The Big Meat Theory: Restaurants are tempting diners with enormous ribeyes and roasts

Food costs may be more jaw-dropping than ever, but hedonism never goes out of style. The latest trend? Big, bodacious hunks of beef, lamb, and pork — slabs so big and spendy that diners have no choice but to share. At Cotogna in Jackson Square, you and your friends can dig into a 2-pound aged T-bone bistecca alla Fiorentina grilled over wood. At Morella, the Argentine-Italian restaurant in the Marina, massive braised bone-in beef short ribs give “Clan of the Cave Bear” energy.

Clifford Pollard, founder of Cream Co. Meats, an Oakland-based wholesale butcher that sells responsibly sourced meats to many of the city’s best restaurants, says the super-sizing constitutes a big shift. “In general, the Bay Area has been more of an off-center-cut type of market, like bistro steaks, hangars, flat irons, skirt steak, coulotte, flat iron — like, the butchers’ hidden secret steaks. We haven’t been a super center-of-the-plate place.” Until now. 

Yes, chefs are looking to beef up the average check, but there’s also the Instagram factor: Big meat likely will elicit a big pic. “Unlike the kind of execution where you’re pulling out tweezers and putting on microgreens, a large-format steak gives you that big wow factor,” says chef Tyler Florence, who knows a thing or two about grabbing attention. “People will pull out their phone and take a picture.”

The ranks of big-ticket, call-your-friends, ready-your-credit-card meat dishes are proliferating. Here are five restaurants that are going hard-core carnivore.

Starting this week, Prelude — the fine-dining downtown restaurant serving up genteel versions of Celtin Hendrickson-Jones’ Southern cooking — is introducing “big cuts,” including steaks cooked over Japanese binchotan and American hardwood charcoal. “I think it fits well with our family-dinner, communal aspect,” the chef says. Choose from a 40-ounce, 30-day dry-aged Niman Ranch ribeye ($295) or a 48-ounce Winter Frost American Wagyu bone-in ribeye ($375), both glazed with beef jus and served with a side of Star Route chard braised with ham hock. Pork lovers can get a three-bone chop ($175), dry-aged, brined, and confitted in aromatic pork fat and finished on the grill with barbecue sauce, served with a ramp pistou.

Go for the pasta, stay for the meat. Delfina, the Mission’s quintessential Cal-Ital destination, is serving bone-in short ribs for two ($86), braised low and slow for seven hours in a bitter and spicy Barolo Chinato (aromatized red wine), then grilled and served with the jus. It’s served with a cardoon-potato gratinata. There’s also bistecca alla Fiorentina ($160), a whopping two pounds of dry-aged prime beef — which is plenty for four, especially if you’re ordering other things.

While it’s not surprising that Tyler Florence’s steakhouse would serve a fat steak, Miller & Lux takes it next-level by serving up a 52-ounce Wagyu tomahawk ($350) from Australian Westholme cattle. “It’s a breed established in the 1940s — one of the purest forms of wagyu outside of Japan,” says Florence. Who orders it? “People closing a deal, maybe an anniversary — or maybe the Golden State Valkyries won again.”

The Presidio’s beautiful eastern Med restaurant has a menu that’s imminently shareable, but the twelve-hour, 12-ounce lamb shoulder ($59) served with keshkek (a wheat porridge), braised chickpeas, and pomegranate jus, with greens from Dalida’s Presidio garden, is something you’re definitely going to want to partner up on. There’s also a 12-ounce, three-week dry-aged New York strip steak ($72) served with ezme (a Turkish roasted tomato-based sauce with pepper paste), char-broiled eggplant baba ganoush, and jus.

Hicham Senhaji (formerly of Michelin-recommended Berber) recently took over the kitchen of this South San Francisco classic, inspired by the Palestinian heritage of longtime owners the Shihadeh family. Senhaji just put a slow-roasted lamb for four ($240) on the menu. Rubbed with ras el hanout and aged butter, the roast comes with charred broccolini, spiced carrots, garlic potatoes, and turmeric rice. It must be ordered 48 hours in advance.