I kinda figured it was Kobe-styled (crossed with Black Angus) but not true Kobe beef. I might have to get some of this...and that Kurobuta pork.
//RANT//
I know Japanese cuisine is all the rage right now and everyone loves being able to list their favorite chic foods, but it seems like the more people become enamored in the idea of eating something special, the more they forget how simple and pedestrian the origins of their food really are.
As such, Kurobuta pork is nothing more than a Berkshire pig raised in the said prefecture of Japan. Yeah, the Brits have been eating the 'best' pig for centuries! Give something an exotic name and watch it explode in popularity and perceived quality. Actually, if we really want to talk about the best pig, then it would be the Mangalitsa.
Kobe/Wagyu beef. The Grey Goose of the beef world. Seems like a super premium product with a perfect lineage, but alas is a modern concoction produced for a modern and assuming clientele. This whole bit on how Kobe beef comes from cows isolated for thousands of years is a genuine load of BS.
Foremost, red meat wasn't a part of the Japanese diet until the Meiji Restoration (1866) and that change in diet resulted in the mass importation of western cattle into the country. Native cattle bred with western ones in attempts at gaining larger meat yields and long story short - the Wagyu lost it's virginity. It wouldn't be until 1959 that the Japanese decided to create a superior breeding stock out of its native cattle. They found the most inbred/unspoiled cattle they could and after a few generations of back breeding got a cattle that had the characteristics of the traditional wagyu, with the added benefits of european breeds (being larger, more meat).
Kobe beef in all its forms is good, I can't argue with that, though it's not some mythical product unspoiled by man and time with the perfect family lineage. No one was eating fatty wagyu steaks until some guy found out he could make a lot of money selling it as a premium product.