Matū’s Rustic Rib Eye Is Beefy Bliss In Beverly Hills

At Matū, a Beverly Hills steak restaurant that showcases New Zealand grass-fed wagyu, rib eyes are usually trimmed and sliced thin, with the eye and cap separated. But to celebrate its second anniversary, this elegant meatery is going big and more traditional with what it calls the “rustic rib eye.”

“It’s a totally different eating experience,” Mike Odell, one of Matū’s operating founders, said on Tuesday when the restaurant introduced the new steak that will run for four weeks.

The double-cut rib eye, cooked over open fire (a technique Odell has embraced for decades), is sliced thicker with the fat still attached. It’s also slightly more charred on the outside despite the fact that each rustic rib eye is cooked slightly less overall than the other rib eyes at Matū. Chef Scott Linder, who leads the Matū culinary team with fellow operating founder Jerry Greenberg, says R&D involved him eating one of these steaks every day for the last month. And he likes how guests can craft their own perfect bite as they slice into the steak. One enjoyable option is going straight for the nicely charred and fatty end pieces.

The rustic rib eye is available as part of a set dinner menu with 24-hour bone broth, steak tartare, shrimp cocktail and a maitake-topped little gem salad. Or there’s an a la carte option for different sizes of a rustic rib eye.

As always, all the beef Matū serves is sustainably grass-fed wagyu from New Zealand’s First Light Farms. Greenberg, who scoured the world for beef before becoming enamored with this wagyu, is such a proponent of this meat that he became a partner in First Light Farms. He also serves First Light wagyu at some of his other Los Angeles restaurants: HiHo Cheeseburger and pasta specialist Uovo. In addition, First Light has a steak club and sells its beef online and at some grocery stores.

Greenberg and his partners love these steaks because they’re blissfully beefy and deeply marbled but eat lighter than other wagyu and are packed with beneficial Omega-3s. Matū (which its founders think of as a steak restaurant but not as a steakhouse) also uses First Light wagyu for dishes like steak tartare, tenderloin carpaccio, croquetas, picanha skewers, a Thai steak salad, braised beef cheeks and fazzoletti (featuring pasta from Uovo) with braised ragu. There’s also a bar-only cheesesteak that works nicely as a capper to a Matū meat-fest if you’re willing to leave your table and go sit at the bar. There are numerous Matū customers who walk into the restaurant with this exact plan.

That sandwich includes eight ounces of grass-fed wagyu rib eye and sirloin, Cooper Sharp cheese with grilled onions and a roasted long hot pepper on a sesame-seed roll. If you want, you can get a side of housemade potato chips fried in wagyu tallow. The cheesesteak also started as a limited-time-only item but became such a hit that Matū continues to serve it for lunch (the only option at lunch, with many guests visiting multiple times a week to sit at the bar or pick up takeout) and dinner.