- 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)
