A couple of months back, we hosted a night of Australian Wagyu at the Southern Glazer‘s Wine & Spirits Academy in Las Vegas with our mates at Chefs Roll. It’s taken us this long to recover from the festivities, and to realize that that whole thing about “what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” didn’t need to be true. Now we’re ready to have a yarn about it! Three amazingly talented chefs from the Las Vegas area came together to showcase the Aussie Wagyu, and they did us proud! In addition to the photos here, you can get a sense of it from the video here.
Here’s who cooked, and what they served and said:
Chef Gary LaMorte of the Mina Group did a robota-style Wagyu ribeye (marble score 9) three ways: ponzu daikon, fermented Buddha’s hand, and chile yuzu koshu and bonito. He also did a shabu shabu, which was Wagyu beef brisket, gently cooked to order very quickly in a beef tail and mushroom broth, seasoned with a sesame tare, charred scallions and sansho pepper infused clarified beef fat.
“The opportunity to cook with Australian Wagyu Beef was always going to be a very special occasion; we chose both of our preparations to ensure that we were capturing the essence of the beef itself, and not overpowering it.”
- Chef Gary LaMorte , Vice President of the Mina Group
“The Wagyu intercostal is a cut rarely seen or used among chefs. I took it and braised it with red wine and saba (reduced grape must). The strip loin was so beautiful, I decided not to slice it super thin, because the texture was so gorgeous and silky. Then I topped it with maldon flaked sea salt, burrata cheese, burgundy black truffles, tuscan oil and caviar.”
- Chef Luke Palladino, Executive Chef of Clique Hospitality
Chef Roy Villacrusis did some Wagyu Beef Temari-style sushi, where he wrapped the Wagyu beef in furikake-seasoned rice and torched it lightly to keep it close to rare. He served it with some feta cheese and a little bit of broken vinaigrette with yuzu, sweet soy and a little bit of truffle oil. And also a pickled roll of shinko and burdock root. Because, why not!
For his second dish, Chef Roy did a cornet of nori and a Japanese-style tartare, seasoned with kalbi (Korean BBQ-style) and Asian-pear kimchi.
“Using the Australian Wagyu Beef was really amazing. I was almost teary-eyed using it because of how amazing the quality. It makes the job of the chef a lot easier when you start with quality ingredients like that.”
-Chef Roy Villacrusis, Executive Chef at Gajin Asiatic Cuisine.