house of prime rib
|

House of Prime Rib (San Francisco)

I’m not sure when I visited House of Prime Rib last, but it’s probably been close to two decades (!). Opened in 1950, the restaurant was already an old standby when I grew up, but has certainly solidified its status as an SF institution at this point.

I’d largely been getting my fill of prime rib from Lawry’s in Beverly Hills. The restaurants are very similar in their old English aesthetic; in fact, for a long time, I thought Lawry’s was a copycat of this place (I subsequently learned that Lawry’s predates this place by over 10 years).

yazawa beverly hills
|

Yazawa (Beverly Hills, CA)

Yazawa is a chain of restaurants based in Japan specializing in Japanese wagyu beef. The restaurant group has locations in Singapore and Milan in addition to Japan, but this is their first in America. As the server described it to us, what differentiates Yazawa is that they are also a distributor of wagyu cattle; they butcher their own beef in-house and are not required to freeze their meat before serving. As a result, Yazawa serves the largest variety of wagyu I have seen in America. They have some domestic beef varieties too, as well as some chicken and pork cuts all grilled up at the table. A handful of appetizers and side dishes, many of them featuring wagyu, are available too.

Totoraku – 8/7/10
|

Totoraku – 8/7/10

Some people know Totoraku as the “secret beef restaurant.” Others have no idea what it is. Likely the hardest reservation in Los Angeles, Totoraku is a non-descript “hidden” restaurant serving what many consider the best beef in the city. However, the restaurant does not serve steaks; rather, it specializes in yakiniku – grilled cuts of meat cooked over coals at your table. Given that I’m a beef lover, and that it’s consistently in the top LA restaurants on Yelp, it’s somewhere I’ve wanted to go for a while.