Wagyu restaurants in Louisville, Kentucky

Half of Louisville's published Wagyu is documented. Four of its restaurants publish here, two clear the full sourcing standard, and both of those two are steakhouses at the top price tier. Zero hold a licence on the official Kobe Beef Association registry and zero carry a Certified Kobe badge, so each reaches the standard by documenting where its beef came from. The two remaining published venues sit at opposite ends of the price range: a downtown oak-fired steakhouse whose own menu description names Hot Stone Wagyu without saying anything more about the beef, and a taco and bourbon room on Baxter Avenue whose menu lists a Wagyu taco as American and stops there.

One is a top-tier listing documenting Japanese A5 by brand rather than by prefecture, which is a step finer than most steakhouse menus manage: a prefecture narrows the beef to a region, a brand narrows it to a programme. The other names its American supplier alongside Japanese A5, so both sides of its menu are traceable.

One absence is worth noting, since this is a Kentucky page. Black Hawk Farms at Princeton, in the west of the state, breeds and finishes its own American Wagyu on a five-hundred-day feeding programme against an industry average of about a hundred and eighty, and it is listed on this site. Its beef reaches chefs around the country and turns up by name on menus in Denver, Detroit, Philadelphia and outside Boston. Neither Louisville room names it.

That is not a criticism of either. It is a reminder that proximity does not create a supply relationship, and that the best-documented in-state producer is often easier to eat in another city than at home.