I’ve had real Kobe beef, in Okinawa Japan when I was 14. Compare it to filet but more tender and more flavorful so I’ve had the best of the best, but steak wise what’s the difference? I’ve eaten at saltgrass which is considered high end where I live.
In: Biology
Higher grade beef steak is mainly about intramuscular fat and marketing. In the US, the main consumer grades of steak are USDA Select, Choice, and Prime — these are the highest three grades on a seven-level scale of meat quality, and the level at which a piece of meat is graded is based mainly on the presence of little bits of fat between the muscle fibers of the cut, which we term “marbling”. Prime has the most marbling of any standard beef grade that the USDA will designate.
Wagyu comes from specific breeds of beef cattled with particular feeding/care processes, and typically reaches a *much* greater level of intramuscular fat (marbling) than other beeves (yes, this is a word, and yes, I have been looking for a chance to use it). Wagyu is graded on a different scale than typical beef, but the basic aspect of “higher grade = more intramuscular fat” holds.
Why is marbling so important? It gives both flavor and texture to meat. Low-fat cuts like filet mignon will taste beefy, but will lack the extreme richness and velvet, mouth-coating texture of a highly-marbled cut like ribeye. So, especially for cuts that are more prone to marbling well, this is a huge part of judging overall quality.
Past that, however, the difference is mainly in marketing/artificial scarcity/conditions in which the cattle is raised. You can buy a perfectly fine USDA Prime rib roast/ribeye at a decent grocer (especially around the winter holidays), or you can buy it at a specialty butcher. Are you able to get better quality with the butcher? Probably, if only because they might source their meat from better producers with higher standards of raising cattle. But if you have two Prime rib roasts side by side? Only being able to discern the better marbling/cutting location within the primal (e.g. ribeye with lots of spinalis v. without) will reliably give you better meat. The rest (like the Certified Angus Beef brand or reference to specific, but resonably comparable farms) is marketing. With niche products, as well, scarcity is an issue — Wagyu is procey because it is good, but it is also rare due to the low overall harvest of Wagyu cows. The low harvest rate does not have much to do with the quality of any given piece of Wagyu, but it does drive the price up across all of them.
The one last thing is preparation and the end-user experience for the customer. You can buy a steak at <chain steakhouse>, but it probably isn’t going to be cooked with as much care/the same quality of beef/other ingredients as if you did buy it from a high-end boutique steakhouse (e.g. Delmonico’s, Smith & Wollensky’s). The technique used in preparing a steak can dramatically alter the quality of the end dish — think *sous-vide* seared at the end and then a pan sauce made of the drippings, red wine, demi-glace, and aromatics v. just slapping a steak on a grill and cooking it there the entire time… worlds apart.
They know how to cook and do it correctly.
Get an expensive steak, cast iron, some learning and you can do it at home for 1/3rd the cost.
It’s mostly about preparation in the high end places. You buy a $100 steak, you get $25 of beef and $75 of their cooking skills. The fancy place I’ve gone to brags about their super high-temp infrared oven that sears the outside quickly and locks in all the juices.
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