If it’s wagyu, the answer is everywhere: in upscale supermarkets and on countless menus around town. So, where did this unlikely combination of muscle and ephemera come from?

SOME MACHO DIE-HARDS in the United States are proposing turning March 14 into a holiday for men to provide an antidote to the roses-and-chocolates froufrou of St Valentine’s Day. If “Beefsteak and BJ Day” ever takes off, it will certainly reinforce the notion of chewy, bloody beef as a man’s ideal food.

Where does that put wagyu, the tinkerbell of the bovine world? Wagyu is beef so tender that it doesn’t just melt in the mouth, it disappears. You don’t need a knife, you don’t need a fork, you really don’t even need teeth. “It is all about the fat,” says Dan Segall, executive chef of contemporary Japanese restaurant Zuma.

Wagyu is a traditional beef from Japan, although talk about tradition is slightly misleading: beef is a relative newcomer to the Japanese diet. Wagyu cows have been bred in Japan for just under 150 years, when, for unknown reasons, the largely Buddhist Japanese started craving steak. (Buddhists who eat meat often still have a dislike for eating larger animals or their blood.)

Using their well-known ability to take Western ideas, improve them out of all recognition and brand them as distinctively their own, the Japanese crossbred fi ve Asian breeds of cow with the famed Angus cattle of Scotland, canada and the US. the result is black-haired, large-framed cattle that put weight on easily, can eat grass or grain and have spectacular marbling – lines of fat weaving through the muscle that give the meat its extraordinary fl avor and succulence.

Japanese cattle are slaughtered after 30 months. their diet is determined by what the farmer thinks will help pack on weight and give fl avor. It can include corn, wheat and barley, even fruit or chestnuts. the myth that the cows drink beer and are massaged is just that. Some cows in Japan do get to eat hops left over from the beer brewing process.

In the 1990s, several Australian companies decided to get into the wagyu business by importing 184 cows and some batches of sperm. Australian cattle eat grass for a year and then are moved to feedlots (which could take their name from the fact that the cattle just stand around and feed a lot). the cattle put on 900 grams of weight a day eating a mixture of foods that reads like an eccentric muesli recipe. the complex carbohydrates are downed with 45 liters of water daily. they are slaughtered at the age of 27 months.

How do Japanese and Australian wagyus compare? chefs divide into two schools of thought. One says that Australian beef has the more pronounced flavor but is not quite as tender as the Japanese beef. the other faction thinks the Japanese product wins hands down in both intensity of fl avor and tenderness. Japanese wagyu is more expensive too.

In preparing wagyu, the cooking temperature is crucial. For regular cuts of beef, you can follow the old homage to rareness: “Just whip the horns off and wipe its ass, please.” Wagyu must be cooked to medium rare at a minimum or not enough of the fat will melt. chefs agree that the best cooking treatment for wagyu is the simplest. Sauces are superfl uous.

The standard method in Japan is to cube the wagyu and fry it on a teppanyaki plate,and serve with grated daikon, ginger and salt. Alternatively, thinly sliced wagyu can be used in shabu-shabu.

At Zuma, Segall grills wagyu steaks over hardwood and serves them with two citrus-based sauces, one with an added oomph of chili paste. the citrus balances the fattiness. Segall thinks that wagyu tastes good well done. (Most chefs, faced with a welldone beefsteak, consider it ready for the garbage can.)

Steaks seem to work only in the hands of the highly skilled. chef tin Ka-ming of the Intercontinental Hong Kong’s the Steak House Winebar + Grill serves both Japanese and Australian wagyu in eight, 12 or 16 ounce steaks grilled over charcoal. tin believes Australian wagyu is a good product, but Japanese is excellent. He favors fast cooking.

Ip chi cheung, executive chinese chef at Shang Palace at the Kowloon Shangri-La, has fi ve Australian wagyu dishes in his repertoire, two of them traditional cantonese recipes (beef stir-fried with oyster sauce or asparagus) and three his own.

Ip uses Australian wagyu because he believes diners at his restaurant prefer its slightly firmer texture and more-meaty fl avor. At home, however, he eats Japanese, dipped in soya sauce mixed with wasabi.

Postawski points across the table at Aymen Boughanmi, over the Alaskan crab legs, the mussels and mammoth shrimp, and says: “He’ll send $2 million worth of traffic to my site from Facebook every month.”

Recommended drink pairings
Chef Ip
Iron Buddha tea
Chef Segall
A creamy Chardonnay, a spicy Shiraz or Dom Perignon Champagne
Chef Tin
Cabernet Sauvignon with blackcurrant fl avours, smooth palate and a silky fi nish, or a Shiraz with redcurrant, peppery and spicy fl avours

8 green onions, chopped
3 garlic cloves, chopped
Wagyu beef cut thinly for sukiyaki or shabushabu
Soy sauce
Lemon juice

For the stuffing: Put a little oil in a frying pan and wilt the onions and garlic. Place in a bowl. You can cook teppanyaki-style at the dining table on a propane burner with a flat grill pan, a large frying pan, or a special teppanyaki pan Heat the pan and add a little oil. With chopsticks, place a piece of wagyu on the hot pan and quickly put a teaspoon of the filing in the middle of the slice. Cover the stuffing with one end of the slice and then the other, and turn the entire piece over. Serve each piece immediately when cooked to your liking Dip rolled wagyu in lemon juice mixed with soy sauce to taste