Ichibo / picanha

イチボ is the sirloin-cap region, toward the hip. In Japanese classification it is part of らんいち ran-ichi, one of the 13 official cuts, which divides into ランプ ranpu as the top sirloin and ichibo as the cap sitting over it.

It is related to the cut sold in Brazilian and increasingly American butchery as picanha, and related is the accurate word rather than identical: the U.S. sirloin region also takes in bottom-sirloin cuts that ran-ichi does not, so the correspondence is approximate at the edges. This is also the far side of the naming problem that catches people out on the loin, where Japanese sarloin turns out to be the U.S. strip loin rather than the U.S. sirloin.

Picanha is traditionally sold and cooked with a thick fat cap left on, and that cap is most of what makes the cut what it is: it renders down and bastes the muscle underneath. How much of it a seller retains varies considerably, and a trimmed ichibo and an untrimmed one are noticeably different products at the same nominal weight.

That matters more for Wagyu than for other beef. A heavily marbled ichibo with a full cap is a great deal of fat by any measure, and some sellers trim it back for exactly that reason. Neither choice is wrong, but you should know which one you are buying.

Ask about retained fat first, then the usual origin and grade. Exact fabrication varies by seller, and the same word covers a range here more than it does on a strip or a ribeye.

If a menu offers both ichibo and picanha it is worth asking whether they are the same item under two names or two different fabrications, because both situations occur.

Cooking it is where the fat cap earns its keep. The traditional picanha method is to cook it fat side toward the heat so the cap renders down through the muscle, which is a different technique from searing a trimmed steak on both sides, and a seller who has trimmed the cap has quietly removed that option. Follow the USDA guidance for whole beef steaks, 145F with a three-minute rest, and give a heavily marbled ichibo more time off the heat than you would a leaner one, because a great deal of rendered fat is still moving in it when it comes off.