At first look, The Hyun does not appear as if an everyday butcher store. Maybe extra like a wonderful jewellery store or designer purse retail retailer. However these glossy interiors, organized with glass instances and brushed metals, showcase one thing much more scrumptious — premium Japanese wagyu beef. 

The Hyun, the primary butcher store within the nation to promote wagyu, is a retail undertaking by chef Jae Kim, proprietor of the close by Korean barbecue restaurant HYUN in Manhattan’s Koreatown. Slightly below the meat atelier is a 2,000-square-foot butchering basement, dwelling to an in-house operation that provides premium cuts for retail, wholesale, and e-commerce for individuals who need to order from a distance. (Whereas many different outlets across the nation promote wagyu, The Hyun says it is the primary spot to butcher it in-house.)

“The thought for a butcher store stems from a mix of cultural custom and private ardour,” Kim, who can also be the store’s head butcher, says. “As I honed my abilities in butchery, I started to see it as an artwork type, striving to respect the pure qualities of the cattle whereas discovering new cuts. My purpose was to introduce this meticulous and creative method to butchery in the US, creating an area that appears like a museum, the place every lower tells its personal story.” 

At The Hyun, Kim needs to lure clients sometimes skeptical of butcher outlets, which, properly, tends to remind people that we’re very a lot consuming animals. To ease the expertise, Kim has added all these high-end decor touches to higher showoff the greater than 50 cuts of beef obtainable for buy, together with filet mignon, chateaubriand, chuck flap tail, culotte head, sirloin butt, brief rib, brisket, shank, and offal. Cuts are chosen with the assistance of a specialist and packaged in a picket field. If the shopper buys a field of three or six cuts, they’re wrapped in Bojagi, a colourful silk cloth Korean present wrap, then adorned with tassels. It is a far cry from plain previous butcher paper. The meats are then sealed within the store’s proprietary vacuum system, which retains the product recent for as much as three weeks. Step-by-step guides are additionally obtainable to assist buyers put together their premium merchandise at dwelling. 

After all, this delicate packaging is simply the ultimate step of an arduous course of, which begins with delivery in boneless wagyu cattle from numerous prefectures all through Japan. With surgical precision and specialised knives, Japanese butchers debone the cattle, separating the flesh into a complete boneless beef, which is then frozen and flown to the U.S., the place it’s quarantined by customs. The meat arrives at The Hyun’s underground butchering facility in a couple of week. The method is tedious and costly, which is why Kim suspects he’s the primary to open a premium butcher store devoted to wagyu. 

The Hyun is situated at 253 Third Avenue in New York. Merchandise can be found for supply in NYC by way of Mercato, Uber Eats, and Instacart. The Hyun can even quickly ship nationwide by way of thehyun.com.