Our Story
National chains had standardized the category with dark wood paneling, predictable wine lists, and dependable execution. They were good. They were reliable. They were, above all, safe.
Mastro’s was never safe. From the beginning, it was theatrical, deliberate, and unapologetically ambitious. The menu led with USDA Prime steaks, wet-aged for 28 days, cooked in a 1,500-degree broiler, and served sizzling on 450-degree plates. The wine list demanded a sommelier, not a glance. And the live entertainment seven nights a week gave the room something design budgets can’t buy: soul.
Within a few years, the brand made a defining move, opening on Canon Drive in Beverly Hills.
The celebrities came first. Then the expense accounts followed. The Beverly Hills location became a proving ground — a place for people who had made it and wanted a restaurant that understood exactly what that meant.
By the mid-2000s, Mastro’s had expanded to seven locations across the American West.
Growth that followed was deliberate. Each opening carried the same awareness: Mastro’s identity was its most valuable asset, and the easiest thing to lose.
That discipline has had consistent stewardship. Since 2007, Mastro’s has been led by Mark Levy, whose tenure has spanned the brand’s most consequential period of growth.
A new chapter opened in May 2013, when hospitality entrepreneur Tilman Fertitta acquired Mastro’s Restaurants.
The Manhattan location on Sixth Avenue, across from Radio City Music Hall in New York City, debuted with more than 1,000 guests. A bi-level dining room buzzed with energy. An expansive ice bar overflowed with lobster, shrimp, crab, and oysters. Athletes, media figures, and celebrities filled the room. It was Mastro’s at its best.
Once primarily a Western U.S. brand, Mastro’s expanded east to Boston, Fort Lauderdale, and Washington, D.C. In 2017, the brand arrived in Houston, opening at The Post Oak Hotel and Tower, one of the city’s most prestigious addresses and a defining location for luxury dining in Texas.
Along the way, one credential component set Mastro’s apart: wine.
What began as individual accolades became something unmatched in the category. Mastro’s Houston now holds the Wine Spectator Grand Award, one of the most coveted honors in American fine dining, while more than twenty Mastro’s locations carry Wine Spectator’s Best of Award. No other luxury steakhouse brand has achieved that level of recognition.
By the mid-2020s, Mastro’s had grown to more than twenty locations across fifteen major markets. It had become one of the very few luxury steakhouses in America that could truly claim national presence, without sacrificing identity.
Walk into any Mastro’s on a Tuesday night, when only places with real gravity draw a crowd, and you will find what was there in Scottsdale in 1999. The piano still welcomes guests and invites you to stay. The seafood tower still arrives over a cloud of dry ice. The legendary butter cake still arrives at a perfect warm temperature. The steaks are still cooked the same way: USDA Prime. Twenty-eight days wet-aged. 1,500-degree broiler. Ultimately, Mastro’s formula has not changed because it does not need to.