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Food Review: 'Arby's Wagyu Steakhouse Burger'

Wagyu Beef and the promise of a special prep process lead to the question: Is Arby's first Burger a Premium Burger Experience?

By Sean PatrickPublished 2 years ago 4 min read
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My Wagyu Steakhouse Burger from Arby's Purchased May 23rd, 2022.

On Monday, May 23rd, 2022, fast food chain Arby’s debuted their very first hamburger in the chain’s history. Heretofore known for Roast Beef sandwiches and curly fries, Arby’s has entered the high end burger market with their Wagyu Steakhouse Burger. The burger concoction is 52% American Wagyu Beef and 48% simple ground beef. Topped with American Cheese, Lettuce, Tomato, Pickles, Red Onions and Arby’s Special Burger Sauce, it’s a sizable burger. It’s also wildly mediocre.

For the uninitiated, Wagyu Beef is more expensive than your average beef product. It comes from cows that are fed for twice as long as your average cow. It can take three years of feeding cows a specific diet to get the right consistency to turn out Wagyu Beef. It’s all in the marbling, visible layers of intramuscular fat in the cows. This produces a higher level of fatty acids which creates the marbling which creates Wagyu. It’s more expensive because it takes so long to raise, feed, and process the cows.

A Banal Sloppy Mess

That fact makes this banal, sloppy mess of a hamburger even more disappointing. Wagyu is basically a marketing concept for Arby’s and not an indication of effort or care put into the creation of this burger. Arby’s is taking some of the most expensive beef in the world and combining it with your average everyday ground beef and getting a remarkably average hamburger that they are selling for a premium, fast food price. With a drink and curly fries my price was more than $12.00.

Arby’s for their part is making big marketing claims about the burger, the process of preparing it while referring to themselves as ‘meat experts.’ I may not be a meat expert myself but the slightly off bite of my Wagyu Burger could not have been more banal. It had a particular spicy, smoky quality but the meat was mostly unremarkable. Arby’s claims to have spent two years developing the recipe for the rollout of the Wagyu Steak Burger. I didn’t taste much of that research in the boring, oversized burger I was sold.

In fairness, I made the terrible mistake of ordering ranch on my Wagyu Burger. Normally, I am a big fan of ranch. Here however, served on the bottom bun under the burger, the ranch caused the meat to slip and slide all over as I tried to pick it up. I can’t imagine the so-called ‘Special Burger Sauce’ is any different from my ranch experience. Thus, be prepared to try and eat a burger on wheels when you order your Wagyu Steakhouse Burger. Normally a brioche bun is a good move but when you slather this much ranch on something, it’s inevitable that the bun is going to soak up the juice and become a sloppy mess as you spend more time trying to eat it.

Look, I am new to the world of food reviews but I have experience in the restaurant industry. My family has owned restaurants and currently own bar/restaurants in multiple locations. I am not the authority I hope to eventually become. I can only offer you my honest opinion and that honest opinion is that this is just a burger. For all the talk of food science, Sous Vide style preparation involving vacuum sealed bags, and water baths, all things hyped in Arby’s publicity materials, what I was served, what I paid for, was a pretty average burger experience.

It's Nothing Special

The Wagyu to Ground Beef percentages haven’t completely ruined the Wagyu taste, I definitely picked up on it. But it wasn’t anything special as a whole package. You can perhaps blame the location where I purchased the burger and assume they prepared it incorrectly but again, it looked fine. You can see the pictures I took, aside from being squished a little as it was packed into a bag with my fries, it was perfectly intact and I can’t imagine any other location could serve it any better than this location did.

The reality is that Arby’s Steakhouse Wagyu Burger is just an average burger dressed up as some kind of premium burger experience. For the curious, and those to make up their own mind on such things, you have only a couple months to get the Wagyu Steakhouse Burger. The burger will be available from May 23rd, 2022 to July 31st, 2022.

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About the Creator

Sean Patrick

Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.

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Comments (1)

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  • Joshua Luke Johnson2 years ago

    Appreciate this honest review, Sean. The masses must be warned!

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