A new slice of luxury

Kurobuta, which is also known as Berkshire pork, means "black pig" in Japanese. The pig is black with six white points: feet, face and switch (the last few inches of the tail). It has shorter muscle fibers and more marbling than what's known in the industry as "bulk commodity pork." The result is meat that, when cooked, is plump and juicy, terrifically rich, with a deep pink color.

Showing up on some of the best menus around town, Kurobuta seems poised to do for pork what heirloom varieties did for the tomato. And it seems destined to become the first designer name in pork.

Spago Beverly Hills chef Lee Hefter first put Kurobuta on his menu two years ago. "It is so flavorful," he says, "it can hold up to whatever cooking style you like: [Chinese] five spice, Italian

Chef Govind Armstrong has been using Kurobuta since he opened his restaurant, Table 8, eight months ago.

Armstrong says that since it is now available, he puts pork on the menu more often than he otherwise would have. Customers who have never heard of Kurobuta order the pork as a novelty and "are blown away by the quality of the meat," he says. Lately, he's been offering Kurobuta pork chops with white bean puree, ham hock jus and salsa verde, served with long-cooked greens. He brines the chops, then sears them in a cast-iron skillet, finishing them in the oven.

Kurobuta may even change the way diners will eat pork, because many chefs, like Armstrong, believe its high quality obviates cooking it to medium-well done, as they would with conventional pork. "Because it's such a clean product," Armstrong says, he likes to cook it medium-rare to medium.

The word that comes up most often to describe the superiority of the product, and the thing that has Los Angeles chefs swooning over the stuff, is fat. "The loin is covered with the perfect amount of snow-white, renderable fat," says chef Troy N. Thompson of Jer-Ne Restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey. "When you sear the pork, you're cooking the fat. So the pork flavor goes right back into the meat." And it's not just roasts that are nice and fat: Even the chops are well marbled.