An eclectic debut in West Hollywood by Southern chef Sean Brock (of Husk fame in Charleston and Nashville) celebrates his passions: vinyl music and sustainable, live-fire cooking. It’s a place where you can begin or end your night with cocktails and tunes.
Wallpaper* dines at Darling, Los Angeles
The mood: stylised Hi-Fi lounge
The entry space is a bar-lounge fashioned after a vinyl-only, hi-fi listening den in Japan, complete with seven custom speakers (designed in collaboration with DJ MAXV), abundant greenery, and a retractable canopy ceiling. Here, you can sip on a roasted aubergine cocktail by bar director Jason Lee while enjoying quirky musical mixes that won’t be found on Shazam – many pulled from Brock’s own expansive vinyl collection of more than 5,000 45s.
The interiors, designed by Sean Leffers, feature raw walnut panelling, birch plywood, hand-cut ceramic tiles, and a pebble-flecked concrete floor, creating a richly tactile environment. Artworks by Mose Tolliver, Peter Tomka, and Santiago Quesnel are woven throughout, but anchoring the formal dining room is Legal Tender: a 23ft piece by Narsiso Martinez, inspired by Mexican muralism and Dada collage. The enlarged banknote features a central portrait of an undocumented California farmworker from Mexico, flanked by masked, goggled labourers in the fields.
The food: Wood fire meets California’s fresh bounty
Brock and chef de cuisine Ben Norton offer a focused, rotating menu of just 12 dishes, each designed to highlight the best of West Coast ingredients with subtle Japanese influences. Central to the kitchen is a custom, hand-forged wood-burning grill, where the team experiments with different types of wood (from fragrant orange tree to robust red oak) to achieve unique layers of flavour. The opening menu includes Shigoku oysters on ice with bonny melon juice and borage, and a red oak-grilled bone-in strip steak served with Swiss chard and black truffle. Other highlights include citrus wood-grilled Wolfe Ranch quail with huckleberries and nasturtium-avocado purée, as well as a delicate venison tartare. A limited number of 24-day dry-aged burgers will also be available daily until they sell out.
Darling is located at 631 N Robertson Blvd, West Hollywood, CA 90069, United States.
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