Brian @ Wongside

As a follow up to my post on Whole Foods and organic food yesterday as well as my article in the Wall Street Journal, I bring you this anecdote:

After my interview with Katy McLaughlin from the WSJ, I was curious as to whether I could find Prime Beef at other establishments. The first place that came to mind was Whole Foods Market. They’re known for their expensive, locally grown, organic food. I figured if I could find an expensive cut of meet like Prime anywhere, it would be there.

So that Saturday I went to Whole Foods and I talked to the butcher. I don’t know if they keep their “second string” butchers on duty on Saturdays, or what was going on, but this guy and his compatriot did not know their meat.  The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hello, I was wondering what grade your meat is.

Butcher 1: What grade?

Me: Yeah, like the USDA grade?

Butcher 1: What do you mean?

Me: Like, Select, Choice, Prime?

Butcher 1: Select Choice or Prime? Hmm…not sure. (Notice he thought “Select Choice” was one kind of meat, not two.)

*Calls to other butcher

Butcher 1: Hey, what USDA grade is our beef? Select Choice or Prime?

*Butcher 2 walks over.

Butcher 2: Well, you have to look at it.

Me: You have to look at it?  What do you mean?

Butcher 2: Well, it’s all based on marbling, so you just have to look at it.

*He picks up a piece of Ribeye (my favorite).

Butcher 2: See, this looks like a piece of Choice. Look at all that marbling.

Me: Oh…uh-huh. (What the heck is he talking about?)

*Butcher 2 picks up another piece of meat.

Butcher 2: And see, this piece looks more like Select.

Me: Got it. Do you ever get Prime?

Butcher 2: Yeah, it depends on what is shipped to us.

*Points to another piece of meat.

Butcher 2: But this piece looks like Prime.

Me: Oh really?

Butcher 2: Yeah. See, we usually only carry Select, Choice and Prime.

Me: Ahh…I see. So if it’s not here, can I special order it?

Butcher 2: Yeah, of course!

Me: OK. Thanks for your time. Bye

I walked away shaking my head. In case you don’t know why, I’d suggest reading my prior post from when I found the Prime beef. It details all the differences.  First of all, I can’t believe the first butcher didn’t know what USDA meat grades were. Unless he’s not from here, which I’d say is highly unlikely, he really can’t call himself a butcher if he doesn’t know about USDA grades.

Second, one can’t just “tell” what USDA grade a piece of meat is. It’s professionally graded by official USDA meat graders. Their job is to look at a beef carcass and determine what grade the entire cow is. It’s not on a steak by steak basis. The entire animal is graded.

Third, unless you’re a maker of processed meat, the only grades of meat available to you are Select, Choice and Prime. Below that, you have Utility, Cutter, and Canner. As this USDA page indicates:

Utility, Cutter, and Canner grades are seldom, if ever, sold at retail but are used instead to make ground beef and processed products.

In other words, it’s inane to claim that you usually have Select, Choice, and Prime if you’re a (theoretically) upscale butcher like Whole Foods. That would be like a geometry teacher claiming “We only cover polygons with more than 3 sides in this class.” Of course you do! Because if a “shape” had less than 3 sides, it wouldn’t be a polygon. Ridiculous!

In any case, I hope you get two takeaways from this:

1. A good laugh. It was pretty funny to me.
2. A lesson that you need to have a good butcher, and a good relationship with said butcher. Beware of butchers who will sell you a $25 ribeye or a $35 filet mignon and have no idea what grade it is.

All you Whole Paycheck Whole Foods  and organic junkies take note: organic food is no better for you than ordinary food. People are spending $48 billion a year to buy organic food that provides no significant difference in nutritional value from any other food. (I’ll refrain from claiming that they’re wasting $48 billion a year because if they didn’t buy organic, they’d still have to spend money on regular food. But given that organic food can cost double what non-organic would, I think it’s fair to say that at least $24 billion is wasted.)

Anyways, I’ve never been a huge believer in buying organic. I’m a pretty thrifty consumer, so I’ll pretty much buy whatever gives me the best value. Usually, that’s not organic food. Historically, if there was an organic piece of food that was on sale for the same price as regular food, I’d buy the organic because of the perceived health benefits (everyone told me it was better), but with this report, I might not even do that any more but for the fact that I know I’d be getting something on the cheap.

This is a good reason not to eat ground beef for a while. There’s been an outbreak of salmonella in Colorado related to ground beef. Apparently, 825,769 lbs were recalled. Yay for steak!

Charlene and I have officially been married for 5 months. Incidentally, that also translates to 150 days. Funny how that works. I guess the 28 days of February combined with a few 31 day months means we’re at an average of 30 day/month exactly.

Anyways, congratulations, Char. We made it this far! Seems like yesterday we were trying to figure out what to have for dinner at the banquet, and dueling it out on the guest list.

Charlene took me out to Red Lobster in celebration of our milestone. It was very delicious. The service was a bit lacking, but I think the server was being overworked and had too many tables to focus on. He seemed like he was running in a thousand different directions at once.

I’m pretty sure I’ve officially decided that I don’t like eating crab from the shell. It’s too messy and time consuming. But I’ll take crab cakes any day. The shrimp, scallops, potatoes, rice, and broccoli were fabulous.

Oh, and those lobster tails they show in the commericals–it’s all marketing–pure and simple–well, maybe not pure but you know what I mean. The ones in the commercial are huge. The ones on the plate were tiny. They made crayfish tails look pretty sizable.

Thanks for dinner!  It was delicious.

I finally bought my grill yesterday. It’s a Master Forge, and it has four main burners with a side burner. Now I’m ready to Grill! It! Up!

Summer at the Wong household can finally commence.

Andy and I are going to assemble it this morning, and we’ll cook dinner on it tonight. I already went shopping at Costco and Safeway for our dinner. We’ve got to inaugurate the grill in style, so I’ll be cooking up the following:

• Grilled Butterflied Chicken
• Tri-tip
• Kielbasa
• Zucchini
• Mushrooms
• Roasted Potatoes

The first five items will be on the grill. The last one will be in the oven, but if I get a little crazy and adventurous, I might try some on the grill as well.

Can’t wait!

Apparently, Yahoo! Finance picked up my steak story from the Wall Street Journal. Now you can read the article in more than one location. haha

Yesterday, I posted that there would be some exciting news coming out, and that it related directly to this blog.

Without further ado, I give you an article about Brian Wong and USDA Prime beef at Costco.

“How in the world!?!” you ask. Again, it all goes to this blog.

So here’s the story:
Read more…

As a follow up to yesterday’s post on the next big steak, here’s another article that details some currently lesser known cuts of beef. When prepared correctly, they can supposedly be quite delicious. I’ve yet to try any of them, but seems worth a try if nothing else.

Yesterday, I posted an article on how marketers are out to “create” the next big steak. But the thought about food marketing grabbed my attention.

I think the other case I’m specifically aware of where the marketers “created” a new food item was with the portobello mushroom. In reality, portobellos are just giant crimini mushrooms. The farmers had no idea what to do with them, so the marketers gave them a new name and sold them as portobellos. Odd, huh?

And in a twist of irony, the marketers did such a good job, and portobellos are so well known now that they must surpass criminis in consumer recongition because you can go into the grocery store today and find “baby bellas” which are supposed to be smaller, immature portobellos. In reality of course, they’re just standard size criminis. Hmm…the irony of it all.

The other interesting one I know of is the Patagonian toothfish. Say what? Likely, you’ve never heard of it, but what if I told you that was the real name of the Chilean Sea Bass?  Yup. Totally marketing. Chilean Sea Bass just sounds delicious and exotic, doesn’t it?

That’s marketing for you.

The Mercury News had a fascinating article on how marketers are in the process of “creating” the next big steak. I put that in quotes because they’re obviously not creating anything. Those cows have been the same for hundreds if not thousands of years, and they’re not growing any new musculature. The marketers are just figuring out new ways of slicing, dicing, and serving beef.

It’s an interesting read with insight into the marketing that goes into the food industry.