The team behind Old Brea Chop House is opening a butcher shop and specialty food store at 415 S. Associated Road in Brea at the end of August, bringing restaurant-quality meats, a temperature-controlled wine cellar, and a menu of smash burgers, breakfast burritos, and French dip sandwiches to a storefront built for both grab-and-go shopping and sit-down dining.
Chef Cut Meat House comes from Tony and Dani Fasulo, who opened Old Brea Chop House in downtown Brea in 2020 alongside head chef Masakazu “Masa” Ose, according to the Los Angeles Times. The new shop will carry restaurant-quality meats alongside gourmet pantry items, chef-driven prepared foods, and a curated wine selection, with Dani Fasulo unpacking bottles into the store's temperature-controlled wine cellar ahead of opening. Ose trained the Chef Cut Meat House staff on the new menu himself, per the same report.
From Pandemic Pivot to Permanent Storefront
The idea for Chef Cut Meat House traces back to how Old Brea Chop House survived the pandemic. During that period, the steakhouse offered a revolving menu of sandwiches and specials and sold high-quality meat for customers to grill at home. Tony Fasulo said the restaurant had to pivot and evolve to survive, and that it grew substantially afterward because of the customer relationships built during that stretch.
Those pandemic-era workarounds effectively became the blueprint for the new store. Fasulo developed Chef Cut Meat House to fulfill special customer requests and extend what Old Brea Chop House already offered, and he has described both concepts as an homage to his own life experiences in the restaurant business, which began when he started working at age 16. He went on to work for Morton's, opening steakhouses in Las Vegas, Palm Desert, and other locations before launching his own concepts in Brea. Fasulo's tenure with Morton's actually ran more than 20 years, including stints as general manager in Costa Mesa and roles helping open or manage locations in Beverly Hills, Downtown Los Angeles, Atlantic City, and Mexico City, according to the Orange County Business Journal.
What's on the Menu and the Shelves
Chef Cut Meat House will serve smash burgers, meatball subs, and Italian classic sandwiches, along with breakfast burritos filled with steak, chorizo, bacon, pastrami, or Taylor pork rolls. The kitchen will also smoke brisket and roast beef for French dip sandwiches, and turn out cheesecakes and other desserts. Fresh-baked bread will include in-house focaccia as well as loaves from local bakers such as Bub and Grandma's.
Shoppers will find grab-and-go prepared foods alongside tables and booths for those who want to eat in, and the store's design leans into that dual identity. The location is set up with a 20-seat wine bar, a craft tap beer station for customers waiting on orders, an in-house scratch bakery, and a full butcher counter, according to Chef Cut Meat House. That hybrid layout puts the new shop squarely in an industry-wide shift: the number of U.S. meat markets and independent butcher shops grew to 10,039 in 2024, with shops increasingly leaning on prepared meals, wine, and gourmet items to drive revenue, per data from Toast POS.
Sourcing Standards Carry Over From the Chop House
Old Brea Chop House built its reputation on hand-cut, farm-specific beef from suppliers including Aspen Ridge, Creekstone Farms, and Rivier, with select cuts dry-aged for up to 60 days, the Orange County Business Journal has reported. Culinary Director and Executive Chef Ose extends that sourcing philosophy to pork as well, selecting premium Iberico, Kurobuta, and Duroc cuts for the restaurant group and generally favoring unmarinated preparations to let the meat's quality speak for itself, according to Chowhound.
That commitment to premium beef arrives as retail prices remain historically high. U.S. retail beef prices reached record averages near $8.84 per pound in 2025 and stayed elevated into 2026 due to tight domestic cattle inventories, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture as cited by Beef Magazine. Whether those supply pressures will shape pricing at the new butcher counter remains to be seen.
A Loyal Following and a Growing Food Scene
Old Brea Chop House already has fans willing to travel for it. Jazz Moreno, who has driven from Whittier to the restaurant with her husband Marcus, called it the best restaurant in Orange County, per the Los Angeles Times. The 415 S. Associated Road storefront chosen for Chef Cut Meat House has its own history as a meat destination, having previously housed another specialty butcher shop, The Butchery Quality Meats, according to the ButcherAtlas directory.
The opening also lands amid a broader expansion of Brea's dining scene, which has drawn major new culinary anchors including Din Tai Fung as North Orange County's food landscape grows, according to baikhome. For Old Brea Chop House's owners, Chef Cut Meat House represents both an extension of the flagship restaurant's supply chain and a bet that Brea shoppers are ready for a one-stop butcher counter, wine bar, and bakery under a single roof.
