Is London’s New £760 Steak Worth It?
At Aragawa the new outpost of the rarified Tokyo restaurant, the meat is unlike any steakhouse offerings you’ll find.
If there’s a pricey Japanese food that grabs headlines, it’s sushi. In New York, menus featuring exquisite raw fish now routinely hit $500 per person (and at Michelin three-starred Masa from Masayoshi Takayama, prices start at $750). The cult of expensive sushi is spreading to London: at Takayama’s just-opened outpost in Harrods, Sushi by Masa, a toro caviar roll is on the menu for £198 ($241), while the omakase menu in the new Sushi Kanesaka at 45 Park Lane in Mayfair will set diners back £420.
But at Aragawa, another new, elite Japanese dining room in Mayfair, the eye-opening prices are not for seafood but beef. It’s the first overseas location of the famed Kobe and Tokyo restaurants, founded in 1956 and 1967 respectively. Aragawa specializes in steaks cut from the super-premium Tajima strain of black wagyu cattle. Steak prices start at £500 and hit £900 for about 400 grams (about 14 ounces) of beef.