For those of you who didn’t read my “Mexican Mediocrity” rant a few weeks ago, today on Nevada Public Radio, I humbug my way through a commentary on how awful our Mexican restaurants are in this neck of the woods, and on how little my listeners seem to know (or care to know) about what constitutes decent, somewhat authentic, Mexican grub.
Click here to hear today’s commentary on News 88.9 FM KNPR – Nevada Public Radio; spoken, as usual, in the James Mason-esque tones for which ELV is famous.
Shabu-shabu means “swish-swish” in Japanese, and that’s what you do at Swish with your meat, seafood or vegetables as you move them around in the small caldron placed before you – containing either seaweed-scented water (for shabu-shabu) or a sukiyaki* broth for cooking your meat and veggies.
For 120 samolians, CUT will put before you three cuts of the best steaks in the world. One is A-5 true Kobe (Wagyu) beef from the Kagashima Prefecture in Japan. The other is wet-aged sirloin from Nebraska (that ELV contends isn’t really aged at all – only cryovac’d in plastic until opened), and the other is 35 day dry-aged beef from Illinois. Can you tell which is which?
Could you taste which was which?
And the answer is…..drum roll please…..from left to right: #1 is dry aged Illinois beef; #2 is the cryovac’d “wet aged” beef; #3 is Japanese Wagyu (very fatty, very tender, very expensive). If you look closely, you’ll see the tell-tale marks of blood/protein leaching out of the wet-aged steak.
Dry aging eliminates much of that moisture and concentrates the flavor into a gamey, funky, mineral-rich beefiness that the other two steaks can’t approach. That being said, the “wet-aged” steak had its fans at my table where we did the tasting, and it was one of the better pieces o’ beef I’ve had in a Vegas steakhouse. The true Wagyu/Kobe could be cut with a spoon, but is so rich that a bite or two is all anyone should want. Although management at CUT, Spago, Craftsteak, et al have told me tales of big, beefy American guys coming in and consuming 16+ oz. steaks of the stuff.