The chef who never stopped using real fat
This year, Whole Foods named beef tallow the top food trend of 2026. Sales of animal fats crossed a billion dollars. Twelve years ago, a chef in Scottsdale opened a restaurant and never stopped using them.
There's a small restaurant in Old Town Scottsdale called Virtù Honest Craft. Chef Gio Osso opened it in 2013 — long before the beef tallow revival, before New York Times explainer pieces, before Whole Foods trend councils. He was quietly cooking with duck fat, beef tallow, and rendered lamb fat while most American kitchens were still being told butter was dangerous.
He didn't think of it as heritage cooking. He thought of it as cooking.
Gio grew up in New Jersey with parents from Calabria — that spicy, seaside region at the toe of Italy. Every summer of his childhood, his family flew back. At his grandparents' farmhouse, everything came from the garden or the sea, and nothing was wasted. The fat from a pork shoulder became the medium for cooking the next meal.
When he opened Virtù, he brought that instinct with him. Confit short ribs cooked in rendered beef tallow. Eggs Benedict finished with foie fat instead of butter. Lamb braciole slow-cooked in rendered lamb fat. "It's a flavor bomb that explodes in your mouth," he told US Foods.
The interesting part isn't just that Gio has been cooking this way for twelve years. It's that this year, this is what everyone wants. Sales of food products containing beef tallow reached $1.1 billion for the year ending March 2026 — a 275% increase over three years ago. Fifty-two percent of American diners between 18 and 34 now check what fats a restaurant uses before choosing where to eat. Steak 'n Shake switched every fryer in the chain.
None of this happened because we invented something new. It happened because a generation started asking a question chefs like Gio never stopped asking: why did we ever throw this out?
The chefs who never listened to the trend are now the ones the trend is following.
YOUR TURN
Have you started cooking with real fats again? Tallow, lard, ghee, butter, duck fat — whatever your grandmother used to keep in a jar on the stove.
Reply and tell us what you cook with now. Or share a photo on Instagram and tag @seedoilmovement with #RealFatSummer. We're collecting stories of the shift, one kitchen at a time.
We didn't invent real food. We just remembered it.
Less noise. More clarity. You'll hear from us next Friday.
— The SeedOil.com Team