One taste of wagyu transformed Sam Chua’s life. The co-founder of wagyu fine-dining haven Black Cow came to savour beef relatively late in life – on a trip to Tokyo in her 20s. There, at the century-old Ningyocho Imahan, she had her first-ever taste of wagyu in sukiyaki and shabu-shabu. It was a ‘transcendental experience’, she says – but one.