Where's the Beef? At the Met, Apparently

Photo courtesy Mike Urban

See that snap over there? That's a shot of the new Ohmi wagyu tenderloin being served now at the Metropolitan Grill. Looks good, I know. But honestly, that's a picture of the cooked steak, and as pretty as it might be, it just doesn't do the cut justice. You wanna see the real food porn centerfold shot (and find out how to get your hands on some of the rarest, most expensive steak in the United States), you're just going to have to click through the jump and check out the next page.

See? Told you it'd be worth it. That's a raw cut of Ohmi wagyu up there--straight from Japan, straight off the back of some beer-and-barley fed, individually-raised cow which benefited from everything from a special, half-secret and scientific diet to daily massages all in order to produce that amazingly marbled and indescribably smooth, sweet and tender beef.

As to whether or not all that trouble is worth it, you'll have to judge. Currently, the Metropolitan Grill's executive chef, Eric Hellner, is running three different beef programs: American, Japanese and Ohmi, with Ohmi being the crown jewel and coming in at a stiff $100 for six ounces.

Believe it or not, though, that hundo? That's getting off cheap by Ohmi standards. The stuff usually sells for between $30 and $40 an ounce and is currently only available in three other places on the West Coast: the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel, Alexander's steakhouse in Cupertino, California and the French Laundry.

I called Hellner and asked him how he got so lucky as to be one of only about a dozen chefs in the country who get to work with Ohmi and he told me one of those long, looping guy-who-knows-a-guy kind of stories--something to do with his meat supplier (from whom he buys his already pretty awesome A5 Kagoshima wagyu) who works for a company that's owned by a Japanese company that's the only one that imports Ohmi into the U.S.. And I gotta say, Hellner seemed pretty excited about it, too.

"It eats almost like... Like foie gras," he told me. Buttery, fatty, decadent, sweet. "But it's more balanced," he insisted, not all luxury or all fat. Still tastes like cow, in other words. Just like the greatest little bit of cow ever. And since there are so few things these days that honestly qualify as rare in the food world, that lends the Ohmi a touch of the mysterious as well.

Still, Hellner has been running both a six-ounce Ohmi steak and an Ohmi carpaccio appetizer for about a week now, unannounced, and has already started selling a few to those who recognize the name and have bank balances that can take the hit. So if you're one of those, I suggest making your plans now.

Though if I were you, I'd load up on the kitchen's creamed spinach, Yukon Gold potato cakes and asparagus in bearnaise sauce while you're there. After all, good as it might be, six ounces of beef is just not a lot of eating.