A Japanese All-You-Can-Eat Wagyu Barbecue Restaurant’s Coming to an Austin Mall

An American-based Japanese barbecue restaurant chain will be opening its first Austin location next year. Chubby Cattle will be opening its all-you-can-eat wagyu restaurant inside of the Barton Creek Square Mall at 2901 Capital of Texas Highway sometime in 2025.

Chubby Cattle’s Austin location offers three tiers of all-you-can-eat grill-it-yourself meats, emphasizing wagyu meats. Those cuts include rib-eye, short-rib, and even the decadent-sounding wagyu paired with uni and caviar. Then there are other meats like scallops, pork belly, and lamb chops. And then there are other not-barbecued dishes like sushi, hand rolls, dumplings, soups, seafood, vegetables, and fruits.

The tier options are available at different pricing for members of the restaurant group (for use at any location) and non-members. The membership program comes with NFTs and rewards like free birthday meals, discounts, guest passes, and reservations. There are also time-limits for seated service.

The restaurant chain is known for implementing conveyor belt services and robot servers. rounded out by visual projections. The company sources its wagyu from ranches in California and Oregon through partnerships.

Chubby Cattle’s first location — dedicated to hot pot — opened in Las Vegas in 2014 with co-founders Harby Yang and managing partner David Zhao. There are Chubby Cattles also in Denver, Chicago, Southern California, Philadelphia, and Duluth — some of those are dedicated to hot pot or shabu-shabu rather than Japanese barbecue. There’s a location slated for Houston too.

The Chubby parent company also oversees other restaurants. There’s Las Vegas hot pot restaurant X Pot, Los Angeles Japanese steakhouse Niku X, Los Angeles shabu-shabu restaurant Mikiya, and others.

In recent years, Austin’s been getting a spate of all-you-can-eat pan-Asian restaurants and chain expansions. There’s Gangnam Korean BBQ in April 2023, Soupleaf Hot Pot also in April 2023, K Pot Korean BBQ & Hot Pot in January 2024 (with a second one later this year). and Liuyishou Hot Pot sometime later in 2024.

The Austin Chubby Cattle will be found on the second floor near the Nordstrom wing. Expect indoor dine-in services and daytime into evening hours.