Canadians Have Been Eating Fake Kobe Beef Until Now

I hate to break it to you, but those "Kobe beef" sliders you've been knocking back with half-priced, after-work pitchers has been a sham all along. It wasn't until this week that Canada got its first restaurant to actually be able to sell certified Kobe beef, and even then a nine- to ten-ounce steak is going to set you back $350.

Montreal chef and Chopped Canada judge Antonio Park of Park Restaurant and Lavanderia got the official go-ahead from Japan's Kobe Beef council (yes, it's a thing) this week after what Park says was a five-year campaign to allow his restaurant supplier to ship him a cow every month. "Since there isn't enough of a supply for everybody, they choose specific chefs and restaurateurs," says Park. "They look into your history to see how many Japanese products you introduce and how you use them. I've been using A5 Waygu from Kyushu in southern Japan. It's a beautiful Waygu, but there's always something better that I can source."

Most beef that's called Kobe in North America is actually Waygu. Kobe is Waygu that's raised in Japan's Hyogo prefecture, so only Waygu from that area gets that designation. That particular beef is prized for its deep marbling, and ultra fatty, melt-in-your-mouth texture and taste. Combine that with the fact that only 3,000 of these cows hit the market each year, and only a tenth of them leave Japan, and you get one pricey, delicious steak that's heavily controlled by Japan's Kobe board.

Kobe beef only started to leave Japan in February 2012 when Macau and Hong Kong got the first shipments. In early 2013, the States got its first taste of Kobe. Now, according to the Kobe Beef council's list of international distributors, the export list has grown to include the UK, Singapore, Thailand, Monaco, Switzerland, Germany, Russia, Spain, Vietnam, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Belgium.

For those who have never tried actual Kobe, Park describes the taste and texture as being similar to the kama toro, the fatty meat around the bluefin tuna's collarbone. But if you haven't had that either (you lowly pleb), the highly prized beef's mouthfeel and flavor is best described as buttery, with a fainter, sweeter flavor than other varieties of beef.

Under the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's labelling laws, any beef claiming to be Kobe must have documentation that it does actually come from Hyogo. A quick online search will turn out plenty of restaurants in the country selling alleged Kobe burgers and hotdogs, but here's an easy way to detect bullshit: if you had an extremely rare cut of beef that costs hundreds of dollars, would you grind it up into a patty and slather it with ketchup?

"It's a scam," says Park. "People are putting Kobe on the menu and charging Kobe prices even though it's not. Kobe is triple the price of Japanese Wagyu at $200 a pound, including the fat that hasn't been cleaned. When you cook it, you lose about 25 percent of the fat, so it's a very expensive steak to eat."

Park says he first fell in love with the fancy breed of beef when he got a taste of it at the age of 12 while travelling with his dad around Tokyo. "My father had an invitation to go to this restaurant that served it, and it was unbelievable. I grew up in South America so I knew my beef every well, but that changed everything I knew about cows. There's nothing in the world that is similar to that. People say that in Canada there's the Australian Waygu or the Quebec Waygu, but it absolutely is not the same."

Park put Kobe on his menu the day he got his license earlier this week, serving Kobe at his two restaurants, the Japanese-style Park and the Argentine-inspired Lavanderia. He's carving up the tenderloin as a steak, and slicing the striploin and ribeye into ultra-thin pieces and simply setting them on a hot stone. "I want to expose the flavours of the beef. It doesn't need a sauce, just salt and pepper."

Though the $350 pricetag for a nine- to ten-ounce steak could easily pay for two months' worth of groceries, Park says it's how much he has to charge to break even because in order to serve the beef, he has to pay an annual licensing fee that costs about $10,000 a year. "Making money from this isn't the right thing to do right now," says Park. "I don't think Canada is there yet, to pay that amount of money for beef. What I want to do is educate people so they know what they're eating. I also want to tell all restaurateurs to stop scamming people."