Astons Opens Swish New Steakhouse At Plaza Singapura Offering Wagyu Steak From $18.90
High SES food at low SES prices.
Got high SES taste but have a low SES budget? You can still enjoy wagyu steak at a steakhouse on Orchard Road for… under $20. Yep, you read that right.
The wallet-friendly steaks are served at one-week-old Bizen Okayama Wagyu Steakhouse at Plaza Singapura, housed within a new multi-brand retail and F&B enclave called NomadX. Bizen is opened by Aston Soon, 46, the man behind the eponymous Astons’ chain of casual eateries. His restaurants are popular with Singaporeans for its affordable prices.
While he also runs ang moh-style steakhouses like The Ranch Steakhouse by Astons at Clarke Quay, this is Aston’s first steakhouse dedicated to Japanese wagyu beef.
Prized for its melt-in-your-mouth fat and tenderness, wagyu beef comes from specialised breeds of Japanese beef cattle (‘wagyu’ literally means Japanese cow in Japanese). Its quality is also determined by a complex grading system that includes a marbling score, which is derived from the amount of fat found in the cow’s muscles. The fattiness of the beef determines how rich it will taste.
A5 is generally considered the best marbling score, with the highest amount of fat. “Our wagyu steaks have a marbling score of A3,” Aston tells us. According to our gourmet beef expert colleague, A3 is not exactly the top grade of beef. But hey, you are paying $20, not $200, for a piece of wagyu steak here.
Bizen’s wagyu beef is shipped as whole carcasses once a month from the city of Bizen in Okayama prefecture, Japan. The restaurant is named after it. Unlike Kobe, which is famous for producing wagyu beef, Bizen is better-known for its pottery industry.