Everyone around me seems to love A5 Wagyu.
It’s expensive, premium, and rare. Eating it even gives you something to brag about: I had A5 Wagyu.
But I don’t like A5 Wagyu.
First, let me explain what “A5 Wagyu” actually means.
“Wagyu” doesn’t simply mean “beef from Japan.” It refers to specific Japanese cattle breeds, mainly Japanese Black, Japanese Brown, Japanese Shorthorn, and Japanese Polled. Most of the Wagyu we usually eat is Japanese Black.
“A5” is a grade.
It actually combines two different rating systems. The “A” means the cow yields a lot of usable meat. The “5” means its marbling, meat quality, color, and other characteristics all received the highest rating.
So, like paper sizes, beef can also be A4, B3, C2, and so on.
The term you probably hear most often at hot pot restaurants is “marbling.”
Marbling describes how finely fat is distributed throughout the muscle.
Heavy marbling looks beautiful and melts in your mouth, but it doesn’t change one fact:
A5 Wagyu is a very fatty piece of beef.
I used to follow the crowd too.
I didn’t understand what A5 Wagyu was, but if everyone said it was amazing, then of course it had to be amazing.
A5 Wagyu was the finest, most delicious beef. If you were visiting Japan or treating someone to dinner, you had to get A5 Wagyu!
When I worked in Japan, I often took visiting friends to Rokkasen in Shinjuku for all-you-can-eat A5 Wagyu shabu-shabu and yakiniku. Rokkasen is famous and incredibly popular. You have to call ahead for a reservation, or there’s no chance of getting a table that day.
But my stomach has always been sensitive to fat. The first piece of A5 Wagyu is amazing, but by the second piece, it already feels too rich. So every time I ate A5 Wagyu, I felt sick.
Still, everyone loved it, so I just went along with the crowd.
One time, I took some friends to Rokkasen again. After dinner, I went home and threw up spectacularly.
A5 Wagyu is expensive. I was throwing up cold, hard cash!
After that, I never wanted to eat A5 Wagyu again.
I actually prefer A2 or A3 beef.
It’s less fatty. Just right. It doesn’t melt in your mouth like A5 Wagyu, but it has a nice balance of tenderness and bite. I can eat plenty without getting tired of it.
Of course, no restaurant advertises that its beef is A3. A5 is what people are willing to pay for.
After all this, if aliens invade Earth one day and become obsessed with finding the most delicious way to eat humans:
Replacing every mention of cows and beef in this post with humans and human meat might be pretty interesting.
