J. Morten's

J. Morten's is a walk-in specialty market at St. Louis Park, minutes from Minneapolis, and its Japanese case names where the beef came from rather than only how it graded. Ribeye and New York strip come typically from Miyazaki, with Kagoshima, Hokkaido and Kagawa also carried.

Naming four prefectures at a single counter is unusual anywhere and close to unheard of away from the coasts. It also changes what a customer can ask for: not just A5, which is a wide band, but a specific region with its own programme and its own character.

The Kagawa line is the one to plan around. Olive Wagyu comes from Shodoshima island, where cattle are finished on the pressed residue left after olive oil is made, and it is produced in tiny quantities even by Japanese standards. This shop gets a New York strip of it a handful of times a year.

That is worth knowing rather than discovering. Japanese stock rotates here generally, and the olive cut in particular is not something to drive across the Twin Cities for on spec. Call the counter and ask what is in this week, which is the correct way to buy from a rotating case anywhere.

The Australian side is standing rather than rotating and is named to its producers, with marbling scores printed against individual cuts. Producer plus score is the full disclosure for Australian beef and most shops give neither.

The shop displays an official Japanese certificate of authenticity showing lineage, carcass number and grading. What it does not say anywhere is that a copy travels home with your order.

That distinction is worth a question at the counter, because the two are genuinely different. A certificate on the wall proves the shop received documented beef; a certificate in your bag lets you look the animal up. This listing sits one sentence short of the top tier for precisely that reason, and the sentence is one the shop is very likely able to say.