And handcrafted steaks, straight from the skilled (though sticky) fingers of Chef Phil A. Minyoung!
(sorry bout the obnoxious music)
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out-and-out lies, like calling boxed Quaker Harvest Crunch granola “organic granola”
That’s no lie! That’s taking back a tragically misused, abused word.
ALL granola is organic.
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That’s made of fresh baby I hope.
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Steamed Hams as they call them in Albany.
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Yeah, that struck me right there as an indicator they’re scamming the customers.
Whyyyyyy?
It had nothing to do with the beef, though. There’s two things about “Wagyu” beef: First of all, in the US, it’s totally meaningless - it may indicate something about the distant heredity of the cattle, but probably not even that. Second, in Japan, real Kobe Wagyu beef is from carefully bred and treated cattle with a particular quality and marbling of fat, which would be destroyed by grinding even if it were from the right kind of beef (which in the US it isn’t). Int he US, calling it “wagyu/Kobe beef” is their way of using regularly old crappy (i.e. not even grass-fed, which would be more expensive but also actually different) beef while charging at least twice as much.
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Indeed. There are real “baby” carrots. And then there is marketing genius. Just as DeBeers created the “tennis bracelet” as a way to offload small Russian diamonds in quantity, ground down “baby-cut” carrots were created as a way to sell cull carrots at a high mark up.
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Eh, I’ve been through that debate before. It’s as bad as the champage debate or the terroir debates.
I’ve had “real” wagyu (Kobe, which has a regional restriction, and certain criteria I’m too lazy to list). I’ve had what you would call hybrid. I’ve had American wagyu. It all fuckin’ tastes the same, and it is a crime to make a burger out of it. 
Ketchup and mayo on wagyu? I can personally attest to the fact I got played.
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I wanted to see if there was any discernable difference. There. Was. Not. Could have been regular 8% chuck.
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It would be a mistake to think this is the exception. Most restaurant menus that make specific claims are lies, there was just a whistleblower here.
Claims of local meat or produce are especially tenuous. I’d swear there was an article on BB not long ago about this, and one grower lamenting there were six places in town claiming to be using his produce but he was losing money because nobody was actually buying his stuff regularly (or at all).
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So, uhm, are gift certificates to Azure available in the BB store, for a discount? Asking for a friend.
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Which reminds me of this:
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agreed.
They sell those as astroturfed (the machine formed patties with the holes in them) frozen burgers in our frozen food section in boxes of a dozen for $15. They are really bad like all premade frozen patties. What’s next cornish game hen nuggets?
yeah, i was curious as well…then sad…
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…
I’ll be right back, need to go find a grinder, some breading, a few hens, and some oil.
Oh, and honey mustard, to make sure I can taste nothing else.
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I’ve had the real deal and Texas grass fed Wagyu, the difference in indistinguishable even raw.
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really? i love grass fed beef, but that gives beef a beefier flavor, whereas regular wagyu is fed a very specific diet to increase marbleization and fat content and create a less beefy more mild flavor. what did it taste like raw? did you use them for steak tartar?
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Which reminds me of the item on QI concerning why Giant Tortoises didn’t get a scientific name for decades because they couldn’t get one back to London to be catagorised because they were so delicious that every example they captured got eaten on the way home.
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I like grinding up well-marbled quality beef for burgers. The grinding and mixing process distributes the nice fat throughout the burger, so if cooked properly the juiciness and flavor permeates the burger. Of course, if you’re just going to pop the patty into your Popeil Burger Buddy (or the momentum machine) for cooking, then all bets are off.
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Maybe enough to make Bill Koch cry.
It all just sounds like late-stage capitalism, which, I gather, is just another way of saying “Christ, what an asshole!” (or perhaps “Christ, what assholes!” when referring to the management of this restaurant and hotel).
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