Let me tell you something about America. Only in America can you walk into a $300-a-head steakhouse in sweatpants and think that's fine. Everywhere else on earth — Paris, Tokyo, literally any country with a functioning sense of occasion — you dress for the meal. The meal is the event. You honor it. Steak 48 in Beverly Hills gets this. They have a dress code. I love them for it already before I've eaten a single thing.
We arrived and I immediately pulled a move: I asked to be moved from the smaller private room to the main dining room, the one with the noise and the energy and the people-watching. The hostess did it without blinking. No attitude, no sighing, no making me feel like an inconvenience. In LA, this is a miracle on the level of a parking spot opening up directly in front of where you need to be.
Our waitress was a sweet, no-nonsense woman who gave us real recommendations without trying to upsell us. Every dish she suggested turned out to be the right call. This is rarer than it should be, and I appreciated it.
The vibe inside: dark, loud, and very Beverly Hills. The clientele I would describe as... comfortable. Settled. The kind of people who have stopped trying to impress anyone and are just here to eat steak and be left alone.
Now. The wine. I did something I am not ashamed of: I took a picture of the wine list and asked an AI what I should order based on what I like. It came back with the Les Cadrans de Lassègue '22, a Saint-Émilion from Bordeaux. The AI nailed it. Rich, dark, a little brooding — exactly the kind of wine that belongs next to a 45-day aged ribeye. It also arrived in what I can only describe as a glass designed for a person with much larger hands than mine — the largest wine glass I have ever encountered in the wild. I did not finish it. I, a person who has never not finished a glass of wine, did not finish this glass. I'm giving myself minus points for this. The glass gets plus points for ambition.
Appetizers. We got the crispy shrimp deviled eggs, which were my favorite thing on the table — little pillows of deviled egg topped with battered, glazed shrimp that had absolutely no business being that good. My one note: the shrimp was warm and the eggs were cold, and I would have preferred they met somewhere in the middle. Temperature harmony. It's not a big ask. Still ate every single one.
We also got the tomato salad. Which was a tomato. Cut into four pieces. With salt and pepper on top. For twenty dollars. I need you to understand that I am not being reductive. That is the dish. A tomato. Salt. Pepper. Twenty dollars. It was good — fine, yes, the tomato was a nice tomato — but I will not be ordering it again, and if you order it, I will judge you. Not harshly. But I will judge you. You are paying twenty dollars for something you could do at home in four seconds with a knife and a shaker. The Beverly Hills tax is real and I refuse to pay it twice.
Oh, and the croissant bread they bring everyone. It arrived in a cast-iron skillet looking like the most promising thing I'd seen all night. It was underwhelming. My boyfriend didn't mind it. I minded it. I love bread. I have strong feelings about bread. This bread did not earn my strong feelings. Moving on.
For the main, we shared a 45-day aged ribeye with three sides. The steak was good. But here's my honest problem with ordering steak at a restaurant: I know what a great ribeye costs at a butcher. I know I can cook one at home. The mental math never fully leaves me. The ribeye at Steak 48 was properly aged, properly cooked — technically correct in every way. Was it transcendent? No. Was it worth the price? Debatable. Would I think about it later? Honestly, not that much. Would I think about it more than the corn crème brûlée? Absolutely not.
The corn crème brûlée. I need you to understand what happened to me when I ate this. It is creamed corn, but it has been brûléed on top — caramelized, crackled, sweet and savory and completely deranged in the best possible way. I am going to steal this recipe. I am going to make it for Thanksgiving. I am going to serve it to my family and they are going to ask me where I learned this and I am going to say I invented it. The spinach artichoke was also excellent. The potato gratin was last — and I say this as someone who loves potato gratin. My mom makes a better one at home. I'm sorry, Steak 48. Some things are just true.
Would I go back? Maybe. For a special occasion where someone else is paying, sure. Is it in my top three steakhouses in LA? No. The service was genuinely good, the corn crème brûlée was genuinely great, and everything else was fine — which, at these prices, is not quite the same thing as good. Fine is what you get at a restaurant that knows it doesn't have to try harder. Steak 48 knows exactly what it is, and what it is costs a lot of money for a tomato with salt and pepper.
