Ah, Mondays! I’m sure you’re just like me in that you always wake up 30 minutes before your alarm goes off, bursting with energy at the idea of getting a start on spending the next five days at the office. Or, more accurately, you may be just like me in that you have a tendency to lie in order to cover up just how much you hate Monday mornings.
But when duty calls, you’ve got to go. As you struggle to convince your body to drag itself out of bed, maybe you try to sweeten the deal by promising yourself a tasty dinner as a reward for not just creating your own little three-day weekend by calling in sick. Yeah, you can make it through your shift if you’ve got something to look forward to at the end of it, like maybe some high-grade beef. And why bother cooking at home when Japan is filled with yakiniku (Korean barbeque) restaurants?
Not so fast there, cowboy. It turns out Monday is the worst day to go out to eat yakiniku.
So how exactly does the calendar conspire to crush your carnivorous dreams of succulent beef? Well, in Japan the wholesale markets for meat operate from Monday to Friday, and are closed on Saturday and Sunday. Allowing one day for delivery, this means that if you hit a yakiniku restaurant between Tuesday and Saturday, you’ve got a chance of being served meat that was purchased just the day before.
On the other hand, with the markets closed on Saturday, any meat being served on Sunday was originally purchased on Friday. And since the markets aren’t open on Sunday either, that means on Monday yakiniku restaurants have no choice but to serve meat that was purchased at least three days prior.
In short, there’s zero chance of being served the freshest beef on a Monday. Frankly, this news saddens us. For centuries, the deal has been clear: cows are delicious, and we eat them. We never imagined they would betray our trust like this.
The problem gets compounded if you’re the kind of yakiniku fan who skips the traditional cuts of meat and instead orders organs, which have recently had a surge in popularity with young women in Japan thanks to their low calorie count. Organs’ flavor tends to deteriorate much more quickly than normal meat. In addition, organs go through an additional screening process and usually don’t ship until a day after the meat from the cow they were procured from, meaning an even larger shipping dead zone over the weekend.
Ostensibly, visiting a yakiniku restaurant on any day between Tuesday and Saturday has an equal chance of scoring you the freshest beef. But while there isn’t one best day of the week to eat it on, apparently there is a best season for yakiniku.
Yakiniku aficionados claim the best-tasting meat has the highest fat content, making it juicy and flavorful. Cows tend to retain higher levels of fat in their bodies in winter than in other months in order to keep themselves warm, which in turn improves the flavor of their meat. Incidentally, this is the same phenomenon that gourmets cite as the reason tuna and yellowtail sushi are at their best during the coldest months of the year.
Of course, with summer just getting underway, we don’t have anywhere near the willpower necessary to resist the siren song of yakiniku until winter comes. Tuesday, though? Now that we can manage.
Source: Livedoor