Chubby Cattle BBQ – LA

Before it opened multiple Japanese-influenced all-you-can-eat BBQ and shabu shabu restaurants in Orange County, Las Vegas-based Chubby Group built a Southern California following with Los Angeles-area locations of its flagship restaurant Chubby Cattle, including the 2023-vintage Little Tokyo location shown here. Their specialty is wagyu, a famously fatty collection of beef cuts taken from historically coddled Japanese cows. Unsurprisingly, Chubby Cattle’s AYCE meals lean much heavier on American and Australian wagyu meat than traditional Japanese wagyu beef, and even then, with limited access to the Japanese A5 wagyu spotlighted on the company’s website.

Since true Japanese A5 wagyu beef (genetically pure and traditionally raised in Kobe or Kagoshima, Japan) goes for over $150 per pound raw, the fact that Chubby Cattle won’t give you unlimited portions of it – or much of it at all – isn’t a surprise. In Los Angeles, it offers three AYCE tiers ranging from $55 (silver) to $75 (gold) to $85 (diamond), each less than the cost of a pound of raw Japanese wagyu. The decision to serve mostly American wagyu strikes us as entirely reasonable at these prices, so long as it’s disclosed to guests up front.

At Chubby Cattle, once your table selects its meal tier, you use an iPad to order up to five plates per person every five minutes, with a strict 90-minute seating limit per group. Having dined at too many AYCE BBQs to count, we’ve never felt time-pressured before, but that happened twice during our Chubby Cattle meal – once before and once at the 70-minute mark, when the restaurant states it will provide a “last call” warning. Those were exceptions to otherwise very good and fairly quick service during our meal: Individual items arrived within minutes, frequently in space-saving stacks, and everything from emptied plates to used wire grills were proactively replaced without any requests on our part. Basic beverages such as sodas, water, and milk teas are included with meals and fully serve-yourself, as are super-simple churro donut hole desserts.

Silver tier guests have plenty of wagyu and non-wagyu BBQ options to choose from, including six wagyu cuts (ribeye, short rib, otoro, chuck eye, brisket, and knuckle), Spanish ibérico pork, and additional prime angus cuts. Additional non-BBQ wagyu dishes include raw tartare with potato chips, a spicy wagyu hand roll, steamed dumplings, and nigiri sushi, the latter medium rare thin slices with small rice balls underneath.

Gold guests add access to five top-grade, highly marbled fat A5 wagyu meat cuts (short rib, top blade, finger meat, ribeye, and otoro) – limited to six orders per person – plus a non-A5 wagyu steak, unlimited A5 brisket, lamb, scallops, and up to four orders of scallop sashimi and wagyu nigiri items. Diamond has the same items, but guests can order more items at once. As we find A5 wagyu to be too fatty, we don’t seek it out, but others may enjoy these tiers and not mind their higher prices.