Recently I have been seeing a lot more kobe beef hamburgers on many restaurant menus. Tommy Bahama - Lone Star Kobe Burger Kobe beef on ciabatta bun, red leaf lettuce, olive tomato and onion salsa, mozzarella, French fries
Cheesecake factory -KOBE BURGER American Kobe Beef with Sauteed Mushrooms and Onions on a Toasted Brioche Bun. Served with Fries You might wonder.. what IS a kobe burger? To answer this, you have to answer two questions. How does the meat grading system work, and what cut of meat is the cow? Grading system: Generally speaking, you could say the informal grading system is as follows: - select
- choice
- prime
- wagyu
- kobe
If you ever go to the market and buy meat, you will notice there is a classification of 'select', 'choice', or 'prime'. This refers to an unofficial grading system of indicating marbling in the meat (I think this rating system is way whacked, but let's leave that for another post). Marbling means how fatty the cow cut is. For example take a look at this picture of kobe beef:  As you see here this white stuff is the fat. And the logic behind the usda system is the more fat it is has, the better ranked this is. The last two rankings, wagyu and kobe are terms which really aren't used too much. Think of wagyu as beef which has even more fat than prime, and kobe having the most. If you look up the wikipedia entry for kobe beef, it describes kobe beef as originally coming from Japan. So the kobe beef you are eating at these restaurants.... - most likely isn't coming from Japan
- most likely grown in the US from Texas
- is "kobe-style"
I do think marbled beef is good, but my main issue here is restaurants are marking up the price for these dishes just for the name. Secondly, take a look at this picture.  So this hamburger you are eating.. which part of the cow is it coming from? The answer is ALL. Ground beef is a funny thing because it is beef which is ground up from whatever leftovers of cuts not used. So if you have a cow carcasses, you can get a certain number of steaks and roasts from it, but inevitably there will be some leftovers. These leftovers are ground up, and you get ground beef. I can see the point of getting like a kobe chuck steak, but if you grind everything up, you basically just get a fatty hamburger. For these reasons, I think the price markups of kobe burgers are totally not justified. Just say NO to kobe. Or at least say no to paying higher prices for it.
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