‘Top Chef's' Mei Lin returns to fine dining at 88 Club

Los Angeles Times

18-04-2025

At 88 Club, planks of artful shrimp toast, piles of chewy mung bean jelly noodles and clay pots of mapo tofu spin on well-lighted marble lazy Susans. This is Mei Lin's take on Chinese banquet dining, and it marks a big return for the 'Top Chef' and 'Tournament of Champions' winner.
After closing their lauded contemporary Chinese restaurant Nightshade, and focusing on Sichuan-spiced fried chicken sandwich shop Daybird, Lin and business partner Francis Miranda are returning with a more formal, full-service restaurant for the first time in five years.
'Having Daybird and doing the fast-casual thing was fun, but being in a kitchen and creating food for [88 Club's] type of setting is even more fun, and it gives me a lot of creative juices to do a little bit more,' Lin said.
At 88 Club, Lin is serving the kind of food she grew up eating and cooking but preparing and plating it with a bit more refinement — and in a sleek, low-lighted, marble-adorned setting in Beverly Hills. In comparison to the fine-dining cuisine of Nightshade, where mapo tofu took the form of lasagna and tom yum spice dusted her take on the bloomin' onion, Lin said her approach to 88 Club is more broadly familiar and more straightforward.
'It's very unapologetic and it's straight to the point, and that's the whole approach to the entire menu,' she said, adding, 'It's a lot of the flavors that you know, just turned on [their] head a little bit. It's nothing that you haven't seen before, but it's done to perfection.'
Lin and her culinary team, which includes chef de cuisine and La Dolce Vita vet Nick Russo, cook glossy cha siu made from Iberico pork, rotating through cuts and serving it with a dollop of hot mustard. There's fried whole sweet and sour fish, its sauce poured tableside. Plump wontons practically burst with prawns and bamboo shoots, all swimming in a fragrant chicken stock. For dessert, Lin whips up almond tofu with seasonal farmers-market produce; jasmine milk tea custard buns; a creamy mango coconut sago with tart pops of pomelo; and a light ginger ice cream topped with a chewy almond cookie.
The bar area, which includes five seats and lounge tables, offers a pared-down menu of the dining room's full offerings. (Maybe, Miranda hints, Daybird could pop up in the space one day to bring the Westside a taste of Lin's numbing-spice fried chicken.)
In the background of running Daybird, Lin and Miranda began planning the restaurant over the last two years. Leading up to the launch, they scoured flea markets for Chinese antiques, art and plateware. 'We kind of always have the idea in the back of our heads of doing some classic Chinese flavors,' said Miranda, who is also an owner of Trophies Burger Club and Lock & Key.
Diana curated the wine program, which includes rieslings to pair with the aromatic Chinese food, while Kevin headed up cocktails and nonalcoholic concoctions that re-create classics with a Chinese tinge: The Long Island iced tea riffs on a Hong Kong-style lemon iced tea, and the dirty martini uses house-fermented mustard greens and their brine.
88 Club is open Tuesday to Thursday from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 5:30 to 11 p.m. 9737 S. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills, [phone], 88clubbh.com
A string of new restaurants recently opened inside the Original Farmers Market, adding to the color and variety of the historic 91-year-old destination. For Kamila Zymanczyk, who immigrated from Poland five years ago, it was love at first sight. She and her family knew they wanted to open Stara Pierogi & Sausage there.
'We were looking for some Polish Eastern European cuisine [in L.A.], and we couldn't find many,' she said. 'We thought there should be something else, another place, and we went to the [Original] Farmers Market. We fell in love with this place.'
Zymanczyk grew up cooking at home with her great-grandmother, her grandmother and her mother; most of the dishes served at her casual food stall are made with their traditional recipes. She and her children handmake pierogi stuffed with a range of fillings; fresh paczki, or doughnuts; nalesniki, or crepes; schnitzel; and griddled imported kielbasa sausages with onions.
Nearby, the full-service Savta — which originated in New York City — serves California cuisine with a European bent. Founder Vincent Benoliel offers wood-fired pizzas; crispy artichokes with panko and lemon cream; linguine vongole with bottarga; steak frites with green peppercorn sauce; chicken with honey and hummus; clams au gratin and more.
Upstairs, Benoliel's new hand-roll concept, Sora Temaki Bar, serves classic sushi hand rolls and sashimi in addition to specialty temaki that include panko-fried oysters with ginger tartar sauce; toro with caviar and Santa Barbara-caught uni; plus seared Japanese Wagyu with garlic chips and tare.
On April 25, Mediterranean restaurant Theía — previously located farther west, in Beverly Grove — will reopen in the Original Farmers Market under new ownership. The latest iteration will feature dishes such as grilled lamb skewers, lobster cavatelli and chocolate mousse baklava, along with live entertainment including DJ sets, belly dancers and acrobats.
Stara Pierogi & Sausage is open daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m; Savta is open Sunday to Thursday from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sora Temaki Bar is open Sunday to Thursday from noon to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from noon to 10 p.m. 6333 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles, farmersmarketla.com
After bringing his vibrant Sri Lankan cuisine to Van Nuys and Tarzana, and then closing both locations, Kurrypinch chef-owner Shaheen Ghazaly is giving Hollywood a taste. Longtime fan and business partner Dr. Nimesh Rajakumar teamed up with Ghazaly to reopen Kurrypinch, this time in a larger and more central location. The Sri Lankan-raised, Pakistan-born Ghazaly meticulously grinds his own chile pastes each morning and painstakingly makes his own roti, all in the name of spreading the allure and awareness of Sri Lankan cuisine.
He and his team serve kiribath-inspired coconut milk risotto with mahi mahi, Ghazaly's signature ghee mashed potatoes, avocado juice, weekend-only biryani and more. The East Hollywood restaurant features a six-seat chef's table overlooking the grill, plus roughly 50 seats in the dining room.
Kurrypinch is open Tuesday to Friday from 5 to 10 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m., then 5 to 10 p.m. 5051 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, [phone], kurrypinch.com
After more than a decade of waiting, the team behind Chinatown staple the Little Jewel of New Orleans opened its adjacent cocktail bar for mint juleps, grasshoppers, hurricane cocktails and more.
Since Little Jewel's launch in 2014, owners and husband-and-wife team Marcus Christiana-Beniger and Eunah Kang-Beniger focused primarily on the operations of their New Orleans-ode restaurant, which is famed for its po'boys, debris fries, gator sausages and other specialties. But all the while they dreamed of opening the Evangeline Swamp Room next door, waiting to begin construction.
Now, after years of readying the space and replicating the scene of a French Quarter watering hole, Christiana-Beniger and Kang-Beniger — along with business partner Evan Mack — serve classics and regional specialties such as the Ramos gin fizz, the vieux carré and the sazerac, alongside frosty, strong libations and a pared-down food menu from the restaurant next door. Look for charbroiled oysters, po'boys, skillet crawfish mac and cheese, fried frogs legs and fried okra, plus special events, including live music and crawfish boils.
The Evangeline Swamp Room is open Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday from 5 p.m. to midnight, and Friday and Saturday from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. 701 N. Spring St., Los Angeles, [phone], swamproom.la
After seven years of street vending and pop-ups, some of the best tacos in Los Angeles now have a permanent storefront. Angel's Tijuana Tacos operates more than a dozen stalls spread across Los Angeles, Orange County and the Inland Empire, filling freshly hand-pressed corn tortillas with trompo-singed al pastor and other specialties dolloped with generous scoops of guacamole. Its first bricks-and-mortar location, in Anaheim, features indoor seating and hand-painted murals, and offers all of the signatures found at the street stands, such as tacos, quesadillas, vampiros, burritos and meat-piled baked potatoes.
There are also a few notable additions: Micheladas can be found only at the bricks-and-mortar, along with French fries that come loaded with cheese, guacamole and your choice of meat — an occasional special at limited stalls.
Angel's Tijuana Tacos restaurant is open in Anaheim Sunday to Thursday from 10 a.m. to midnight, and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 a.m. 3436 W. Lincoln Ave., Anaheim, instagram.com/angelstijuanatacos
Last year, one of L.A.'s most popular smashburger operations expanded from Santa Monica to Studio City, its bright orange-and-red building a beacon for short rib smash burgers, dipped soft-serve cones and tallow fries. Now it's launched a third outpost, and this time it's even farther east. Heavy Handed's signatures can now be found in Silver Lake, taking over the former All Day Baby space with new retail items from owners Max Miller and Danny Gordon as well. In Silver Lake, the wine list skews more natural, funky and experimental, tailored to the neighborhood; the location also features multiple TVs broadcasting a range of live sports, and seats roughly 55. The late-March opening marked the debut of Heavy Handed's take-home buckets of bread-and-butter pickles and squeeze bottles of 'heavy' sauce, which can also be found in Santa Monica and Studio City.
Heavy Handed is open daily in Silver Lake from 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. 3200 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles, heavyhanded.la