When The Rich Lie

I alluded to the things rich people lie about in yesterday’s post. Those of you who, like me, spend more hours than are probably reasonable reading EW.com, Pink is the New Blog, and D-Listed know what I’m talking about. The rich and famous don’t pay for anything – that’s why they’re rich. Instead they wear expensive brands and eat in fancy restaurants and tell the world about how great the “it” thing of the moment is.

Don’t get me wrong -- if Gwen Stefani wants to clothe me in Lamb out of the goodness of her heart, I am more than willing to testify to her personal brilliance and the overall perfection of her clothes. This is how companies sell things to gullible and non-rich people like us. Because deep down, our 12-year-old selves long to be accepted and are willing to buy whatever the cool thing of the moment may be.

Sadly, this means suspicious people like me start to doubt famous people. How can we believe that things are as good as they say they are when Mr. Famous is essentially being paid (through free goods or services) to do so? (An extreme example of this phenomenon is Spencer from “The Hills,” but then who believes him about anything??)

Such was my jaded view prior to my trip to Kobe, Japan. Rich people told us that Kobe beef was all that and a case of chips. They bragged that there was no tastier or more tender cut of beef to be found anywhere on the planet than Kobe beef. They scoffed at the astronomical price tag and said that this massaged and beer bellied cow was better than its less expensive, sober cousins.

This is going to be painful for me to say. *deep breath* The rich people are right!

Hubby and I went to a teppanyaki restaurant in Kobe that received a good write-up in one of our guidebooks. Now, most teppanyaki places are full of showy chefs that create onion volcanoes, throw shrimp into your pocket, and generally put on a floorshow that makes the food taste better. In Kobe, the star of the show isn’t the chef or the fancy food tricks he learned at chef school. In Kobe, the star of the show is the Kobe beef.

Hubby and I each selected a cut of meat (two different “regular” Kobe cuts as opposed to the “super” Kobe which was $40USD more expensive) and settled in for our culinary outing. First, we were introduced to our dinner and asked to inspect the perfect marbling on each cut. No piece of meat went unused as the chef proceeded to tantalize our taste buds and even the fat was finely diced and used to help flavour the fried rice.

To say that the meat was merely tender would be a disservice to the meal we enjoyed that evening. We ate our meal with chopsticks since knives weren’t needed to cut through the lusciously delicate meat.

The couple next to us did order the “super” Kobe, so we asked what the extra $40 tasted like. The girl looked at us and replied sheepishly, “It’s even more tender, if you can imagine.” No, we couldn’t imagine that, but we didn’t care because we were still in a beef induced coma from which we had yet to awake.

The moral of today’s blog isn’t that you can trust rich people to sometimes tell the truth. Nor is it that you shouldn’t be a jaded blogger who doesn’t believe what people tell her. No, today’s lesson is that when faced with the choice between turkey or Kobe beef for Christmas dinner – always vote for the pampered, drunk cow!