Stephanie Breijo

Sipping cocktails while toppling high scores is that beautiful utopia where adulthood meets childhood: You can stay out as late as you want, the retro vibes never cease, the beer flows freely and games cost as little as a quarter. We’ve compiled a list of the best adult-friendly arcade bars in the Los Angeles area, the kinds where you can both order a cocktail, some natural wine or a beer and play some Space Invaders. From a trendy Arts District bar to an Echo Park spot that doubles as a restaurant, here’s where to unleash your inner pinball wizard in L.A., all grown up.

Bite into a sandwich here, slurp a bowl of ramen there, before finishing off with some ice cream—when it comes to piecing together the ultimate meal, it's always fun to pick and choose at Southern California's various food halls, home to small businesses and some of the most thoughtful, creative and scrappy chefs across the region. Though L.A.'s food halls date back close to a century—we're looking at you, Grand Central Market and the Original Farmers Market—a new crop of food havens have made it easier than ever for diners across the Southland to personalize their own all-in-one snack crawls. Check out our guide to our favorite food halls in Los Angeles and Orange County—and start planning your next visit.

It’s not too tricky to score an invite to the Magic Castle, Hollywood’s members-only magician clubhouse. Since 1963, the century-old Victorian mansion has served as the sort-of-secretive home base for the Academy of Magical Arts. Step inside—reservations and formal dress are required, and no photos, please—and you’ll find performance parlors, secret doors, mysterious illusions and—well, we don’t want to ruin all of the surprises in store. Instead of spending years practicing your craft as a wannabe magician, you can gain access to the Magic Castle via these ways below (ranked from easiest to most difficult).  

Sure, liquor’s been legal since Prohibition’s end, and there’s no practical use for smuggling hooch in basement bars post-1933, but there’s still something sleek about a speakeasy—especially in an age where everything is on full display across social media, removing all the mystery. Fortunately, L.A. keeps a bit of the playful, adventurous, seek-and-ye-shall-find spirit going thanks to the city’s oldest bars and modern-day spots tucked into corners as video stores, hotels, barber shops and anything else you need to explore to find the door. What defines a speakeasy? Some of L.A.’s top examples are shifting and adapting: Even K-town’s beloved pirate-themed speakeasy, R Bar, ditched its passwords a few years ago, and now it’s just a bar—nothing wrong with that, though, let’s be clear. So for the purposes of this list, we whittled the criteria. Every bar on this list has an entrance that’s physically hidden or unmarked, whether it’s a door within a restaurant or in a basement, or the door is actually a bed that flips around to reveal a secret staircase. You’ve got to be in the know to find these top-notch cocktail dens. Once you’ve unlocked these great bars, you’ll usually find burlesque, live jazz, vinyl nights and other secrets waiting to be discovered. Hit the town like it’s 1922 for our city’s top new, old and everything-in-between speakeasies.

If it seems like a new brewery pops up in a Torrance warehouse or Highland Park garage every few months, it’s because it does. Despite L.A.’s impressive pre-existing selection of beer bars, we’re also a city full of artisans who like taking matters into our own hands—including brewing beer.In fact, there’s so much fantastic craft beer in this city that compiling a list of best breweries had to come with restrictions: Here, we’ve focused on the breweries that have a taproom you can actually visit (hence why Craftsman, a veritable Pasadena brewery with a devoted following but no actual public space, is not on here), and those that actually brew in Los Angeles. So put down your crusty old Miller Lite, get out of the house and raise a pint to L.A.’s growing craft beer scene. RECOMMENDED: Guide to craft beer in L.A.

There are plenty of things that make a bar great, but a show-stopping view? That’s a real gamechanger. What could be more elegant than sitting up high, cocktail-in-hand taking in some sweet, sweet scenery. Whether you’re perched on the umpteenth floor of a Singaporean skyrise or plonked atop a south London car park, rooftop bars are about the experience just as much as the drinks.  Sure, many of them are swanky places, but lots more are pretty down-to-earth hangouts, too (despite, obvs, being pretty far from the ground). Featuring top-notch venues from all over the globe, our favourite rooftop bars range from the cha-ching to the chilled. But they’ve all got one thing in common – a stonking view. RECOMMENDED: 🍷 The best bars in Europe🍸The best bars in North America🍹The best bars in Asia

Disneyland’s known as the happiest place on Earth, but when it comes to finding the best Disney food, well, it can suddenly become the most overwhelming. With the relatively new Avengers Campus to eat through, more than 160 full-service restaurants and quick-and-casual spots to find a bite—and more than 14,000 recipes in rotation—the House that Mickey Mouse Built hasn’t just become a destination for some of the best rides in California: It’s become Anaheim’s go-to for award-winning wine programs, whimsical pastries, freshly made pastas, an intergalactic cantina and everything with mouse ears that you can imagine. We ate our way through the parks to find the best of the best, so whether you’re looking for hidden food finds, cult classics, top-notch sweets or the best-tasting deals and dishes in Disneyland, California Adventure and Downtown Disney, you’ll track them down with our guide to the 34 items you need to try.

Breakfast is the meal that launched a thousand trends: breakfast burritos, acai bowls, bagels, all the manners of toasts and tartines, and yes, brunch. Somehow, though, there’s still plenty of places in Los Angeles that have escaped the hype/backlash cycle that’s dogged all of the above—plus the slate of newer, chef-driven restaurants that turn into madhouses on late Sunday mornings.  To round up the best of the best, we not only looked through the latter, but delved into greasy spoons, old-school diners and the city’s third wave coffee shops, plus the city’s various Asian breakfast options to bring you the all-around best list of breakfasts in Los Angeles. Some are casual and budget-friendly, others less so, but all of them deliver a hearty, filling and delicious meal to start your day off right. Without further ado: here are our picks for the best breakfast restaurants in the city RECOMMENDED: The best restaurants in Los Angeles

L.A. gets plenty of its reputation from the film industry, but we prefer when our stars come draped in a tablecloth and feeding us some of the best food we’ve ever tasted. And in this golden age of dining destinations, plenty of our city’s restaurants have become their own sort of icons. Whether you’re a visitor or a local, believe the hype: These famous Los Angeles restaurants have stood the test of time or made waves with newer fare, and live up to their reputation. From hot dogs and hole-in-the-wall Japanese cafés to Victorian-era food halls and star-studded fine-dining, here’s where to find L.A.’s most famous restaurants worth a visit—and who knows, maybe you’ll see a a celebrity there, too (but we all know the real draw is the food).

Dive bars in Los Angeles are as varied as the city’s neighborhoods. Even the definition of a dive bar varies, from somewhere with low lighting and cheap beers to a place for locals to meet up, week after week, year after year. From tiki drinks in El Segundo to a storied biker bar in Hollywood, we’ve got your guide to the city’s diviest dives, where you can sing your heart out with karaoke, drown your sorrows with a couple stiff drinks and, quite possibly, kick off one of the best nights of your life.  RECOMMENDED: The best bars in Los Angeles

For thousands of years, humans have craved cacao-based treats and delicacies—the 16th-century European iteration of that being the chocolate most people in the United States know and love today. Whether you’re shopping for a gourmet holiday gift (always a delicious Valentine’s Day go-to) or just hoping to score a sweet treat of your own, these L.A. chocolate shops will be there to facilitate a sweet, dopamine-spiking reprieve from modern life. And, you know, with the future of cacao uncertain amid the worsening climate crisis, an indulgent box of high-quality gourmet chocolate may soon be a rarity, so enjoy cacao-based sweets while you still can.

With a century of candymaking under its belt and a place in every chocolate-loving native Angeleno’s heart, See’s Candies is the confectionary of Southern California. At the holidays, in chocolate shops throughout the year and in LAX kiosks galore, that white-and-black box means just one thing: quality confections. Charles A. See and his mother, Mary—the adorable woman who’s served as the brand’s figurehead in that black-and-white photo for decades—never could have imagined that their company would become an icon of Los Angeles, even going so far as to set up shop within the TCL Chinese Theater (then still known as Grauman’s) in 1920s Hollywood. To taste See’s is to love it, and nearly everyone has a die-hard favorite flavor. To get to the bottom of the absolute top, we asked See’s to send and recommend their best—and believe us, there are dozens upon dozens of options—and in return, they sent us 28 varieties. Our editorial team tasted our way through them all, and maybe—maybe—had a little too much chocolate (and learned that yes, there is such a thing, but even when we didn’t love the flavor combinations, the See’s chocolate is always stellar quality). Here are our descriptions of each variety, along with in-the-moment reactions as we figured out which rules the See’s candy kingdom.

Grab your Dr. Jekyll potions, your wooden stakes and practice your best slasher-film screams because one of the country’s biggest horror conventions is back.  Ghouls, goblins, the undead and fans of the macabre will descend on the Long Beach Convention Center’s Midsummer Scream to see some of the biggest names in the genre lead panels, sign autographs and pose for pictures—all in between shopping the best horror merch in town and taking in the grade-A blood-curdling cosplay, of course. There’ll be hundreds of vendors on-site with spooky trinkets, antiques and collectors items, in case you’re looking to keep the gruesome vibes going long after the weekend—because as any horror fan knows, the Halloween spirit lasts all year long.

The British garage-rockers return following their Primavera Sound appearance. The ferociously talented quartet headlines with its blend of full-tilt, sinewy rock, which is constantly undergoing sharp-witted evolution.

We feel it in our fingers, we feel it in our toes: Christmas is all around, and we bet no one knows it better than the cast of Love Actually Live. From late November through the end of December, cult-favorite musical series For the Record presents a stage show based on one of the world’s most beloved holiday movies, Love Actually. Using a multimedia set, a live orchestra and songs from the film, the show will turn Beverly Hills’ Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts into a feel-good winter set for musical numbers and scenes of the movie’s intersecting love stories.  Of course, the most beloved aspect of the movie is the character work—though the Christmas-time London setting gives that a run for its money—and to bring the insane, lovesick and relatable personas to life is a solid cast, often of familiar faces.

République chef-owners Walter and Margarita Manzke brought a piece of Paris to Pico Boulevard with Bicyclette, a two-tiered bistro and upstairs restaurant filled with classic French technique and charm. The former Sotto space is now home to escargots en croûte; roast organic chicken atop coq au vin sauce; freshly baked baguettes with Normandy butter; an already iconic caramelized-onion tarte tatin; and traditional French pastries.

The Tex-Mex bastion of breakfast tacos and queso has landed in Pasadena: HomeState's frozen-cocktail machine is swirling margaritas and spicy palomas, there are freshly made flour and corn tortillas for the local chain's signature tacos, and the Frito pie is plentiful.  The casual, comfortable and family friendly Tex-Mex concept has opened in the former home of Lincoln, complete with patio seating, an open and spacious indoor dining room, and all the touches that make HomeState feel like, well, home, even if you don't hail from Texas. Settle in at a picnic table amongst the cacti and vintage horse figurines for the same menu you'll find at the Los Feliz, Highland Park, West Adams and Playa Vista locations—which means all-day breakfast tacos, chips and queso, migas, Texas-toast brisket sandwiches and more. There's on-site parking, bar seating that overlooks the busy kitchen, and, of course, ample supply of some of the best tacos in Los Angeles.

The popular roving pizza truck landed a brick-and-mortar restaurant, which makes more than a little sense to us: It's remarkable a truck could hold all of Bootleg Pizza's weight for as long as it did without the wheels buckling. Bootleg makes some of the heftiest, cheesiest, most satisfying square pies in all of L.A., with dough so dense—but not so dense that it compromises flavor and composition—that one or two slices of the naturally leavened beauties could knock you out. While you know you probably shouldn't tackle a whole box yourself, it's hard to stop yourself from trying. We swear by the Hot Jimmy, which smothers those pan slices in ricotta, mozzarella, spicy sausage, black pepper, hot honey and a metric ton of roasted garlic, but the classic-leaning pies are just as worth an order.

Some of the best tacos in L.A. have landed in Silver Lake. El Ruso, the Sonora-style taco destination in Boyle Heights, recently took over the former Goods Mart space—located just next to All Day Baby and across the street from Spoon & Pork and Playita Mariscos—and opened a mobile outpost, with more on the way. You can find taquero Walter Soto and his team crafting fresh, handmade flour tortillas; char-grilled meats; packed-full sobaqueras; and flavorful braises out of a trailer at the front of the parking lot, and there's a plan for indoor seating soon to follow. Want more good news? Soto and his talented team hope to expand their operation even further in the future. Just be sure to stop by the latest outpost earlier than later, as the El Ruso team regularly sells out in Silver Lake as it reaches evening hours.

Get ready to curl up with a bowl of one of the world’s most comforting dishes because—even though the physical restaurant has closed—one of Lucques’s best events is back. Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne’s annual cassoulet night returns, this year in takeout form via the duo’s Lucques Catering & Events, to pay tribute to the traditional dish with roots in Southern French cooking. This year’s three-course menu features a salad of young greens with Saint Agur cheese and, for dessert, gateau basque, but we all know the star of the night will be the Cassoulet de Maison, with duck and pork confit, garlic sausage and white beans. Try to resist the urge to catch the next flight to France after you’ve had your fill.  

Looking for something to sip over the weekend? One of L.A.’s most thoughtful French restaurants is hosting a virtual wine dinner on Saturday, January 23, when you’ll sit down to a meal cooked by Pasjoli, pour the included wine pairings into your favorite glasses at home, and log on to a Zoom event with Michelin-starred chef David Beran and other members of the Pasjoli team. They’ll be whipping up a two-course meal at $105 per person, which includes tartar of roasted mushroom and veal breast blanquette—plus four wines to enjoy. If you like to end your night on a sweet note, for an extra $30 per person you’ll receive a dessert course of a red wine poached pear, plus an extra pair of wines (hey, it’s the weekend—live a little). Each wine pairing is a six-ounce pour, and the dishes come ready to heat and serve. After purchasing your ticket you’ll receive the Zoom link to the virtual event. Now you just need to figure out what to wear; finally, a reason to get out of our sweatpants.

The park is technically still closed, but Knott’s Berry Farm is still finding a way to make the season spooky. Normally California’s oldest theme park goes all-out for Halloween with haunts and trails during Knott’s Scary Farm, but this year, it’s instead throwing a brand new food festival on just a portion of the grounds. The new Taste of Fall-O-Ween is set to include food stations packed with all the pumpkin-spiced treats, apple cider, funnel cakes, soup bread bowls and other fall fare you could want, plus more eerie options such as frozen “bloody” lemon slime margaritas. And while there will be adult concoctions to purchase, it’s a family-friendly event—so much so that there’s even a children’s trick-or-treating trail.  There’s no admission needed for the fest, but you will need to purchase a tasting card, with five tastes for $35, or $20 for a kids card with three tastes. Find the full story on Taste of Fall-O-Ween here.

One of the food world's biggest L.A. events is bringing some of the city's most famous chefs into your living room. The Lexus All-Star Chef Classic normally takes over Downtown's L.A. LIVE, but this year the mega food event is going digital with delivered meals, virtual demos and full-on fine dining experiences at home. The new format involves four-course meals delivered to you—provided you live in L.A. County, Ventura County or Orange County—and the dishes will come prepared and/or curated by the chefs in this year's lineup. Most of the meal will arrive ready to plate and serve, but there'll be a few opportunities to cook along with the demos that you'll be able to access with a ticket. This year's lineup includes chefs Dominique Crenn (of San Francisco's Crenn Dining Group); Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook (of L.A.'s Animal, Son of a Gun and Jon & Vinny’s); Ludo Lefebvre (of Petit Trois and LudoBird) and master sommelier Carlton McCoy (the president and CEO of St. Helena's Heitz Cellar), and it's all hosted by chef Nyesha Arrington (formerly of Native). The standard dinner pack ($500) includes a four-course meal for two; two bottles of wine; two beers; two sodas; two Stella beer chalices; access to the broadcast; and access to the chefs' recipes. Want to really make a night of it? The "at-home services for two" package includes all of the above, plus delivered plateware, glassware, silverware and napkins, not to mention servers who'll arrive, set your table, prepare and serve yo

Forget the preorders and the pickups and the million trips to the grocery store this Labor Day. This year, you’re making your own pie.  Santa Monica’s Gourmandise School of Sweets & Savories is offering a few virtual baking classes the Sunday before the holiday, so you can whip up your pie along with the instructor (pastry chef Clemence Gosset) and ask her any questions you might have in the process, ensuring a perfect dessert for Labor Day. Each class runs $55, and upon registration you’ll receive the ingredient list as well as the private Zoom link to attend the class.  If you’re more of a morning person, the 10am–1pm class will teach you how to make a classic blueberry pie with a flaky butter crust, and if you’re hoping to enjoy something a bit creamier, sign up for the 1:30–4:30pm class and whip up both a Key lime pie and a s’mores pie (both featuring a graham cracker crust). From there, the next step is enjoying the fruits of your labor on Labor Day.

UPDATE: Disney Parks announced on Friday that its previously-untitled, The Princess and the Frog-inspired Splash Mountain makeover will debut in late 2024 as “Tiana’s Bayou Adventure.” There aren’t a ton of other details yet about the Disneyland ride (which will appear in Walt Disney World, as well), but you can check out a video below of some of the Louisiana-based research that’s going into it. Our original story by Stephanie Breijo, published June 25, 2020, appears below. Disney Parks announced today that its iconic log-flume ride, Splash Mountain, is getting a whole new look. The beloved water ride is based off the controversial film Song of the South from the 1940s, but today the company shared that the both Disneyland and Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom locations are completely reimagining the 1989 ride with a more contemporary—and inclusive—film, The Princess and the Frog. Imagineers began planning the revamp last year, according to the parks’ announcement, and will set the new ride in New Orleans, following characters from the 2009 film such as Princess Tiana, Louis and Mama Odie through their preparations for a Mardi Gras performance. Fans have been calling for the re-theming for years, even creating an online petition to ditch Splash Mountain’s problematic origins. There’s no estimation on the ride’s completion, nor any word on whether the original Splash Mountain will still be available to visit whenever Disneyland reopens. But we do have an artist’s concept, wh

Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights, comes early this year, starting on November 28 and running through December 6. Each year, the dates of the Jewish winter holiday vary but always begin on the 25th day of Kislev, the ninth month of the Hebrew calendar. Whether you’re lighting the menorah with a partner, friends or family, celebrate the importance of family, remembrance, blessings and (of course) fried foods with these take-home Hanukkah meals and limited-edition sweets and desserts from some of the best restaurants in the city. Akasha Every year, Culver City’s Akasha offers a “vodka and latkes” Hanukkah feast, including $25 seasonal cocktails serving two to three guests like Light the Menorah, a lavender blue vodka lemonade made with Meyer lemon and the cranberry vodka-based Jelly Donut sweetened with apricot jam. This year, they’re offering the same menu for to-go and delivery. Beyond Yukon Gold latkes, chef Akasha Richardson is also offering chopped, seasoned chicken liver by the half pint ($10), “pletzel” onion and poppy seed challah ($10) among other starters, as well as two-person servings of beef brisket ($40) and tangerine braised chicken ($36).  Note: Akasha will be closed for pickups or delivery on Monday, November 29 and Tuesday, November 30. Price: Varies; Order with 48 hours’ advance notice via Tock; pickup and delivery available November 28 and December 1–5.  Photograph: Courtesy Jeremy Fox Birdie G’s Jeremy Fox’s Santa Monica restaurant offers a f

This weekend supermodel, reality-TV personality, talk-show host and multi-hyphenate entrepreneur Tyra Banks wants to give you something to smile with your eyes about.  In 2009 the America’s Next Top Model host and producer coined the “smize,” a now-lexicon term that means smiling not with your mouth, but with your eyes, and today, she launches an ice cream shop in Santa Monica branded fully around it. That’s right, we’re getting a SMiZE Cream parlor (smizing not required for purchase). Technically Banks’s confection is frozen custard, not ice cream, due to its higher egg yolk and milk fat content, and it comes in a range of flavors such as strawberry birthday cake with sprinkles; salted caramel with butter-roasted pecans; Chocolate Barbecue, involving a smoked-chocolate base, brownies and roasted almonds; and one titled The Best Vanilla I Ever Had. Banks isn’t responsible for the recipes themselves—she tapped a culinary team to help create and manufacture them, including food scientist and fellow reality-TV participant Dr. Maya Warren—and at the bottom of each cup, there’s a sprinkle-coated cookie-dough truffle in flavors that correspond to each variety of frozen custard.  Photograph: Courtesy SMiZE Cream/Massimo Campana You’ll be able to pick up flavors in prepackaged eight- and 14-ounce cups, and if you don’t happen to be anywhere near Banks’s ode to smizing and frozen custard, the brand also launches nationwide shipping today. If you are in town, there’s a lot going on

This week one of L.A.’s most popular patios springs back to life. Surrounded by trees and bohemian touches, the indoor-outdoor restaurant Cliff’s Edge sat along Silver Lake’s stretch of Sunset Boulevard for 16 years but closed in March of 2020 to protect its staff from the pandemic, and then announced its permanent closure last October. But Wednesday night, the verdant—and romantic—restaurant space reopens as the newest branch of Mediterranean-leaning local chain Bacari. The Bacari Silver Lake menu will replicate the shareable small-plate, or cicchetti-style, offerings from Bacari’s other locations—Glendale, West Adams, West Third and Playa del Rey—but will also feature a few new dishes from executive chef and co-owner Lior Hillel. Photograph: Courtesy Bacari/Jakob N. Layman Dinner service will run nightly with options such as lamb-stuffed eggplant with a lemon-and-garlic emulsion; falafel with coconut harissa; smoked-mushroom pizza; and shawarma-inspired tacos, as will a late-night menu that runs until as late (or early) as 2am. Brunch service launches this Saturday, and will be available every Saturday and Sunday with dishes like potato-and-egg hash with chorizo and mornay; espresso-infused ricotta with berries and granola; and crab-cake Benedict, all of which to be noshed and shared throughout Bacari Silver Lake’s 5,000-square-foot space, which includes two fire pits, a full bar, strings of bulb lights, and, of course, that massive, popular patio, which was already a lon

The last year gave rise to some of L.A.’s most innovative pop-up restaurants yet, and now, thanks to Smorgasburg, you’ll be able to find a few of them in the Arts District every Sunday. On July 4 the massive weekly food event is returning for the first time since March 2020, and with it, it’s bringing more than 80 food and retail stalls to the ROW DTLA’s 7th Street Produce Market space. Some of Smorgasburg’s most iconic and long-standing attractions will be returning, but the vendor list—which was released this afternoon—also includes some of the region’s best new food concepts. Rebecca King’s pork-centric pop-up the Bad Jew is on the 2021 roster, offering massive pork pastrami sandwiches, while chef Rashida Holmes—who wants you to eat more goat, remember?—is bringing her Caribbean pop-up Bridgetown Roti to the mix with Jamaican patties, roti and more. Little Fish, which brought fried fish sandwiches to Echo Park, is coming to Smorg with seafood, sides and frozen lemonade, and the Highland Park-founded Los Dorados will freshly fry up its massive flautas from Steven Orozco Torres. View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Bad Jew - Rebecca King (@thebadjew) Hinoki & the Bird chef Brandon Kida’s Sichuan-inspired fried chicken concept, Go Go Bird, was one of our favorite delivery operations to emerge from 2020 and it will be popping up here every Sunday, but if you’re partial to roast chicken, Saucy Chick Rotisserie is bringing Mexic

Just in time for the NBA conference finals and a packed LAFC summer schedule, Highland Park’s got a new sports bar—and it’s one that’s entirely vegan. Last week Put Me in Coach opened in the former home of the also-vegan Hinterhof German Kitchen and Beer Garden, bringing two patios, local craft beer, flat-screen TVs, frosé, boozy sno-cone–like concoctions, and an entirely plant-based menu of bar classics to York Boulevard. The new all-vegan sports bar comes to us from some of the minds behind a few of L.A.’s most fun spots to grab a drink or a plant-based bite: the nearby but now-closed bar Block Party, where local beer, frozen drinks, food pop-ups out front and a bustling back patio made for another York Boulevard destination; West Adams’s Party Beer Co., a taproom and brewery pouring playful, crisp brews and beer slushies with a menu of vegan pizzas, sandwiches and beyond; and the vegan Nashville-inspired fried chicken concept, Wolfie’s, housed in the former Block Party space. Photograph: Time Out/Stephanie BreijoBoneless "chicken" wings in spicy orange glaze Wolfie’s chef Richard Chang is overseeing the menu and organizes it into sections for burgers (regular or chili cheese), Asian street food (bulgogi bibimbap or orange chicken over purple rice), sides (onion rings, house-made Cool Ranch Doritos and the like), boneless wings and tacos, covering all the bases of bar-food fare. All the classics are there, but done with a plant-based bent: The nachos involve cashew sour

A flashy Spanish restaurant is set to touch down in Beverly Hills next month, promising live music nearly every night of the week and traditional Spanish cuisine with high-end ingredients and “an avant-garde touch.” TATEL, with locations in Madrid and Ibiza, is set to open sometime in July and transform the former home of Nic’s Beverly Hills into a restaurant, bar and live-entertainment space for “an unforgettable experience where food, cocktails and live music blend into one.” In Madrid’s outpost, live music is performed nightly; the new Beverly Hills iteration—the first U.S. expansion of the brand—will be open from Tuesday to Sunday and offer it nearly as often.  At the bar, expect cocktails in both classic and house-created forms—especially when it comes to gin: Our colleagues at Time Out Madrid named TATEL one of the 10 best gin bars in the city, after all. While the full menu is still in development, dishes for the preexisting locations include options such as grilled Iberian pork; saffron risotto with grated truffle; cannelloni with mushrooms and foie gras; fish in clam vinaigrette; and classics such as Iberian-ham croquettes. In Beverly Hills, expect to eat similar Spanish- and Mediterranean-leaning dishes from within the newest TATEL’s indoor-outdoor space, which features large doors that open out onto Canon Drive. Rendering: Courtesy TATEL Group TATEL is expected to launch at 453 N. Canon Dr. in Beverly Hills in July, and be open for lunch and dinner Tuesday throug

In 1989 one of L.A.’s most promising chefs opened what would become one of the city’s most influential restaurants. Under cofounder and chef Mark Peel, the commanding La Brea restaurant Campanile would spur decades of culinary talent that still finds kitchens creating and enduring under his influence to this day. Yesterday, on June 20 and at the age of 66, Peel passed away after being diagnosed with cancer only nine days prior, reports the Los Angeles Times.  Before he launched one of the most lauded restaurants in Los Angeles, Peel spent his childhood in the San Gabriel Valley. At 12 he moved out of Southern California and north to Sonoma Valley, where he took his first kitchen job. Eventually Peel began cooking under Wolfgang Puck at Ma Maison, then at Michael’s Santa Monica, then Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse, and returned to Los Angeles to become chef de cuisine at Spago’s original location in West Hollywood. In 1989 Peel and his then-wife, chef Nancy Silverton of Mozza and La Brea Bakery, opened Campanile: a restaurant that would grow to influence and serve as training ground for more acclaimed chefs than almost any other in Los Angeles history. Silverton and Peel divorced, but Campanile remained open for more than 20 years—more than a small feat in such a mercurial industry. (The space is now home to République.) In the last years of his career, Peel opened Prawn Coastal, a quick and casual seafood concept inside Downtown’s Grand Central Market. At the time of its launch,

Some of our best bars are starting to reopen for every occasion and scenario you can imagine, and if you’re specifically looking to travel down a rabbit hole in order to get a cocktail, L.A.’s got you covered there, too. This October, an immersive Alice in Wonderland-themed bar is heading to town, complete with cocktails, games, puzzles, plenty of photo ops and even a round of the Queen of Hearts’ favorite game, croquet. (We hear you’ll even be playing it with faux flamingos.) Events companies Viral Ventures—which is currently running a wizard-themed pop-up bar in Hollywood—is bringing a Mad Hatter-inspired cocktail soirée to Los Angeles this fall and offering a taste of their popular Wonderland Bar in Sydney: a three-floor dive into Alice and Wonderland with rentable themed rooms, a full bar of tea cocktails and even high tea.  The L.A. pop-up, called Alice: An Immersive Cocktail Experience, will run 90 minutes long and take place in an undisclosed location somewhere in the city. We don’t know exactly how it’ll compare to the Sydney version, but we do know there’ll be riddles, activities such as painting the roses red, and plenty of photographable moments, not to mention tea-inspired cocktails overflowing with fog from dry ice. Every ticket runs $45 and will include two drinks, plus a welcome-to-the-party jello shot. You’ll be sipping on the likes of the Teapot, which involves limoncello, triple sec, orange, cranberry and lemon, and the vodka-based Painting Cocktail with van

One of L.A.’s most influential wine bars is heading west, bringing Spanish fried chicken and a range of biodynamic and organic wines from the Central Coast, France and beyond to Brentwood. Tonight, chef Suzanne Goin and restaurateur Caroline Styne’s lauded A.O.C. is getting a second location and opening in the former Larder at Tavern and Tavern spaces, which the duo closed last year. What once offered retail shelves and a cold case for salads and other prepared foods—and then made way for a bakery case and a bar—has been transformed into a more formal dining room, with a communal table for walk-in seating. Tavern’s atrium is gone, but the remodel offers a new private dining room, plus outdoor seating, and for those fans of the Beverly A.O.C., an identical menu of seasonal small plates. The quintessential Spanish fried chicken with chili-and-cumin butter and a romesco aioli will be on offer at A.O.C. Brentwood, as will long-time favorites such as the parmesan-stuffed, bacon-wrapped dates; wood-fired clams in sherry; and the beloved roasted chicken with green olives, a dish in ode to San Francisco’s Zuni Café—all with a kitchen led by Tavern's former chef de cuisine, Hamilton Lyons. Shannon Swindle, who oversees the pastry program at the original A.O.C., will also lead the dessert program in Brentwood. Dinner will be offered Tuesday through Sunday, beginning at 5pm, with brunch service and the Brentwood-only addition of weekday breakfast and lunch to follow in the coming weeks

When California fully reopens on June 15, one of the state’s most useful pandemic allowances for restaurants and bars will be sticking around—at least for the foreseeable future. This afternoon Governor Gavin Newsom announced that businesses selling food as well as alcohol will be allowed to continue to sell to-go cocktails thanks to an extension of the temporary provision. Previously illegal, restaurants and bars across Los Angeles have bolstered their takeout sales through the ability of customers to add pre-made cocktails to food orders during the last 15 months. The provision also spurred countless specials, business expansions and some innovation within the industry, such as new cocktail canning operations across the county, delivery cocktails, frozen drinks to-go and themed cocktail kits. The move to extend the program would allow to-go cocktails with the sale of food to be offered through the calendar year until statewide bills—such as SB-389, which passed in the State Senate in May and has yet to be voted on in the Assembly—could theoretically pass and be signed into law, allowing to-go cocktails on a permanent basis. “We’ve got a number of pieces of legislation that is [sic] going through the California legislature,” Gov. Newsom said in a press conference on Thursday. “Some of that won’t happen soon enough, so we want to make sure there are no gaps, and that’s why we’re going to extend these orders that we put into place going back to March of last year.” Newsom also

When Disney’s Avengers Campus opens on Friday, you won’t have to go subatomic or enter the quantum realm to find Ant-Man’s corner of the park; you’ll just have to head to Pym Test Kitchen, where the food mirrors the size-morphing antics of the titular superhero (and thief and champion of the everyman) Scott Lang and his tech-savvy partner, Hope van Dyne, alias the Wasp. The new restaurant is also where you’ll find some of the best food being served in the Disneyland Resort, no quantum tunneling required—unless, of course, you’re one of the pretzels growing and shrinking above the cash registers. The long-awaited Marvel-themed footprint of the California Adventure park features meet-and-greets with the likes of Iron Man, battle training from Wakanda’s Dora Milaje, reality-bending entertainment from Doctor Strange, and an interactive web-slinging Spider-Man ride, and as thrilling as it is entering an ancient sanctum or witnessing Spidey scale a wall, there’s almost nothing more delightful than an oversized fried chicken sandwich served between comically tiny buns. Pym Test Kitchen’s whole schtick is downright charming—we’d expect nothing less from a restaurant modeled after a Paul Rudd franchise—and the big-small-big-small gimmick lends itself to some true comedy across the otherwise classic American menu. One massive plant-based meatball sits next to one that’s not much larger than a marble, and they form a “spoonful” (where the bowl is, you guessed it, an oversized spoon) wit