B & B Butchers in Fort Worth now has a $120 wagyu sandwich on the menu – and they’re selling like wildfire

B & B Butchers in Fort Worth now has a $120 wagyu sandwich on the menu.

Don’t believe that DFW is the king of steaks in the USA? Check out this new steak item now on the menu at  B & B Butchers in Fort Worth: a $120 prime beef sandwich.

Owner Ben Berg told me over lunch yesterday (I was his guest) that he was inspired by an upscale twist some Japanese and Manhattan chefs are applying to the popular lunchbox pork cutlet sandwich (or “katsu sando,” as it is called in Japan).  But instead of tucking inexpensive pork inside two slices of buttered, toasted white bread slicked with soy-and-mirin based bbq sauce, they’re swapping a thick slab of prime A5 wagyu beef.

Katsu, or “cutlet” in Japanese, refers to meat that’s been pounded thin before being cooked. At B&B Butchers, corporate chef Tommy Elbashary doesn’t pound the rich wagyu ribeye beef for his katsu sando; he simply slices a six-ounce portion of the eye, trims it square, then applies a standard Japanese dredge (flour-egg-panko bread crumb). The beef cutlet then takes a quick sixty-second plunge in the deep fryer to crisp it all up and slightly melt the meat’s luscious marbling.

The $120 sando is constructed with richly marbled A5 Miyazaki ribeye steaks and Japanese pain au lait milk bread, plus housemade katsu sauce. Then Elbasharyhe trims the crusts off the bread and cuts the sandos into into three portions

I expected the thick sando would be too rich for more than a few bites. I was wrong. It was wonderful – and three portions is perfect for sharing.

Berg says the Houston outpost of B&B Butchers sold two dozen of the same wagyu katsu sandos since its intro a week ago. That’s earned it a place on the permanent menus at both the original Houston resto and the year-old Fort Worth branch.

Go check it out.

And for those trying to do the math, here’s the calculus: you can pick up USDA Prime ribeyes for roughly $13 per pound at Costco right now. An insider at a Dallas restaurant says the current wholesale price that restaurants pay for Miyazaka Japanese wagyu beef is about $75 per pound.