The Most Anticipated Los Angeles Restaurant Openings, Summer 2025
Projected Opening: Mid-summer
Major Players: Bryant Ng, Kim Luu-Ng
Chef Bryant Ng (Cassia) and his wife Kim Luu-Ng are gearing up to open a fast-casual Chinese American restaurant called Jade Rabbit in Santa Monica this summer. The restaurant will draw on Bryant's family history of cooking Chinese American food and take inspiration from the Hong Kong-style cafes and Cantonese barbecue restaurants that opened in the 1980s and 1990s. Meals will be formatted as combination plates with two side dishes, two vegetables, and a main like beef and broccoli, honey walnut shrimp, and an orange mango chicken that nods to sweet-and-tangy Korean fried chicken. — Rebecca Roland, Eater Southern California/Southwest Editor
Projected Opening: Summer 2025
Major Players: Phil Rosenthal, Nancy Silverton
Television writer and host Phil Rosenthal ( Somebody Feed Phil, Everybody Loves Raymond) is teaming up with chef Nancy Silverton to open Max & Helen's, a classic diner, in the former Le Petit Greek Larchmont space. The restaurant is inspired by the Palace Diner in Biddeford, Maine, which was featured in the Maine episode of Somebody Feed Phil . Expect approachable classics like Silverton and Rosenthal's take on a diner breakfast with eggs, bacon, toast, potatoes, and a cup of coffee. Rosenthal tells Eater that he wants Max & Helen's to look like he just happened to find a 100-year-old diner, complete with antique fixtures. — Rebecca Roland, Eater Southern California/Southwest Editor
Projected opening: Early to mid-July
Major Players: Rose Previte, Alfonso 'Poncho' Martinez, Deau Arpapornnopparat, Tongkamal 'Joy' Yuon, Maria Elena Lorenzo
Maydan Market was first announced in late 2023 as an East Coast expansion from D.C. restaurateur Rose Previte, who earned a Michelin star for Lebanese-inflected restaurant Maydan. The market will host a branch of Maydan, Previte's travel-influenced restaurant Compass Rose (which recently closed in D.C.), LA Oaxacan specialist Poncho's Tlayudas, and a grill-oriented eatery by Holy Basil Thai called Yhing Yhang. The market also recently announced a stall called Club 104 that will host a rotating mix of vendors and operators for a month or two at a time. When it opens, Maléna by Tamales Elena will serve pozoles, banana leaf tamales, and antojitos from the family behind the famed Watts food trailer. Then the stall will host chef Melissa Cottingham and Meymuna Hussein-Cattan of Flavors From Afar, followed by Eater YouTube host and chef Nyesha Arrington in early 2026. — Matthew Kang, lead editor, Eater Southern California/Southwest
Projected opening: July 2025
Veteran fine dining chef Brian Baik is almost ready to unveil his first-ever permanent restaurant after roving around Los Angeles for the last couple of years. Baik, whose family owns Koreatown's respected Kobawoo restaurant, trained at Eleven Madison Park, Chef's Table at Brooklyn Fare, and Sushi Noz before coming to Los Angeles during the COVID-19 pandemic. He opened Corridor 109 as an ode to the former Paris two-Michelin-star restaurant Passage 53 (109 is the suite number for Kobawoo) inside his parents' Koreatown restaurant serving Japanese and Korean seafood in elegant, no-fuss presentations. He moved to a space in Chinatown with just four tables, developing a following.
Corridor 109 will now occupy a standalone building in Melrose Hill with a neighborhood-friendly bar and lounge up front, with an intimate tasting counter in the rear. The bar will open a few weeks before the tasting counter with a top-tier cocktail program and small bites. At the full tasting counter, expect Baik's prowess with high-quality seafood to be on full display, and while the place is not overtly Korean influenced, he folds in flavors from his upbringing. — Matthew Kang, lead editor, Eater Southern California/Southwest
Projected opening: July 2025
Major players: Alvin Cailan, Tuệ Nguy?n, Einat Admony, Proposition Chicken
Local Kitchens is making another foray into Southern California when it opens in early July in Studio City. Similar to the recently opened Neighborly in Westlake Village, Local Kitchens partners with established chefs and restaurants to combine various menus and dishes under a single roof. At Local Kitchens, customers can come in and encounter multiple menus, like Sweet Onion Burger by chef Alvin Cailan (who owns Amboy in Chinatown) and Tấm Tấm Rice by chef Tuệ Nguy?n (who helms Đi Đi in West Hollywood and is known by her social media handle TwayDaBae).
Local Kitchens in Studio City will offer a more complete dining experience, featuring 13 tables, communal seating, patio seating, ceramic plateware, and murals painted by Los Angeles artists. In addition, expect more staff to greet customers, take orders, and facilitate service, which will stand in contrast to the 'digital-first' and kiosk-oriented approach of Local Kitchens' Bay Area outlets. Fans won't be disappointed: Tấm Tấm riffs on Vietnamese broken rice dishes, with charbroiled chicken and braised pork belly over rice. Sweet Onion Burger has Cailan's Oklahoma-style shaved onion burgers with quarter-pound patties. Yalla Falafel makes stuffed falafel and amba chicken pita sandwiches, while Proposition Chicken does Southern-style fried chicken tenders and sandwiches. Expect this food hall-in-one to be a strong addition to the Valley dining scene. — Matthew Kang, lead editor, Eater Southern California/Southwest
Projected opening: Late June 2025
Major players: Dani García, Katsuya Uechi, Sam Nazarian
Originally opened inside New York City's Citizens food hall in Midtown West in December 2021, Casa Dani earned a Michelin star but quietly closed earlier this year. Alongside Casa Dani in Century City, Los Angeles's own Katsuya will open a flagship restaurant with a revitalized 20-year-anniversary menu and add to the Westfield mall's ever-improving slate of dining options.
Dani García is one of Spain's most acclaimed fine dining chefs, with two-Michelin-starred Smoked Room in Madrid and its Michelin-starred sibling in Dubai. The chef also held three Michelin stars at his eponymous restaurant in Marbella's luxe Puente Romano hotel, though it closed in 2019. Assuming it reflects its New York menu, Casa Dani in Los Angeles should distill García's modern takes on Spanish fare, like croquetas de jamón ibérico, Andalusian-style tuna preparations, paella, and grilled proteins like whole turbot and ibérico pork loin. Katsuya's Japanese lounge menu of sushi, rolls, and izakaya-inflected dishes will gather some of chef Katsuya Uechi's greatest hits from over the past 20 years. — Matthew Kang, lead editor, Eater Southern California/Southwest
Projected opening: August 2025
Celebrated Southern chef Sean Brock is opening his first West Coast restaurant, called Darling, featuring seasonal ingredients prepared over a live-fire grill in the former Soulmate space on Robertson Boulevard. The Nashville-based chef will also open Bar Darling, an adjoining cocktail bar that will serve cocktails while vinyls play over a hi-fi sound system.
Brock is a high-profile chef whose career has focused on showcasing Southern cuisine. He grew up in Virginia's Appalachian mountains before finishing culinary school and becoming executive chef at Charleston, South Carolina's Husk from 2010 until 2018; he then became a partner at McCrady's Restaurant. Brock won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Southeast in 2010, and became a New York Times bestseller with his first cookbook Heritage , which also garnered a James Beard Award. Brock splits time between Nashville and Los Angeles. Darling will open across the street from Lisa Vanderpump's Sur and the trendy sandwich shop from three Vanderpump Rules stars, Something About Her. — Mona Holmes, editor, Eater Southern California/Southwest See More:
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
24 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Ralph Barbosa talks about helping families affected by ICE raids
Comedian Ralph Barbosa sits down with the Los Angeles Times' Nate Jackson to talk about his newest stand-up special, 'Planet Bosa' and how he is using comedy, and his voice, to help the early days of ICE activity in Los Angeles, Barbosa reached out to fans over social media and said he'd help those affected. Here, he talks about why he did that and what it meant to him to help how he could.
Fast Company
30 minutes ago
- Fast Company
‘Your Labubu's Labubu needs a Labubu.' These 4 items show we might be at peak accessory
Lip balm on your phone case. A backpack on a Stanley. A Labubu for your Labubu. Cute branded accessories are nothing new. For decades, consumers have been enticed by the prospect of collecting aesthetically pleasing knickknacks, from Troll dolls to Tamagotchis. Recently, though, the accessory craze has taken a meta turn: Every accessory now needs to have its own accessory. Consider the recent excitement around Labubu dolls as a prime example. These bug-eyed elves, designed for the sole purpose of being attached to a bag or clothing, helped their parent company, Pop Mart, triple its profits in 2024 to a total of $920 million. The fever is still raging, with fans clambering to buy new colors and styles—and even potentially dangerous knockoffs. As quirky bag charms like the Labubu have taken off, the accessory's accessory has become part of the mainstream. It's been legitimized by major brands like Prada, which sells a $1,350 robot bag charm; Louis Vuitton, which offers a beaded phone strap that can only be purchased by contacting the company; and, most recently, Kendall Jenner's 818 tequila brand, which turned its mini shooters into a keychain. 'Accessory-ception' appears to be a new way for brands across a diverse range of categories to tap into the demand for collectibles—and a sure sign that accessory culture has gone too far. Here are four of the wildest accessories for accessories we've seen so far. Rhode phone case Rhode's $35 lip gloss phone cases, which debuted in February 2024, are exactly what they sound like: two custom phone cases with purpose-built slots for carrying (Rhode-branded) lip gloss. Before they even launched, both cases already had a waitlist. After they sold out and relaunched two months later, those waitlists numbered in the hundreds of thousands. The lip case inspired hundreds of TikTok reviews, DIY tutorials, and even a parody from Heinz ketchup —and its success showed other brands that the meta accessory could serve as both a popular collectible and a wearable marketing opportunity. Stanley backpacks The Stanley tumbler, which absolutely dominated the internet—and cupholders nationwide—in late 2023 and early 2024, has become perhaps the most famous canvas for the endless accessorization cycle. Stanley itself sells a backpack of sorts for its famous tumbler, as well as a keychain for said tumbler that's also shaped like, you guessed it, a tumbler. But the Stanley accessorization gets even stranger in the world of TikTok Stanley packers. Within this subgenre, social media creators have found a shocking number of ways to further accessorize their Stanleys until they're almost unrecognizable. In one TikTok with 270,000 views, creator @missyysparks shows herself packing her Stanley for Christmas shopping, a task that involves clipping a lip gloss, a container of Tylenol, and a tumbler keychain full of cough drops to the water bottle. In another video with 279,000 views, creator @nicolepamelaaa preps for a 'hot girl walk' by affixing an entire snack platter of cheese and grapes to the top of her cup, as well as tucking a tiny tumbler with a single shot of energy drink into her Stanley's backpack. 'Is the walk the Oregon Trail by any chance?' one commenter wrote. 'Why does your Stanley have a Stanley?' another asked. Our question exactly. Owala bottle charm In light of this dystopian Stanley accessorization spiral, other water bottle companies have attempted to put their own spin on the trend. This June, Owala collaborated with the jewelry company Made by Mary to create a necklace with a tiny Owala-shaped charm, accompanied by a sparkly Owala bottle with a mini version of itself attached as a charm. The bundle cost $99.99 and sold out—giving Owala superfans a meta-accessory to flex on less deep-pocketed water bottle enthusiasts. Labubu for your Labubu Generally, Labubus are the epitome of the meta-accessory trend: They serve no purpose other than to look aesthetically pleasing (debatable), and they can be dressed up in a variety of tiny outfits, which has led third-party sellers to create such necessities as Labubu wigs, jerseys, hats, and car seats. Thus, it was only a matter of time before someone found a way to give a Labubu its own Labubu. One Redditor in the subreddit r/labubu did just that by sourcing a mini version of the doll and affixing it to the original keychain-style. 'A Labubu for my Labubu,' the post's caption reads. 'It's a Lalabububu or a Labulabububu,' one commenter responded. Another added, 'Your Labubu's Labubu needs a Labubu.'
Eater
3 hours ago
- Eater
Akiko's (the Original) Is Back With a New Powerhouse Chef at the Helm
is the regional editor for Eater's Northern California/Pacific Northwest sites, writing about restaurant and bar trends, upcoming openings, and pop-ups for the San Francisco Bay Area, Portland, Seattle, and Denver. Chef Ray Lee is readying a comeback for the original Bush Street location of sushi favorite Akiko's this fall. It won't be Akiko's Part II, or even Part I, given that the original technically moved into the SoMa neighborhood as of January 2023. Rather, the space will reopen as an entirely new restaurant in mid-to-late September; it currently doesn't have a title, but is instead being referred to by the working name TBD, according to a press release. This time around, Lee won't helm the restaurant solo. Joining him is chef Tommy Cleary, of Hina Yakitori. Since the start of the year, Lee and Cleary workshopped food at Lee's other restaurant, Friends Only, hosting two dinners at the Nob Hill restaurant. What they've landed on is an a la carte izakaya-style menu with a beer, wine, and sake menu to complete the experience. Annette Chu Annette Chu Annette Chu Annette Chu During the test dinners, dishes under the Hina menu included tsukune, or a chicken meatball with an egg yolk; kawa, crisp chicken skin wrapped around a skewer and dressed in ikura; and grilled tako, or octopus. For Akikos, diners tried items such as okonomiyaki with king crab and smoked trout roe, chawanmushi with shrimp and truffles, and nigiri sushi. Lee worked with Elmer Lin of Consortium SF to refresh the space. The new restaurant will be 'dark and moody,' the press release states, with paint and wallpaper by Scott White and walnut millwork by Pseudo Studio outfitting the space. Akiko's was originally a sushi restaurant that opened in 1987 under Lee's parents, but in 2009 Lee eventually bought them out and took over the family business. Under Lee's stead, he grew the restaurant into other businesses, including Family Cafe (which opened in 2019 and shuttered in January 2022), 10-seat sushi counter Friends Only in Nob Hill in November 2022, and the eventual move of Akikos to the luxury residential high-rise the Avery. The original Akiko's last service was on New Year's Eve of December 2021, and the space flipped to hosting occasional private events before it closed for its design overhaul. Annette Chu Annette Chu Cleary opened Hina Yakitori initially as a casual yakitori restaurant in Oakland in 2015, having previously trained under acclaimed yakitori master Kazuo Nakayama at Tori+Salon in Tokyo. Four years later, he reopened in San Francisco, reimagining the restaurant as a 14-seat, Tokyo-style yakitori omakase restaurant. The restaurant ultimately closed in August 2023, but Cleary dipped a toe back in the restaurant scene with the Friends Only dinners, as well as pop-ups at Berkeley Bowl and Wesburger this past year. TBD (431 Bush Street, San Francisco) is set to open in mid-to-late September 2025. To keep up with the latest details, follow Ray Lee (@therlsf) and Tommy Cleary (@hinayakitori) via Instagram.
