Every Restaurant That Opened in LA This October

The Hotel Clark, a 1914 building on Hill Street that sat empty since the late 1990s, finally opened in September, and its all-day restaurant held its grand opening party on October 15. Executive chef Gio Koletty, previously of the Peninsula Beverly Hills and Casa del Mar, cooks California produce through a Greek, Italian, Spanish and Southern French lens. There's a second-floor pool deck for drinks and a wine list past 150 labels.

Breakfast is where the prices are posted: the Clark Breakfast is $25, shakshuka $26, steak and eggs $36, and a 60-minute free-flow sparkling add-on is $45 at weekend brunch. Dinner runs hamachi crudo, mezze, penne alla vodka and a whole branzino, with cocktails from $18.

Brian Bornemann built Crudo e Nudo into the Westside's seafood bar. Bar Fortuna, in the old Vamos Vamos space on Main Street, is his Italian one: a neighborhood cocktail and wine bar with handmade pasta, a run of negronis, and amaro poured into antique glassware. Noah Castellanos runs the bar, JD Plotnick the wine list, Jose Morales the kitchen. The house rules are the kind of thing Bornemann does on purpose: no parmesan or pecorino, no steak, and pasta made from locally stone-milled whole wheat.

Hours are Wednesday and Thursday 5 to 10pm, Friday to Sunday noon to 10pm, with the bar and late bites running to midnight. An espresso walk-up window comes in the mornings.

Diane Dang grew up in Nha Trang, where her family ran a French bakery, and opened the first Brodard in Orange County in 1996. It has been one of the state's best-known Vietnamese restaurants ever since, and the grilled pork spring rolls are the reason. This is the first location outside Orange County, in the former Tocaya space at 2nd & PCH, with indoor and patio seating.

Prices are on its own site: the grilled pork rolls are $7.50, shaken beef bo luc lac $24.95, Hanoi pork vermicelli $20.95, seafood claypot $23.95 and the crispy duck garlic noodles $31.95. Vietnamese crepes and a beef pho round out the familiar end of the menu.

The h.wood Group (Delilah, The Nice Guy) turned the old Bootsy Bellows space on Sunset into its first Japanese restaurant, open since Monday, October 19. Executive chef Erik Idos, an LA native who spent close to a decade with Nobu and ran its Hong Kong kitchens, cooks a modern izakaya menu built for sharing: sashimi and nigiri, skewers and charcoal-grilled meats off the robata, rice and noodle dishes, and a crispy quail karaage.

The room is dark on purpose, with a vinyl booth stocked with a few thousand records and two private rooms with built-in karaoke. Kevin Lee, a certified Japanese ice master, runs the cocktails, so the ice gets carved by hand.

The Napa Valley burger stand, founded in St. Helena in 1999, opened its second Southern California location at 4th and Wilshire on October 2, a short walk from the Promenade and the Pier. It is a big one: 6,600 square feet inside, a 2,200-square-foot heated patio, more than a dozen community tables, and a bar with TVs.

Burgers, chicken sandwiches and tenders, fish tacos, seasonal salads and hand-spun shakes are the core. The bar pours a Napa list (Joel Gott, Rombauer, Caymus), rotating local drafts and a frosé. A separate soft-serve counter with a self-serve kiosk runs Straus organic soft serve, sundaes and cookies baked on site.

Pro skateboarder Don "Nuge" Nguyen, the late restaurateur Steven Arroyo and Mikayel Israyelyan started Burger She Wrote on Beverly Boulevard in 2021 and added Sherman Oaks in May. Brentwood, on San Vicente, is the third and the largest, which still means 25 seats. It held its grand opening party on Saturday, October 3.

The formula does not change: 100 percent American wagyu from Snake River Farms, smashed, on King's Hawaiian buns. A single is $9.50, a double $14.50, the Oklahoma Smash (onions pressed into the patty) the same, and the Impossible version $11.50. Fries are $4.50, fancy fries $9.50, and the $7 Pooch Meal is a plain patty with cold potatoes for the dog.

Bingz is a big fast-casual chain in China built on one thing: rou jia mo, the meat-stuffed flatbread of Xi'an, done with a house-made bun that shatters like puff pastry. Its first US shop soft-opened inside the TAWA Gateway plaza on Valley Boulevard in September and held its grand opening on October 2.

The signature pork bing uses 32 spices. After that: black pepper beef with king oyster mushroom, Peking duck, cumin chicken and two vegetarian versions, with cold liangpi noodles, sizzling chili noodles and spicy wontons on the side.

The Southern California boil chain, started in 2010 and now 40 locations across seven states, opened on the corner of Wilshire and Vermont with a grand opening on Saturday, October 10. The format is the one that made it: crawfish, shrimp, crab or lobster by the pound, bagged in one of the house sauces, dumped on the table.

It is the second Kickin' Crab in the city after Hollywood. Wilshire/Vermont station is across the street.

The Beverly Boulevard diner that has fed late-night Los Angeles since 1993 opened a second location on Tuesday, October 20, in the old All Day Baby corner at Sunset and Descanso. It is the first Swingers on the Eastside, and it is opening in stages: takeout only to start, running from 6pm until 3am, with the full dining room expected in December and 8am to 3am hours after that.

The menu mirrors Beverly, which means the breakfast-at-midnight end of things, with location-specific specials promised. Plaid booths, mosaic tile and wood paneling carry over.

Owner Sean Martin calls it a California bakery with an accent. Founding baker François Pied trained at École Lenôtre in France and lead baker Abel Pulsifer came from Arizona; the two worked together at Bub and Grandma's before this. The space is on Airport Avenue by the Santa Monica Airport, on the Mar Vista line. It soft-opened in late September, ran a second soft-opening weekend from October 2, and the official opening is still to be announced.

Croissants take four days, with at least 18 hours of fermentation and hand lamination. The flour is French plus ancient grains from Hayden Flour Mills, and there is a butter list of eight, from Bordier to a goat butter to a plant-based one. Beyond the croissants: a shakshuka danish, a gruyère and chive quiche, sausage rolls, sesame epi, chocolate cramique, and sandwiches like ham with Comté. Coffee is Caffe Luxxe.

Jason Afriat and Sasha Solonin run an events agency, spent six months on the recipe and tested the two finalists on 100 neighbors before picking one. The result is a strained, protein-rich, Mediterranean-leaning frozen yogurt in four flavors (plain tart, vegan chocolate, coconut, pomegranate) with no toppings bar. Toppings are chosen for you: whipped honey, matcha salt, crushed baklava, halva, pistachio cream, dates, figs, olive oil.

It soft-launched October 1 on Crescent Heights just south of Beverly and threw its grand opening on October 8. The house order is plain tart with halva, honey, olive oil and pistachio.

The Coffee Bean at Santa Monica and Hancock was a Rainbow District fixture for decades. Its replacement is a coffee shop run by the Men's Health Foundation, the nonprofit clinic upstairs, built as a daytime gathering spot rather than a bar. It soft-opened at the end of September and held its grand opening in mid-October.

Specialty coffee, scones, banana bread, chocolate and lemon-blueberry cakes, weekend cinnamon rolls, salads, sandwiches and a breakfast burrito. A fuller kitchen is planned once the hood passes inspection, and a portion of coffee sales is set to be matched and donated to a rotating charity.