It’s Wagyu Week. That means over-the-top restaurant specials — and free samples.

In 2023, I reported on Philly (and every American city, basically) being flush with phony wagyu beef — and on a Philadelphian preaching the gospel of true Japanese Wagyu. Tokyo native and Temple grad Nan Sato started her business, Wagyu Sommelier, to educate cooks and consumers about Japanese Wagyu.

In the past two years, Wagyu Sommelier has imported about 25 whole animals, giving American chefs a chance to work with secondary and tertiary Wagyu cuts that are otherwise hard to come by stateside. The company works with distributors in the Philly and D.C. area, selling to restaurants like June BYOB and Kampar, and is eyeing expansion to Chicago. (I joined a trip to Japan with Wagyu Sommelier and several Philly chefs last year.) Sato’s hope is that chefs and restaurants of all stripes — not just steakhouses and Japanese concepts — will embrace Wagyu as a versatile luxury ingredient.

That’s where the importer’s Wagyu Week (or, really, two weeks), from Jan. 23 to Feb. 7, comes in. Nine area restaurants — and two high-end retailers — received rare cuts of A5, the most richly marbled beef, from Japan’s Iwate prefecture to serve up in unexpected ways.

Experimentation is already underway at El Chingón, where chef-owner Carlos Aparicio speared a hunk of Wagyu shoulder on the trompo and roasted it al pastor style. “The meat turned out really amazing,” he said. Some he shaved into red adobo tortillas for tacos, and the rest he laid over Wagyu-fat tamalitos dolloped with chile cascabel aioli and cilantro macho. For another dish, Aparicio crusted a cut of Wagyu top round with pastrami seasonings, piloncillo sugar, ancho chili, and avocado leaf, cured it for 72 hours, then served it as carpaccio-thin slices alongside Chihuahua cheese-crusted sourdough tortillas. Finally he prepared a mar y tierra of Wagyu short rib steak and langoustines with a mustard seed salsa macha and squid ink corn tortillas.

Aparicio’s looking forward to riffing on more specials, but acknowledges the Wagyu dishes are pricier than his normal offerings — last weekend’s Wagyu dishes were part of a three-course $100 menu. Still, he appreciates the opportunity to work with a new ingredient and thinks customers do, too. “People get attracted to try and experience something completely different than what we usually serve,” he said.

Wagyu has its skeptics (including Craig LaBan) and its converts. Altomonte’s COO Vincent Grispino is among the latter. When he tried Sato’s supply, the melt-in-your-mouth richness of the beef flashed him back to childhood: Grispino was a picky eater and would only eat the fat from a steak. “I personally could survive on just eating Wagyu,” he says. “The way the animals are handled and what they’re fed — you are what you eat eats — that’s a big part of it."

One of the area’s long-running gourmet Italian markets, Altomonte’s is one of two retailers to get cut into Wagyu Week — and free samples are part of the deal. (Di Bruno Bros. locations in Wayne, Ardmore, and Rittenhouse will also have Wagyu to buy and sample from Feb. 1 through Feb. 28.) Grispino says his family’s stores in Warminster and Doylestown will serve slices of Wagyu at select times. “All you need to do is grill it, add a little bit of salt,” he says. “The flavor speaks for itself.”

Altomonte’s will also have some prepackaged Wagyu cuts for sale, including top round, sirloin, and chuck. “We’ll also have some sliced for making cheesesteaks,” Grispino said. “If you’ve never had a Wagyu cheesesteak, that’s an experience in itself.”

None of the participants in Wagyu Week have committed to making a cheesesteak (yet — Barclay Prime, which makes a wagyu cheesesteak with meat from a different supplier, is partaking in Wagyu Week; its dish is TBD). But you can get close or, arguably, better. Philadelphia deli darling Liberty Kitchen plans to use the Wagyu shank they received in a roast beef sandwich, according to co-owner Matt Budenstein.

“It’s Anthony Bourdain’s beef bourguignon recipe, but we use Two Locals beer instead of the red wine,” he said. (Besides its Fishtown location, Liberty Kitchen is the in-house food vendor for Two Local’s West Philly brewery.) The beer-braised beef will be topped with homemade giardiniera, provolone, and garlic aioli and served on a seeded kaiser roll with a side of au jus. The sandwich will go for $20 — only a couple bucks more than its insanely popular kale caesar cutlet sandwich.

“The nice thing about this Wagyu Week is all the restaurants are making it pretty accessible. You’re able to try some Wagyu for not very exorbitant prices,” Budenstein said. “It’s not really meant to be everyday meat. In Japan, it’s not everyday meat. It’s really just for celebratory purposes. ... It’s like champagne.”

Iwate Wagyu Week will run Jan. 23 through Feb. 7 at the following restaurants: LaCroix, Royal Boucherie, El Chingón, Liberty Kitchen, Kampar, Morimoto, Barclay Prime, Cornerstone Bistro in Wayne and Hook & Ladder in Conshohocken. Check their respective Instagram pages for details. Altomonte’s in Warminster and Doylestown as well as Di Bruno Bros. in Rittenhouse, Ardmore, and Wayne will have free samples and prepackaged cuts of Wagyu available at select times from Feb. 1 through Feb. 28.