Dean Banks is the chef/proprietor at HAAR Restaurant in St. Andrews.  During the Pandemic he formed a company called HAAR at Home to provide make-aways nation-wide, and I enjoyed (8.5/10 score) what I received.  Then I discovered Dean had started another company called Waagyu Burger, to offer nationwide delivery of quality beef burgers made with Wagyu.  Its took me a while to suss the company’s name had an extra ‘a’ in Wagyu!  Now I’m a pedant when it comes to Wagyu. First off ‘wagyu’ means “Japanese beef” in Japanese, so I’m amused by restaurant menus which refer to ‘wagyu beef’ because effectively they’re using the word ‘beef’ twice!  Then there’s the question of where the Japanese beef comes from – in UK it’s very rare for the beef to come from Japan, instead coming frozen from Australia or fresh from Wales, plus other nations do not spend the time and expense on raising their cattle the way some Japanese farmers do, and the quality and flavour is just not the same.  For that reason I very rarely buy wagyu in restaurants because I don’t tend to find the extra expense above British beef to be worth it.  But this make-away from Waagyu Burger tempted me and I ordered one for £36.95, which included a £10 off voucher code.  For that I got 4 beef patties, which would make two meals for me and Mr A, so I was happy with the value for money.

The delivery box arrived on schedule, and was of course smaller than the multi-course boxes I usually get. But inside all the items were just as professionally and helpfully packed and labelled, and there was a simple card of cooking instructions.  All I had to do was pan fry the wagyu patties for 2 minutes each side, then pop them into an oven for 10 minutes. At the same time I fried off some streaky bacon in the burger pan.  There were 4 cheddar cheese slices for melting on top of the patties, but I found these hadn’t been well packed, and each slice stuck to another and I ended up scattering crumbs of the cheese over my burgers.  But at least it was ‘real’ cheese, not the plastic nonsense normally put on top of burgers.  They provided what they called “Waagyu sauce”, which I found had a very interesting, smokey flavour, and tasted like some beef fat was in it.  Even a little gem lettuce came in the box, ‘artisan’ sesame brioche buns and a small tub of crispy shallots.

I found the resulting burger quite enjoyable, but a little rich for my on-chemo appetite. I suspect this was because of the extra animal fat from the bacon (and I mistakenly used all the bacon in just 2 burgers), but maybe also because the burger lacked fresh tomato or onions, or an element of acidity.   I scored it 7/10

The next day I made the second pair of wagyu burgers, this time without bacon, but with added vinaigrette on the lettuce and some red onion marmalade.  I preferred this one, as it was less fatty. 8/10

This burger kit was pretty good, but I couldn’t tell you the Japanese cattle had made a taste difference!  But the patty was made from good tender meat, and it held together well in the frying pan.