For two years, Palm Beach Meats, a restaurant-retailer and community-inspiring hub in West Palm Beach, has been a popular destination for pilgrims in search of the rich and velvety experience of Japanese Wagyu.
The shop’s display case just became even more exclusive: Palm Beach Meats last week received the golden trophy that comes with official certification as a purveyor authorized to serve and sell genuine Kobe beef, a specific style of Japanese Wagyu and the world’s most desired meat.
“There are strict criteria that the cattle have to meet in order to qualify as Kobe beef, and in Japan there are laws about who can use the word Kobe,” says Eric San Pedro, owner of Palm Beach Meats. “It’s one of the most expensive brands of beef in the world because they produce so little of it. The whole philosophy in Japan is not about producing the most, it’s about producing the best.”
The trophy and certificate (in Japanese) — from the Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association in Japan, which officially endorses restaurants, wholesale and retail businesses around the world to offer authentic Kobe — sit front and center on the display case at Palm Beach Meats.
How unique is this designation? Palm Beach Meats is one of 73 restaurants in the United States certified to put genuine Japanese Kobe beef on the menu, a list that includes just six in Florida, all in South Florida.
Palm Beach Meats, a fast-casual restaurant with serious culinary ambitions on an up-and-coming stretch of South Dixie Highway, is joined on the list by Steak 954 in Fort Lauderdale, Cote Miami in the Design District, Klaw in Miami’s bayfront Edgewater neighborhood, and two spots in the Brickell district, Gekko and Wet.
Though they’re allowed to sell Kobe beef, not all have it in stock at all times. Palm Beach Meats just got a shipment of 30 pounds last week. They keep it in a locked cooler.
If you want to buy Kobe to prepare at home, San Pedro’s shop is the only restaurant in Florida where you can make a retail purchase. It’s also the only company in the United States that is designated to sell Kobe in three categories, as a restaurant, a retailer and as a wholesaler.
“There’s not much of a [retail] market for it where we live, not gonna lie,” San Pedro says. “South Florida is just kind of getting interested in Japanese Wagyu in general. We decided to do this more on a wholesale level.”
But more restaurants have been asking him about top-shelf Wagyu recently, so the market may be changing, he says.
“For a lot of restaurants, serving the most exclusive thing in the world puts them on the map. We’ve had a lot of our [wholesale] customers who have inquired, ‘What is the most exclusive Wagyu we could buy?’ [Kobe] would be it. People will travel globally to seek out this beef,” San Pedro says.
Wagyufest weekend
The unique allure of the luxurious Japanese beef — both Kobe and other variations of Wagyu — will be the focus of a three-day celebration called Wagyufest at Palm Beach Meats, 4812 S. Dixie Highway, West Palm Beach. Running Friday, March 31, through Sunday, April 2, the festivities will include dinners, tastings, giveaways, live music and other attractions.
Wagyufest opens at 7 p.m. Friday with an eight-course, all-Japanese Wagyu tasting dinner by Palm Beach Meats’ resident chef Emerson Frisbie. Sample dish: A5 Steak & Eggs, which tops A5 Kobe Wagyu (the highest rating) with caviar. The cost is $325 per person at PalmBeachMeats.com. A Wagyufest dinner with a similar eight-course menu on Saturday is sold out.
Earlier on Saturday, Fort Lauderdale-based chef Takeshi Kamioka of Kaminari Ramen food truck fame, will take over the kitchen from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. to offer an all-Wagyu “greatest hits” menu. The vibe will be “fast-casual, first-come, first-served,” and the afternoon will include free Wagyu samples, Wagyu discounts, Soto sake cocktails by Pedro’s Fine Wines, raffles, live music and limited-edition Wagyufest T-shirts.
In many ways, Wagyufest was inspired by San Pedro’s desire to create a showcase for the genre-defying magic he witnessed at Takeshi’s food truck.
“Some of the stuff he would put together, on the fly, with whatever ingredients were there, it was art, it was amazing,” San Pedro says. “I’ve told him, his Japanese Wagyu quesadilla is both the dumbest and best thing I’ve ever eaten in my life.”
From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, chef Jay Rok from pop-up Eat BMC and chef Renata Ferraro of Key Biscayne’s revered Flour & Weirdoughs will collaborate on Wagyu croissant smashburgers. Along with more free Wagyu samples, music and giveaways, Civil Society Brewing Co. of West Palm Beach and Jupiter will showcase a new beer, Hoop Dreams.
For the finale of Wagyufest, Palm Beach Meats’ Sunday Supper series begins at 5:30 p.m. and features a Wagyu-inspired menu from Miami’s Yakitori Boyz (chefs Gregg Marsicano and George Dasinger). Expect their signature izakaya-style dinner (tapas-like plates) prepared with the traditional Japanese binchotan grilling method. Tickets cost $150 at PalmBeachMeats.com.
Wagyu vs. Kobe
Wagyu, loosely translated, means “Japanese cow” (“Wa” meaning Japanese and “gyu” meaning cow). Beef that has been certified as Japanese Wagyu is from cows genetically linked to one of four specialized breeds, have been raised in Japan, and meet specific rules for care and feeding.
Once processed, the beef must meet certain standards for fat content and marbling, an essential quality. The fat in Japanese Wagyu melts at room temperature, which gives it a trademark buttery, rich consistency and flavor.
There are Australian and American brands of Wagyu beef, typically from cows that have been crossbred with domestic cattle, which are plentiful on menus in restaurants across the United States.
“We love Wagyu of all kinds, but no one has ever replicated the Japanese beef,” San Pedro says. “There are some programs outside of Japan that do full-blood Wagyu, genetically speaking it’s 100 percent Wagyu. But a lot of what happens in Japan, and the results that they meet, results from the care of the cow.”
The overriding philosophy in raising Wagyu is to eliminate all forms of stress on the animal, from birth to processing, San Pedro says. They are careful to use clean water and feed curated to the taste of the cow, and farms are not built near roads to avoid noise and air pollution.
“Their philosophy is that if the cow is happy, it produces better meat,” he says.
San Pedro and his wife, Meghan, first tasted Japanese Wagyu at a friend’s Las Vegas wedding and that was that. He quit his day job as a substance abuse counselor to pursue a career in Wagyu, joined by Frisbie. Meghan San Pedro recently quit a job in finance to work at Palm Beach Meats.
“It’s not just steak. We joke, we call it unicorn meat. It eats nothing like steak. The closest descriptor we could find, and it’s not a great one, is it eats like butter. Better than butter,” says San Pedro, who acquired the nickname Wagyu Papi (courtesy of Frisbie) shortly after Palm Beach Meats opened.
Kobe is an even more rigorously scrutinized brand of Japanese Wagyu. Every Kobe steak is Wagyu, but not all Wagyu beef is Kobe.
To be labeled Kobe, the cow must be of a particular strain of Wagyu called Tajima-Gyu and raised on one of a limited number of designated farms that follow exacting standards for breeding, diet and care in the Japanese prefecture of Hyogo, in which the city of Kobe is the capital.
“Kobe is the most elite brand of Japanese Wagyu. It’s also the most famous brand, which is why the word is thrown around so much in the United States,” he says.
How to prepare Wagyu
Top-rated A5 Japanese Wagyu runs about $130 a pound at Palm Beach Meats, and the Kobe will be $275 to $300 per pound when it makes its debut at Wagyufest this weekend. Fear of ruining it is understandable. Chef Frisbie is here to talk you off the ledge.
“It’s a lot easier to cook than people think,” Frisbie says. “But, yeah, you’re coming in and spending a decent amount of money on a piece of meat. We joke that we offer a concierge service, but it’s true. If somebody buys something, a lot of times we’ll give them instructions while they’re here, or I hand them a business card and they’ll DM or call me.”
What’s the best way to prepare a Wagyu steak?
“It depends on the cut and it depends on the marbling score,” he says. “I prefer to cook pretty much everything in a cast-iron pan. I trim a little bit of the fat off of it, and put it in a cold cast-iron pan on medium heat, so as the pan’s heating up, the fat is rendering down and you’re cooking it in its own fat. I mean, you’re paying for that fat. It’s also a lot healthier to consume that than it is vegetable oils, and butter just burns faster.
“Depending on the cut, typically we sell a 1- to 1-and-a-quarter-pound steak, it’s usually about 5 or 6 minutes on each side, basted a few times and then rested, like 5 to 7 minutes per pound,” Frisbie says.
What not to do
Says Frisbie: “Funny story — Tyler Cameron [seen on “The Bachelorette”] and his brother used to buy a lot of stuff from us. I delivered some A5 Japanese [steak] to him in Jupiter, and I gave them specific instructions NOT to put it on a grill, right? Later that night, I’m sitting on Instagram and I see his story and it’s, like, literally the grill is engulfed [laughs], because they put three of these things on there and all the fat is dripping off and it’s flaring up.”
Staff writer Ben Crandell can be reached at bcrandell@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Instagram @BenCrandell and Twitter @BenCrandell.
