2023-10-04 09:38:17
If Hiroki Ito dies, he will not have achieved his life’s goal. He will not have bred the definitive Wagyu cattle, the cow of all cows, the perfect animal that nothing and no one can improve on. But he will have come very close to his goal, because now only nuances separate this restless perfectionist from the ideal state: Hiroki Ito is considered in his homeland as the best of the best among cattle breeders, as the king in the miraculous kingdom of Matsusaka, as the guardian of the carnivorous Grail, whose animals give die-hard gourmets the most precious, sought-after, finest meat, the pinnacle of all pleasures that until now could only be climbed in Japan – and now, for the first time ever, outside the country, in three restaurants in Paris, Barcelona and Madrid .
The heavenly kingdom of gourmets
In Japan, Wagyu is not a matter of butchers and butchers, but a religion with canonical quality hierarchies as immovable as Mosaic tablets of the law. The third best beef is Omi, the second best is Kobe and the very best is Matsusaka from Mie Prefecture, southeast of Osaka. Only 2,500 Matsusaka cows are slaughtered each year, which are allowed to grow for 30 to 32 months, longer than their Omi and Kobe siblings, and, as the most reliable indicator of tenderness, have a melting point of 17 degrees Celsius, as opposed to the 20 and 25 degrees respectively two other varieties. But all of this is far exceeded by Hiroki Ito: His farm is the only one in Japan whose meat is classified as 90 percent with the highest quality level A 5 – which only one percent of all Japanese Wagyu achieves – and whose range almost entirely has the title of nobility BMS 10+ carries: The “Beef Marble Standard”, which indicates the degree of marbling of the meat, is rated from zero to twelve, and everything beyond ten is the kingdom of heaven for Japanese gourmets, including the emperor, whose purveyor to the court is of course none other than Hiroki Ito can be – the man who won the big Matsusaka Championship three times in a row and was then politely asked not to take part anymore so that the other breeders also have a chance.
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