Wagyu restaurants in Rancho Mirage, California

Rancho Mirage is a desert resort town of about eighteen thousand people with two published Wagyu restaurants, and both are verified. Zero sit in the menu-only tail, both price in the top tier, and one carries the Certified Kobe badge.

That badge is a conjunction and worth spelling out: the room holds a licence on the official Kobe Beef Association registry, which is standing permission to buy genuine Kobe, and Kobe was on the menu we verified. Both halves are required here, because licensed rooms all over the country were serving other prefectures when we last read them, and a licence on its own says nothing about what is available tonight.

The second room documents Japanese A5 and names an Australian producer, and sells by the ounce, which is the format that makes a graded cut orderable rather than aspirational. Tenderloin is the named cut at both, which is unusual: most Wagyu menus lead with ribeye or striploin, because those carry more intramuscular fat and are what the breed is famous for. Tenderloin is the leanest of the premium cuts, so a Wagyu tenderloin is a subtler proposition than the same grade in a ribeye.

This is a small, expensive, and entirely documented list. There is no cheaper entry point and no Japanese room, which is what a resort town's dining scene tends to produce.