- Gozu is a wagyu beef tasting menu.
So we work through the entire animal
throughout the progression of a meal.
This is part of the Teishoku tray,
which is the final wagyu course.
I don't know anybody that is working
with wagyu on this level in the U.S.
This is a nearly everyday occurrence here.
Teishoku traditionally is a lunch tray
that has a broth, it has a sashimi,
it has a seasonal vegetable, it's got pickles,
and then either a nice piece of fish
or beef or something like that.
I spent seven years working as the business development chef
for Alexander Steakhouse.
We opened a restaurant in San Francisco in 2010, Pasadena.
We opened it in Taipei, we opened in Tokyo,
and I really got a chance to travel to Japan
and talk to a lot of these farmers.
And one of these farmers asked me,
"Hey, it's great that you're taking, you know,
all the rib-eyes and the strips and the filets,
the tenderloins, but when are you gonna take
a whole animal?
How about you be the first to import a whole animal
from Japan to the United States?"
And that was always really intriguing to me.
These animals give their life for, you know, us to enjoy,
and there's a definitely a certain level of respect
that comes out of it.
So every time that we're breaking down and cutting,
and we're always thinking about how best
to utilize and showcase each individual piece of the animal.
But yeah, I mean, anytime you get it in,
you realize that you've got a $3,000 piece of meat
that you're cutting.
So we do a lot of aging here,
whether it's with fish or beef.
Dry-aging has really become quite a phenomenon.
You won't generally see these cuts of wagyu
in the United States,
you almost have to build a place to serve it.
I think that's why a lot of restaurants
are sticking with the New York and rib-eye and tenderloins.
In this cabinet right now is a shoulder clod
from Chateau Uenae, good friends of ours in Hokkaido.
So it's called Hokkaido snow beef.
So there's five grades of beef.
Among that, you get into beef marbling score,
which goes from one to 12.
These all grade between 10 and 12 to qualify as snow beef.
- So here we have the clod heart,
so this is the main muscle that we use
in the shoulder for the skewers.
And so from here, since it's all nice and cleaned up,
we will break it into smaller blocks
and then use it to make these skewers.
- This is the part of the tray where everybody gets kind of,
I think what they were expecting.
I think everybody, at some point,
that comes through this front door
expects to have a piece of meat
that's grilled over charcoal, put in front of them.
(bright instrumental music playing)
Everything in this restaurant is cooked over this hearth.
We don't have any gas in the restaurant at all,
so we're 90% fire.
- Here we have the sliced tricep muscle from the shoulder.
So what we're gonna do with this
is we're going to lay it out and then kiss it with charcoal
and finish it with a little Maldon sea salt,
and that is one of the elements of the Teishoku tray.
This muscle is normally very chewy,
so we slice it super thin, as you can see,
so it's very delicate,
so you don't feel any of that texture on your mouth,
all you feel is, like, the beef,
and then the fat as you're eating it,
and then just, like, a nice, like,
it kind of melts away because of how thin we slice it.
So we take it and we brush it
with a little bit of wagyu tallow.
- We use Kishu binchotan for this.
These are actually made from fallen branches
that are then put a kiln, brought up to 1,000 degrees,
that yields this really cool charcoal
and you can almost hear, it sounds like ceramics.
It's a light cook, and then you get a really, really cool
barbecue flavor that happens when you do it.
This restaurant wouldn't be what it is
without fire and charcoal.
I think it's kind of the lifeblood of this entire space.
When you see there's a counter, everybody sits around,
it's kind of transformative for people that come in,
and it's very innate to sit around a fire and stare at it
and enjoy each other's company.
I think it takes to a whole other level
when you're preparing food over that same fire
that is kind of providing entertainment
and light and warmth.
- This is the rare seared tricep muscle from earlier
that we have kissed with charcoal,
and I'm just giving it the garnishes
of miso-pickled ramp bulbs.
Then we also have pickled black trumpet mushrooms
and kinome leaves.
(upbeat instrumental music playing)
- Fish delivery just came in today.
This is all coming from the Toyosu market.
Raul cuts 99% of the fish here.
So these fish, a type of sea bream,
in Japanese, are called tai.
We use this on our sashimi course on the menu.
So these come in already eviscerated,
the tails are cut and the fish are bled.
You can see how fresh this fish is just from the eyes.
The eyes are super clear and round,
exactly what we're looking for.
- Yeah, this is one of few things
that doesn't get cooked over the fire.
I love the way that we are using an entire fish
for the dish, 'cause the whole concept of the restaurant
is to use the offcuts of the wagyu, too,
but utilizing the whole cow,
so we are doing the same for seafood as well,
and it's not just wagyu
that we are following that philosophy.
Surprisingly, the dish is really delicate and clean,
'cause the rest of the menu
could be really flavorful and intense.
This dish keeps the entire menu really balanced.
Dashi is a Japanese-based stock
that is made from kombu and bonito,
and that's, like, the basic foundation of dashi.
Getting coals hot enough so it can grill the fish
for the dashi gelée that's on the sashimi.
We wanna get a roasty flavor on the fish
to create another layer of flavor
that can be infused into the dashi.
Although the sashimi course is a cold dish,
but it also have touched the fire in the dish.
I'm gonna roast both the heads like this
and we're gonna hang the bones of the fish over the fire.
- So I think a lot of this
is just applying different techniques so we can,
we'll put a hard grill on some of it.
If we hang this over the fire,
it's pulling a lot more smoke,
so it's gonna give a whole different perspective to things.
So as we build flavors, we're trying to go
across that full spectrum of lightly smoked
to full-on, hard sear, to even, like,
char in certain places.
- So you can kind of tell the bone's been, kind of, like,
dehydrated, so the flavor intensifies, and if you smell it,
you can smell that smoky flavor from the flames.
So when the water's simmering,
just put the bones in with some kombu,
and then you wanna bring it to a simmer, and after that,
we'll bring it down to 75 degree
and let it sit and infuse for an hour.
Then we'll turn it into a gelée.
- The sashimi is coming from Japan.
So we'll filet that, slice that,
slice the wagyu lardo thinly, that gets layered in between.
The fish itself is brushed with a little bit of shoyu
that's been in cherry oak barrels.
That gelée, that sits on top,
and then that gets finished
with onion sprouts on top of that and some cherry blossom.
(pulsing music playing)
Uni is part of a supplement course
that we're running right now that's toast.
This uni is coming from Hokkaido, as well,
so you've got super cold water for this particular dish.
This is really, really where it's at.
We always kind of open it up, take a little taste,
make sure everything is where it's supposed to be.
Something that we've realized relatively recently is
there's an additive that is used in it
in order to make it last longer
and to keep the flesh more firm.
And as we've kind of gone through,
you sort of realize you can taste that.
And a lot of people that don't like uni
say it makes their throat itch,
and that's from the additive, so,
anytime we can, we'll go the additive-free.
That's delicious. Super nice.
So this is one of the last things
that we gotta put together for service today.
This is a brisket from Chateau Uenae.
I smoke this for about 11 hours,
and then it gets sliced thinly
and it's being used on a toast supplement
with uni and a little bit of Thousand Island dressing.
So, for this one, we'll block it into saku.
The brisket's another really, really nicely marbled piece,
but it does take some cooking,
it's still got a little bit of a chew to it.
This is, definitely shows my Indiana roots,
where it's a lightly grilled piece of toast
and then we've got the brisket that goes over top,
we've got a little Thousand Island dressing
that's infused with wasabi,
and then we've got some Hokkaido uni
that goes on top of that.
So, this is a bone-in rib-eye.
The big significance on this, it's been about a year
since the U.S.D.A. started allowing bones
to come into the U.S. from Japan.
There's very few farms that'll do it
because we're talking roughly a $4,700 piece of meat.
If this Cryovac seal is broken at any time,
when it comes through U.S.D.A.,
the product won't be allowed in,
so it's a risk for both the farms and the packers in Japan.
This has been dry aged for about 50 days,
so we're gonna trim this down a little bit.
You can see it's got
a little bit of bark on it from the age,
particularly on this side,
we like to just skim a little bit of that off
just to open it up, it's not a whole lot.
So you kind of see, as we get through this top layer,
things start to open up a little bit.
There's always a wow factor when you bring this out
and let 'em know what's coming.
We're just gonna season it
with a little bit of salt and pepper and start grilling.
It's great to do, like, this large format stuff
for big groups.
It's kind of an impressive chunk of meat,
so it definitely, it makes, you know,
it makes a statement, for sure.
So we start getting, you can kind of see this, like,
really, really nice crust right outta the gate.
We don't want it to just blow up in flames
or it's gonna be bitter and kind of this kerosene flavor.
So there's a lot of back and forth
and just managing these coals.
It's fun to cook a little bit during service.
We'll go up, hang here,
and just let it cook slowly for the rest of the way,
let this thing do its thing,
and then pull it down and slice it.
Utilizing whole animals and offcuts,
I think wagyu is almost a gateway animal
from that standpoint.
There's a lot of parts of the cow that you can eat,
and a lot of different preparations
that can be done with wagyu versus, say, an American breed.
I think we grind nearly 60% of the animal
in the United States with Angus beef,
whereas there's a lot more focus, particularly in Japan,
on the different cuts and the different textures
that come from things,
there's a different pallet set that's being used.
I think cooking on fire,
it requires an immense amount of skill out of the chefs
and the cooks that do it.
There's a ton of heat management,
not all wood burns the same,
so there's always some variance.
The center of the restaurant is the hearth.
That fire's kind of the soul of the restaurant.
It's got, kind of, a heartbeat.
I think the way that meat interacts with charcoal
and with wood is a very, very special thing.
Most of this animal, you can just grill over fire
and it's delicious, but there's some things
that take a little bit more time and energy.
And I think we're,
that's kind of what this restaurant's all about,
is finding those ways to work with the versatility
and to find nuance in the individual muscles
on each primal that we bring in.
(stringed instrument playing)