Just completely blown away.
posted by evilangela at 12:54 PM on August 6, 2018

I've had Wagyu, though not the top end stuff, and it's not really my thing. Not surprising, because my favorite meat in the world is actually the opposite, wild venison, which has almost zero fat. At least the sort hunted by my dad, field cleaned to avoid gaminess and hung in his walk in cooler for the right amount of time.

Interestingly, it's also best served practically raw but for opposite reasons, it will go to leather if given anything but the most careful searing.
posted by tavella at 1:54 PM on August 6, 2018

I've had Wagyu once, in a closed restaurant near Nara city, cooked in cubes on a very hot teppan, by the father of a girl my friend was dating.

It was remarkably good.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:43 PM on August 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

I discovered a fancy butcher in New Farm on the weekend, they had a variety of Wagyu cuts, as well as some dry aged Wagyu (and individually-wrapped Wagyu burgers, which annoyed me, not because that's not how you "treat" Wagyu [what does that even mean?] but because it was a hideous application of single-use plastic).

But I was there for sausages. I bought two of each kind of fancy sausage - two beef somethings, a pork something, and a duck something - that appealed to me, and as he was wrapping them up, the butcher asked "Any plans for the rest of your Sunday?" and I swiveled my eyes at the sausages and probably pursed my lips towards them like they do in Kuala Lumpur because it's rude to point. He nodded: "Just a sausage fest then?"

I guess I will get some Wagyu on the weekend, I suspect it will make a nice beef tartare.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:14 PM on August 6, 2018 [4 favorites]

The duck sausage was remarkably shitty by the way, not because it was duck, but because of some stupid herb that was in it that tasted somehow worse than coriander already does.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:17 PM on August 6, 2018 [1 favorite]

You realize that 200 years ago, Japan was a feudal state with medieval technologies (with some exceptions to Western notions of those things), right?

Not to belabor the point, but I find that when I discuss Japanese history, I usually begin, "Well, about a thousand years ago...." Kikkoman soy sauce, y'know, that stuff you find in the grocery store, is made by a company founded in 1630. The original point is that Wagyu beef, being only a century or so old, is hardly "ancient" by Japanese standards. (Whereas, by California standards, a company "doing business since 1995!" revels in its history.)
posted by SPrintF at 3:43 PM on August 6, 2018 [3 favorites]

> some stupid herb that was in it that tasted somehow worse than coriander already does

I wonder if it was Vietnamese coriander, because I grew to like coriander despite experiencing the "soapy" taste, but Vietnamese coriander was like discovering the boss monster's true form.
posted by lucidium at 4:45 PM on August 6, 2018 [2 favorites]

I've had what was supposedly "wagyu" at restaurants, but at such low prices that there is obviously no relation to what is being described in the article -- $18 for a burger might be a lot compared to McDonalds, but doesn't translate to much of a $250 steak.

Then she took a bite and said it was too greasy.

All I know about wagyu beef is from videos on youtube and articles like this one, and to be honest, it usually does look greasy. I'd like to try it at some point (especially as carpaccio, which looked really good in the photos), but my favorite cuts of beef are leaner and/or tougher, like skirt steak, oxtail, shank, etc, which have all the flavor.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:16 PM on August 6, 2018

The only matsuzaka style wagyu I've had that I really enjoyed was as very lightly seared sushi. As much as I like the flavor of beef fat (if I order a ribeye, I finish the steak, fat and all, because it's stupidly tasty), the small handful of other times I've had it, the fat was just overwhelming, and I realized I'm much more a fan of American beef.

One of the (very few) good things about the overwhelming pull of Tokyo (and to a lesser extent, Kyoto and Osaka), and how it's dragging everything away from all the other prefectures (companies, young people, money, etc) is that pretty much every other prefecture has had to make strong attempts to draw people and money back. One way has been through food, to the point that nearly every prefecture has its own homegrown variety of meat that they advertise as worth traveling (tourism dollars) for, or seeking out at a specialty restaurant or grocery. Chiba has at least two varieties of pork (one which is raised on sweet potatoes, with the ongoing goal of breeding the pigs to a level on par with Iberico pork, called Imo Buta). Tokyo Kuro Buta (Tokyo black pigs) is pretty amazing. Nagoya and Iwate are both well known for the quality of their chickens.

The food is good, the realization that careful attention to farming and raising animals well is great, and the work the local governments are doing to keep their prefectures alive and somewhat prosperous is commendable. I live near Tokyo, and work there (because it's where the jobs are) but the concentration of everything in one city is a clear detriment to the rest of the country.

tl/dr: wagyu is nice, but you should really try high end Japanese pork. It's fantastic. Also, Tokyo is terrible.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:21 PM on August 6, 2018 [6 favorites]

You're only saying that because you've destroyed Tokyo on several occasions, and you're trying to retroactively justify your actions.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:04 PM on August 6, 2018 [8 favorites]

(Just saying, almost all of my most memorable experiences from my trip to Japan were in Kyoto.)
posted by tobascodagama at 8:07 PM on August 6, 2018

You're only saying that because you've destroyed Tokyo on several occasions, and you're trying to retroactively justify your actions.

Aww, shucks. Little old me?

chuckles to self, steps on SDF tank
posted by Ghidorah at 8:13 PM on August 6, 2018

some stupid herb that was in it that tasted somehow worse than coriander already does Fennel, possibly? I've had many a fine sosig ruined by overdone fennel.
posted by The otter lady at 8:46 PM on August 6, 2018

Fennel certainly rings a bell. The bell that says: "your shitty sausages are cooked and the house staff aren't even going to bring them to you, come and eat them standing up at the kitchen bench so it's easier to spit the partially-chewed mouth-bolus directly into the bin".
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:02 PM on August 7, 2018 [1 favorite]

Drew also has a post that appears every Tuesday which is generally really amusing here called Fun Bag. There is even an RSS feed.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 7:25 PM on August 7, 2018