Still in bloom
The Rose Venice, Altadena intel, Bird Street listings, downtown private dining, Nickey Kehoe, Ojai, nut farming, MORE
RESTAURANTS • First Person
Ray on Rose
Situated next to Frank Gehry’s Binoculars Building, The Rose has been a Venice landmark since 1979. The bustling, all-day eatery — all of 8,000 square feet — sits at the intersection of Venice and Santa Monica, and at 35, remains an integral part of the city’s culinary scene. Not without evolving, though.
As of February, The Rose has a new chef at the helm: Ray Garcia. It’s a slightly unexpected (yet somehow, entirely fitting) move. Garcia, a native Angeleno, first gained national attention when he opened Broken Spanish and BS Taqueria downtown in 2015. Now, he’s bringing his Mexican-inspired, SoCal culinary perspective to the legacy establishment.
Slowly but surely, Garcia is taking advantage of The Rose’s size and scope by flexing his versatility as a chef, imbuing the menu not just with the flavors from Mexico and Latin America he’s known for, but also, the Caribbean, and a few styles from Asia, too. While breakfast and brunch offerings remain mostly unchanged for now, dinner is where he’s really making his mark.
Some favorites from the new order: wood-fired shishitos in a lemon-ponzu sauce, duck confit over caramelized-onion Tehachapi polenta, and hearth-roasted chicken with aji verde, squash, and pea tendrils. These shareable plates pair perfectly with a bottle of orange wine, nowhere better than on The Rose’s breezy patio. End your meal wisely, with the ‘Ode to Jalisco’: rich mole ganache, chocolate crumble, and hibiscus sherbet. Not what you might expect from The Rose, but one of a host of reasons Garcia will have you coming back for more. –Victoire Loup
→ The Rose Venice (Venice) • 220 Rose Ave • Mon-Sat 9a-10p, Sun 9a-9p • Reserve.
RESTAURANTS • Intel
ALTADENA, ASCENDING: The couple behind Silverlake Wine, Everson Royce Bar, and Triple Beam Pizza are set to open a wine shop and bar in their home ’hood of Altadena. They’re not the only restaurateurs descending upon the mountainous suburb after having settled in the area. A FOUND source confirms that All Time Altadena has broken ground, and a Kismet outpost is in the works, too.
LA RESTAURANT LINKS: DTLA’s multi-venue watering hole Clifton’s Republic will reopen next month • Southeast Asian microchain Star Leaf plants a flag in Pasadena • Where every dollar spent at Silver Lake’s Botanica goes • Towards a unified theory of dining out in LA • Death and Co. is everywhere. Is that a good thing?
REAL ESTATE • On the Market
Birds of a feather
Earlier this month, the two-acre, 5800 SF estate at 1475 N Doheny in the Bird Streets traded for $20.8M. The property, which features a tennis court, carriage house, and vast wine cellar, had come to market in January for the first time in decades, asking $27.95M; it seems the seller quickly understood what adjustments were required on price to get the deal done.
Indeed, in the Bird Streets and other trophy neighborhoods, for-sale properties regularly bounce on and off the market as sellers test the waters with aspirational prices, then reset so as to make the days on market appear fresh in Zillow. (Our sister publication FOUND NY chronicled a similar state of affairs in the NYC townhouse market recently.)
Here, three listings in the Bird Streets for your consideration: one entirely new, one listed in February and since reduced by almost $500k, and one that’s been playing the on/off market game since 2020. God bless their real estate agents.
→ 1526 Blue Jay Way (Bird Streets, above) • 3BR/3BA, 2778 SF • low-slung modernist house with dramatic pool • Days on market: 9 • Ask: $7.65M • Agent: Aneela Zaman, Douglas Elliman.
→ 9342 Sierra Mar Dr (Bird Streets) • 5BR/6BA, 4810 SF • newly renovated Balinese inspired house on a quarter-acre • Days on market: 93 • Ask: $7.995M • Agents: Jacob Greene and Joshua Altman, Douglas Elliman.
→ 1450 Blue Jay Way (Bird Streets) • 5BR/7BA, 6377 SF • 2018 vintage modernist house • Days on market: 1388 • Ask: $11.935M • Agent: Aaron Kirman, Aaron Kirman Luxury Real Estate.
LA WORK AND PLAY LINKS: Erewhon sues city to stop Sportsmen’s Lodge redevelopment in Studio City • First look inside new development Rosewood Residences Beverly Hills • London-based nail salon Townhouse launches U.S. expansion in Beverly Hills • Is Mar Vista’s Fatty Mart the future of neighborhood markets? • Should you use Slack to manage your personal life?
WORK • Thursday Routine
Nut-fueled
LAUREN MONTGOMERY • CEO/founder • Monty’s
Neighborhood you live in: Echo Park
It’s Thursday morning. What’s the scene at your workplace?
I make clean-ingredient cashew cream cheese and butter for a living, and I love what I do, but when I’m not working, I always prioritize meditating, my favorite workouts, getting outside, wandering around my neighborhood, and connecting with friends as much as possible.
You’ll find me in the commercial kitchen for part of the day, overseeing production or doing R&D, or working from a coffee shop in the Arts District. I love Tea at Shiloh for its laidback and airy vibe. I’ve been working on some new cake-in-a-jar flavors as of late, and a cultured vegan feta for a food service client.
Any restaurant plans today, tonight, this weekend?
I wouldn’t consider myself a foodie exactly, more like a hyper-vigilant health foodie. I'm not huge on dining out, unless it’s the Erewhon hot bar — salmon and KWB (or kale-and-white bean) is my go-to. If I’m going out, it’s for a morning stroll in my neighborhood, and grabbing a pistachio latte at Canyon Coffee, lunch at Honey Hi, or occasionally a meetup in the evening for a mocktail at La Fe in Echo Park.
How about a little leisure or culture?
I love an Elysian hike for a quick outdoor fix, a day-long silent meditation retreat at Against the Stream Meditation Center, or live music. The last shows I saw were Devan at Hotel Cafe in Hollywood and Nathaniel Rateliff at the Orpheum Downtown.
Any weekend getaways?
I’m between NYC and LA right now, but loving a weekend trip outside of LA when I can swing it. My go-tos are Ojai, where I love staying at the Capri and the Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel. I also love renting a camper van and seeing where I end up. Another great recent getaway was a weekend retreat at Esalen.
What was your last great vacation?
My last great vacation came before I started my business: nut farming in Spain and Italy. When traveling, I highly recommend working on a nut farm — or any farm you have the opportunity to work on — to understand the culture and food sourcing/processing on a deeper level.
GOODS & SERVICES • FOUND Shop
Welcome home
The gorgeous annex attached to Nickey Kehoe — the design store founded by interior geniuses Amy Kehoe and Todd Nickey — is called, simply, Household. In it, you’ll find top-of-the-line home items, from aged terracotta planters to stoneware butter dishes, coveted by Angelenos and visitors alike. On a recent stop-in, I spotted a Vogue editor and a celebrity client, each sifting through teal-tinted glass carafes, pottered Oaxacan candlesticks, and striped Baina bath towels. Make this your first stop when you want to impress dinner guests or simply say thank you. –Zoe Schaeffer
→ Shop: Household (Hollywood) • 7266 Beverly Blvd • Mon-Fri 10a-5p; Sat 11a-5p.
CULTURE & LEISURE • Techno Pop
Just Like Heaven festival, The Postal Service, Death Cab for Cutie, Phoenix, more, Brookside at the Rose Bowl (Pasadena), Sat @ 12p, VIP tier 2, $389 per
Justin Timberlake, Kia Forum (Inglewood), section 110, Sat @ 8p, $333 per
Kraftwerk, 9 nights, Walt Disney Concert Hall (Downtown), Tues @ 8p, front orchestra, $139 per
WORK • Office Life
Stress test
This bit from Andreessen Horowitz general partner David Ulevitch in Feed Me last week has been taking up some space in my head:
My observation as a board member in a lot of companies is that the entirely-remote teams always seem way more stressed out. Commitment to work tends to also fall off when the only work dynamic is toiling away alone and then being on zoom for meetings — no laughing at jokes during lunch, or taking a walk around the office with coworkers to brainstorm. Offsites help, but aren’t everything.
Mostly, I’ve decided that companies that have raised venture capital from Andreessen Horowitz are probably not the best sample set for measuring employee stress. And that the presence of board members from Andreessen Horowitz may be tipping the scales.
Secondarily, office jokes are overrated (and often better on Slack). Though at my last company, also fully remote, we did end the weekly all-hands with a joke. Everybody laughed (maybe performatively!).
That said, I do worry about the unseen, slow-burn risk of a single door separating my work from my life. So far, the studies seem mixed, which makes sense, given how early in this experiment we are and how complicated the re-imagining of the workplace is. But I’ve been fully remote for almost a decade, with less stress (I think), but also, probably less connection outside these work-home walls.
For FOUND, now publishing in four markets five times a week, the results of our efforts are mostly on the page, easier to track maybe than a software business building toward a big product release. Those four markets (FOUND LA, NY, SF, Miami) also make remote infrastructure more central to the mission than a forced, physical HQ.
It also looks good in the budget and saves us those painful early discussions of whether we can commit to a 10-year lease or splurge on the good desk chairs. Maybe we’d feel differently if we had that sweet A16Z cash. –Josh Albertson
ASK FOUND
Three FOUND subscriber PROMPTS for which we are seeking intel:
I know I should be eating in the San Gabriel Valley, but where?
I need to buy a housewarming gift. What are the best homeware stores in LA?
What’s your favorite restaurant in LA (if you haven’t told us already)?
Got answers or more questions? Hit reply or email found@itsfoundla.com.
RESTAURANTS • The Nines
Private dining, downtown
Damian (Arts District, above), chic Mexico City vibes in an 11-person PDR or lush patio