The steak arrives raw. You cook it yourself on a stone from Mount Fuji.
Seven visits in ten months, three of them on consecutive days. Nobody eats at a steakhouse three days running, which is the quickest way to explain what this place actually is.
I went three days in a row. Saturday lunch, Sunday dinner, then Monday lunch again. Nobody eats at a steakhouse three days running, and that is the fastest way to explain what Yappari Steak actually is.
Seven visits to the IT Park branch across ten months, and the timestamps give the game away better than any review could. 14:22 on a Saturday. 19:51 the next night. 13:33 the day after that. Then 21:22 on a Sunday in April, 14:00 on a Tuesday in June, and 22:36 on a Thursday in July. That last one is the tell. A 10:36 PM steak is not an occasion. It is a shift ending.
The steak arrives raw, and that is the point
What lands on your table is a slab of beef, barely colored, sitting on a black volcanic stone that has been heated until it is genuinely dangerous. The stone is lava rock from Mount Fuji. The beef is Australian, air-freighted in rather than frozen. Nobody in the kitchen has decided how you want it cooked, because that is now your job.
You cut a piece, lay it flat on the stone, and count. Ten seconds a side gets you something still red in the middle. Twenty gets you medium. Leave it while you talk and you have ruined it, which is a real risk and also the entire entertainment. The stone stays hot for most of the meal, so the last slice cooks about as well as the first.
Cook in batches of two or three slices rather than loading the whole stone. Crowding it drops the surface temperature and the meat steams instead of searing, which is the only way to get this wrong. The garlic chips and the sauces on the side are there to be used between batches, not poured over everything at the start.
What it cost, and what that tells you
I photographed the full printed board on 23 November 2024. Every steak comes with rice and soup, and the whole menu is built as a ladder by weight:
- Yappari Steak, top blade: 100g ₱390, 150g ₱580, 200g ₱780
- Karubi Steak, rib finger beef: 100g ₱350, 150g ₱540, 200g ₱720
- Beef curry rice ₱295, chicken steak ₱238, beef stewed tendon rice ₱225
- Extra meat by the 100g, rice ₱60, garlic butter rice ₱120, cabbage or macaroni salad ₱60
Those numbers are from November 2024 and they have moved. The current delivery listing for the IT Park branch puts beef curry rice at ₱370 against ₱295 on the board, chicken steak at ₱310 against ₱238, and the salads at ₱80 against ₱60. Delivery platforms usually price above the counter, so treat that as the ceiling rather than the dine-in figure. What is not in doubt is the direction. Ask at the table.
Even at the top of that range, look at what the ladder is doing. A hundred grams of top blade with rice and soup for well under ₱500 is not competing with a steakhouse. It is competing with lunch.
Three branches, and TOPS came first
Most people in Cebu meet this place at IT Park and assume that is the original. It is not. Yappari opened its first Philippine branch on 5 May 2024 at The Circle at TOPS, in Busay, which is why the menu board I photographed at IT Park six months later still carries a Busay address at the bottom. The chain comes from Naha City in Okinawa and had already gone into Singapore and Australia before it got here.
TOPS. The Circle at TOPS, Tops Road, Busay, Cebu City. Open 11:00 AM to 11:00 PM. The one with the view, and the one to pick if the drive up is part of the plan.
IT Park. Ground floor, Skyrise 3, Asia Town IT Park, Apas. The one in these photographs, and the one that explains the concept. When it opened it ran daily from 10 AM to midnight. Restaurants do not keep those hours. Call centers do, and the district around it is full of them.
SM J Mall. Lower ground, Mandaue, added around mid 2025. Sunday to Thursday 10:00 AM to 9:00 PM, Friday and Saturday until 10:00 PM. Mall hours, mall crowd.
Read those three in order and you get a chain working out the city in public. Start at the viewpoint where the tourists are, move to the district that never closes, then take the mall traffic.
Why this is not on our list of Cebu steakhouses
It is a fair question, since the sign says steak house. The honest answer is that a steakhouse is defined by somebody else making the decisions, and here nobody does.
At Fat Jim’s a chef decides your doneness and lives with it. At Acacia the sizzling plate decides for you, which is why you order a level rarer than you want. At Yappari the stone does nothing except get hot, and every decision that makes a steak good or bad is yours. That is a genuinely fun format and it is a completely different product, so it sits outside the steakhouse comparison rather than near the bottom of it.
Judge it against the thing it actually is, which is a fast, cheap, repeatable meal that happens to be beef. On that measure it is very good, and seven visits in ten months is me admitting it.
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Frequently asked questions
How does Yappari Steak work?
The steak comes to your table raw on a lava stone heated until it sears. You cut and cook each slice yourself, roughly ten seconds a side for rare and twenty for medium. Rice and soup are included with every steak.
How many Yappari Steak branches are there in Cebu?
Three. The Circle at TOPS in Busay, which opened first on 5 May 2024, Cebu IT Park at Skyrise 3B, and the lower ground of SM J Mall in Mandaue.
How much is Yappari Steak in Cebu?
The board photographed in November 2024 started at ₱390 for 100g of top blade with rice and soup, rising to ₱780 at 200g. Current delivery listings run roughly 25 percent above those figures, so confirm at the table before ordering.
Is Yappari Steak worth it?
For a fast, cheap steak you control, yes. For a steak dinner where somebody else does the work and the room is part of the point, go to a steakhouse instead. They are not the same purchase.
Photographed at Yappari Steak, Cebu IT Park, across seven visits between November 2024 and September 2025. Menu prices read from the printed board on 23 November 2024 and clearly dated as such. Branches, hours and the TOPS opening date checked 30 August 2026.
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