Kobe beef

American  

noun

1. meat from the Japanese cattle Kobe cattle, which are specially raised to produce a beef that is highly prized for its extreme tenderness.

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Kobe beef British  

noun

1. Also called: Wagyu.  a grade of beef from cattle raised in Kobe, Japan, which is extremely tender and full-flavoured as a result of the cattle being massaged with sake and fed a special diet including large quantities of beer

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Example Sentences

At Blossom, Wang ordered a dinner worth nearly $2,500 that included shark fin soup, Peking duck and Kobe beef.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 18, 2025

They caught salmon during the day, then feasted on multi-course dinners featuring Kobe beef filet and Alaskan king crab legs, and consumed $1,000 bottles of wine into the evening.

From Salon • Jan. 10, 2025

If you were to list out the chemical composition of organic Kobe beef it would be a superlong list of really long, complicated words that most of us couldn’t pronounce.

From New York Times • Aug. 27, 2021

That’s like shelling out for the Kobe beef and Maine lobster just to get the after-dinner mint.

From Seattle Times • Nov. 2, 2020

Perhaps because it contains some of Japan’s best agricultural land, where super-expensive Kobe beef is raised today, and where Japan’s ancient capital was located at Kyoto until the capital’s shift to Tokyo in 1868.

From "Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies" by Jared M. Diamond