Best Steakhouses in Los Angeles 2026

Puck and Lee Hefter opened CUT in the Beverly Wilshire in 2006 and built a glass-walled dry-aging locker into the kitchen wall — guests passing the line see the cuts hanging at 35 days, 45 days, 60 days, the Japanese A5 in its own zone behind tempered glass. The bone-in ribeye is the order; the A5 flight is the experiment. Richard Meier designed the room — white leather banquettes, white-oak floors, a clean modernist counterpoint to every red-leather steakhouse in town. The wine list is California-deep with a serious Bordeaux section. Service is the most polished steakhouse service in Los Angeles, which is why expense accounts default here. The Michelin star has appeared and disappeared on the Beverly Wilshire room across editions; the cooking is consistent regardless.

Mastro's Scottsdale opened in 1999 and the Beverly Hills location landed on Canon Drive in 2008. The piano lounge — live nightly, mid-tempo standards — and the dual-tier room layout do the actual work: agents on the ground floor, principals in the Penthouse. The on-the-bone cuts arrive on 400-degree plates with a sizzling rim of butter; the seafood tower stacks two-foot tall at the table. The wine list is fine without being interesting, which is the right call for a room where the conversation is the menu. Tuesday and Wednesday after 8:00 PM are working nights — Sundays are quiet to the point of empty. The valet line is the longest in Beverly Hills outside of Spago.

Lang spent a decade in New York running Daisy May's and writing serious barbecue cookbooks before opening APL on Vine Street in 2017. The kitchen is wood-only — Texas post-oak in the grill, a wood-fired hearth for finishing — and the dry-age locker holds cuts to 60 days. The 28oz tomahawk for two is the order, finished over flame with a brown-butter baste; the bone-in ribeye works for a single diner. Lang's cocktail program — bourbon-forward, properly chilled, served on rocks that do not melt within ten minutes — is the best in any LA steakhouse. The bar is the right seat for a solo diner; the booths at the back are the right seat for a date. The room is dark, lit by candles and the orange glow of the grill, and the music is mid-range — present but not loud.

Wolfgang Zwiener spent forty years as a head waiter at Peter Luger in Brooklyn, then opened his own steakhouse in Manhattan in 2004; the LA outpost on Cañon Drive followed in 2007. The format is the Luger template — porterhouse for two, three, or four, broiler-finished, brought to the table on a 500-degree platter and tilted so the juices run to one end. The thick-cut bacon slab is the appetizer that has been on the menu since the New York opening. The wine list is shorter than Mastro's, the room is plainer, the cooking is the more disciplined. Zwiener understood broiler steakhouse cooking better than almost anyone in his New York generation; that program ships intact to LA. Not as glossy as CUT, not as showy as Mastro's, but the porterhouse is the most reliable on the list.

Joachim Splichal's Patina group opened Nick + Stef's in 1997 inside the Wells Fargo Center on Hope Street, when downtown was still empty after 7:00 PM. The dry-aging cabinet sits glass-fronted at the back of the dining room — the room is built around the cuts. Service is fast for a downtown business lunch and slows respectably for a dinner. The bone-in ribeye is the order; the tomahawk is theatre but worth ordering once. The wine list is California-strong with a fair burgundy section, and the bar pour on bourbon is generous in a way LA has stopped doing elsewhere. Nick + Stef's is not the destination room of the list — it is the working dinner room that handles a four-lawyer Tuesday at 7:00 PM without theatre.

Pacific Dining Car opened in 1921 as a converted railroad dining car on Sixth Street — the original was in Westlake and ran 24 hours for nearly a century before the pandemic closed it. The Santa Monica location on Wilshire Boulevard remains the spiritual continuation: dark wood, brass rails, white linen, the same filet mignon and broiled steak menu that has barely moved since the Truman years. The 24-hour service was the calling card — politicians, studio veterans, late-shift police, post-club crowds all funneling through the same room at the same booths at 3:00 AM. The Santa Monica room's late-night hours have moved with the times; confirm them when you book. The Westlake original's status remains uncertain — call before you drive. For a serious diner, the filet mignon, an old-fashioned, and the room itself are the meal. The cooking is competent rather than transcendent; the experience is the order.

John Taylor opened the original on Eighth Street in 1953 and the room has been a Koreatown survivor through every demographic shift the neighborhood has had since. The booths are red vinyl, the lighting is dim, the relish tray arrives free with every cover — pickled vegetables, cottage cheese, kalamata olives. The culotte steak (the top sirloin cap, fan-cut, charcoal-broiled) is the menu signature; the New York strip and filet both come from the same broiler. The wine list is short and unambitious; the cocktails are pre-mixed and stiff. Studio veterans still eat at the front booths. The room reads as a vanishing piece of LA dining and the cooking is consistent — go for the experience, not because the steak beats CUT.

Damon Mediavilla opened the original on Brand Boulevard in 1937 and the room — bamboo, hula girls on the walls, a tiki bar at the front — has barely been touched in eighty-nine years. The menu is shorter and more honest than the room suggests: top sirloin, New York strip, filet, lamb chops, lobster, all broiled and served with the same baked potato and creamed spinach combinations as the Eisenhower years. The mai tais and zombies are the real reason younger diners book — the tiki cocktail program runs through fresh-squeezed citrus and a serious rum back bar. The cooking is competent rather than ambitious; the value is the room. Glendale is not a destination for serious steakhouse cooking in 2026 — go to Damon's for the tiki-and-steak time capsule and a thirty-five-dollar sirloin.