[Photo provided to China Daily]

At the same time, the internal temperature of the core of the meat after cooking should be somewhere between 56 C and 58 C.

The meat is served in slices, with rock salt or fresh wasabi as the dipping sauce. As I bit, I was taken aback by how fine the texture was, exceeding any wagyu steaks I had had before. The flesh was extraordinarily tender, melting on the tongue in a velvety rather than greasy way and delighting the taste buds. It was so juicy as to be mouth-filling, bursting with full-bodied delectable fattiness.

If you have a lot of the binchotan seared wagyu in thick slices by themselves you may find it all rather rich and fatty.

Balance the beefy flavor with rice. For a sukiyaki donburi, Takashi cuts a paper-thin slice of wagyu of about 2 mm and cooks it in a traditional Japanese way using suet to grease the sukiyaki pot first, and dipping in raw egg before serving.

Apart from wagyu, the chawanmushi (Japanese steamed egg custard) with foie gras and St. George's Mushrooms salad were also delightful.