“This is as raw as Wagyu” Five years after slipping the most fetishized Japanese meat on the planet into a track produced by Night Skinny, Guè Pequeno has decided to take the next step: transforming Wagyu from a punchline into a burger.
It’s happening at Donburi House, which on April 9th launched the “Guè Burger” in collaboration with the Milanese rapper, available only until September.
Price: 28 euros.
Average reaction from the Milanese food public: “Are we serious?”.
Our reaction: color us curious!
From the bar to the burger: why Guè?
The project was born as part of a broader move by Donburi House, which wants to shift from a simple Japanese food offering to something closer to a contemporary izakaya (which are now popping up in Milan like the "vinelly&piattiny" of a couple of years ago, have you noticed?) where you can eat, drink, listen to music — did someone say Listening Bar? — and spend a Tokyo-style evening with hip hop in the background.
The choice of Guè, in fact, wasn’t just thrown there at random. Japanese culture has been in his imagery for years: Murakami cited in his lyrics, teppanyaki, gyoza, Kobe beef, and a manga-luxury-rap aesthetic that has always been in his vocabulary. Wagyu, from 2021, was practically already a spiritual product placement.
The tasting: ready to be outraged?
And we come to the burger, which is the part that really matters. Because on paper, it seemed like a terrible idea.
Not so much for the 28 euros. We all know Milan’s prices by now.
The problem was something else. Taking a meat as precious as this and transforming it into yet another smashed burger until it becomes a leather sole was perhaps a good idea for TikTok, but less so for the palate.
Fortunately, it didn’t go that way.
The work on the meat
The meat comes from Meat Japan, a historic importer and among the first to bring authentic Japanese wagyu to Italy. There is some technical study behind it by chef Takashi Kido: in this specific patty, two cuts with different marbling are used.
One is richer in intramuscular fat, the kind that gives wagyu its almost buttery and high-gloss texture that seems to melt just by looking at it, and the other is slightly less marbled, chosen to prevent the burger from collapsing during cooking and turning into a (very expensive) puddle of melted fat.
The Donburi House burger stays compact and juicy. No aggressive smash burger crust, no adolescent desire to carbonize everything. And thank goodness for that.
Bun yes, cheddar maybe
The homemade shokupan bread was also very good: soft, slightly sweet, a milky cloud that holds everything together without being an "arrogant brioche-boy" like what happens now in half of Milan’s delivery burgers.
The sauces? Absent. And here, we nodded with respect.
But then he arrives: the cheddar. Lots of cheddar. Too much cheddar.
It’s not bad, it simply covers a part of that fatty and flavorful finesse that wagyu manages to have when treated well. The good news is that from "the booth" (the kitchen) they tell us you can easily ask for it without. And that is exactly the advice we feel like giving. Go, order it without cheddar, and bite into it like you do with emotions.
So, how is this Guè Burger, really?
Under that slightly 2010s-era American cheese, there is a burger thought out better than prejudice might imagine. And it is also quite consistent with Guè Pequeno himself: someone who for twenty years built a character on excess, only to become over time much more precise and sensible than many of his imitators.
A bit like this burger. It looks like a gimmick, then you eat it and realize that someone, at least this time, actually put some thought into it.
