THE BURDEN OF LUXURY
A STEAK THAT DROWNED IN ITS OWN SELF-LOVE
All the best food I’ve ever had fought me a little.
The best food pushed back. It bled if I cut it wrong. It came raw, or rare enough to still remember the field. It had grain, resistance, teeth—meat, not just the echo of it.Subscribe
There are moments in life when one is handed a plate so opulently self-satisfied that it practically winks at you, as if to say, “Go on, peasant—taste transcendence,” and this Kyoto Wagyu Teriyaki was precisely that: a gloriously seared, shamefully marbled lump of bovine aristocracy, so rich it should’ve come with a trust fund and its own monocle, collapsing into the mouth like a fainting duchess draped in butter and silk, while I—poor mortal desiring actual meat—chewed through the experience like a man desperately trying to locate substance beneath a greasy symphony of decadence, wondering all the while whether culinary greatness was truly meant to taste like an oil slick on a velvet sofa, or whether, perhaps, I just wanted a steak that remembered it had once been muscle, not a lifelong spa guest with aspirations of becoming foie gras; in short, it was exquisite, expensive, and utterly unbearable.
This?
This was something else entirely. This was fat. Not the useful kind. Not the kind that crisps at the edge or deepens the flavour. This was indulgence boiled down and jellied into parody. The kind of flesh that melts before your teeth can even ask a question. Wagyu, they call it. Reverently. Like it’s meant to be spoken in italics.
But here’s the truth: I don’t like fat. I don’t fucking want fat. I don’t care if the cow was read bedtime stories and wiped with silk. I’m not here to eat its retirement plan.
This wasn’t steak. It was a lard sculpture. It was butter with a history degree. It was a rich man’s idea of meat—soft, gleaming, self-important. You put it in your mouth and it doesn’t chew. It surrenders. But not like tartare, where the flesh is clean and cold and alive. No. This just collapses. It’s like eating a lump of vaseline that’s been caramelised and glazed.
Yes, it’s expensive. Because everything obscene is. The marbling is obscene. The price is obscene. The worship is obscene. But no one stops to ask whether it’s good. They just assume. Because it costs more than your rent, it must be genius. But taste it—really taste it—and what you’re left with is oil. Slathered, soaked, oozing through every bite like guilt.
There's no bite. No chew. Just a soft slide of fat into silence. You finish one piece and you’re already dreading the second. It’s not richness. It’s punishment wearing luxury’s mask.
And I’ve had the best. I know what good beef tastes like. I know raw that sings like brass and aged cuts that snap with character. This? This was a texture experiment gone mad. Like someone asked, “What if meat was just cream with a nervous system?”
I don’t want my steak to melt. I want it to stand its ground. I want iron and blood and sinew. I want truth. Not mouthfuls of apology disguised as opulence.
So no, I didn’t like it.
I respected the skill.
But I hated the indulgence.
Because the best food?
It makes you feel something.
This just made me feel sick.
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