(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)
8 L.A. supper clubs that pair good food with live music
- Share via
The sloping View Park-Windsor Hills neighborhood bustles during the day as residents grab smoothies from Simply Wholesome market, order pies from Crustees or walk the track at Reuben Engold Park. But with few late-night dining and nightlife options, the unincorporated community turns sleepy after dark.
That’s changing with the opening of Somerville, a swanky spot on Slauson Avenue from partners Yonnie Hagos and Ajay Relan of GVO Hospitality, behind five locations of Hilltop Coffee (including one just next door) and Lost, a Mexico City-inspired rooftop in downtown. With modern continental cuisine and a full cocktail menu with live bands that take the stage every night, the space brings the supper club model to a South L.A. neighborhood steeped in Black history.
The immersive lounge pays homage to Central Avenue, a once-thriving thoroughfare that, for decades, served as the heartbeat of L.A.’s Black community with a strip of jazz and blues clubs that brought big-name musicians such as Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday to their stages. The restaurant is named after Hotel Somerville, a former mainstay on the avenue that’s since been converted into Dunbar Hotel, a senior living center.
“We wanted to create our version of what that era might have been,” said Relan.
Since Somerville launched last November, it’s not uncommon to see clusters of guests draped in stylish furs and beaded gowns idling near the Slauson and Overhill intersection, hoping to snag a seat at what’s quickly become one of the city’s toughest reservations.
The lounge belongs to a growing supper club scene in Los Angeles, one that spans a long-running showcase in Los Feliz, a Glassell Park sandwich shop that flips to an evening jazz club and a clandestine wine bar in Highland Park.
Here are nine L.A. supper clubs to visit next time you’re craving dinner alongside a live show.
Showing Places
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
BG Nites at Bub and Grandma's
Glassell Park American $$
By day, it’s one of L.A.’s favorite bakeries and dinettes. By night, on Sundays and Mondays, it’s a low-lit jazz haven. Bub and Grandma’s is perhaps best known for its stellar and sprawling bread operation, its pies and some of the best sandwiches in town but at BG Nites — the only time you’ll find the Glassell Park restaurant open past 3 p.m. — it hosts a rotation of jazz ensembles near the front windows, dims the lights, pours the wine and lets the night unfold in a neighborhood-restaurant setting.
Trios, solo pianists, experimental groups and more provide the soundtrack to a special menu that includes many of the Bub and Grandma’s daytime hits, plus BG Nites-exclusive dishes such as roast chicken with tangy white barbecue sauce; a succulent burger on a pillowy house-made bun; and vinegar-laced steak tartare. This is a jazz night with comforting food and a cozy, casual feel. Find each month’s BG Nites lineup on Instagram, and be sure to time your arrival around 6 and 8 p.m., when the sets begin.
Trios, solo pianists, experimental groups and more provide the soundtrack to a special menu that includes many of the Bub and Grandma’s daytime hits, plus BG Nites-exclusive dishes such as roast chicken with tangy white barbecue sauce; a succulent burger on a pillowy house-made bun; and vinegar-laced steak tartare. This is a jazz night with comforting food and a cozy, casual feel. Find each month’s BG Nites lineup on Instagram, and be sure to time your arrival around 6 and 8 p.m., when the sets begin.
Read All Read Less
Route Details
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
The Jazz Café at Cipriani Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills Italian $$$
Cipriani’s upstairs jazz club boasts both style and substance. The world-famous restaurant — founded in Venice, Italy, nearly a century ago — serves a full menu of fresh pastas, steaks and Italian specialties on white tablecloths in the ground-floor dining room, but ascend the stairs and you’ll find the new Jazz Café. Here, small palm trees bend in S-shapes from the walls over zebra-patterned banquettes, servers clad in white tuxedo jackets offer tremendous service, and the music rotates throughout the evening.
The vibe is that of Hollywood’s Golden Era or supper clubs of the 1930s and ’40s, with performers often donning evening gowns or suits with fedoras, and their songs range from jazz standards with trios and quartets to frontman-forward silken soul. Many of its attendees don their own finest in a nod to the theme. An abbreviated menu features Cipriani’s signature Italian dishes and sips, including whole veal chops, pastas and caviar — as well as beef carpaccio and the Bellini (white peach puree and Prosecco), which Cipriani’s founder Giuseppe Cipriani is credited with creating — plus a new selection of smaller, snackier items like egg-and-anchovy sandwiches. Tables tend to book out weeks in advance, so keep an eye on reservations before heading over.
The vibe is that of Hollywood’s Golden Era or supper clubs of the 1930s and ’40s, with performers often donning evening gowns or suits with fedoras, and their songs range from jazz standards with trios and quartets to frontman-forward silken soul. Many of its attendees don their own finest in a nod to the theme. An abbreviated menu features Cipriani’s signature Italian dishes and sips, including whole veal chops, pastas and caviar — as well as beef carpaccio and the Bellini (white peach puree and Prosecco), which Cipriani’s founder Giuseppe Cipriani is credited with creating — plus a new selection of smaller, snackier items like egg-and-anchovy sandwiches. Tables tend to book out weeks in advance, so keep an eye on reservations before heading over.
Read All Read Less
Route Details
(Danielle Dorsey / Los Angeles Times)
Verse
Toluca Lake Jazz venue
It’s a rainy Wednesday evening, but every table at Verse is occupied, filled with couples on a date night, groups of friends celebrating birthdays and music-industry types obscured behind sunglasses and furs. The nondescript exterior gives way to a moody dining room with spacious seating facing a stage that’s back lit with built-in bookshelves, making the entire affair feel like you’re private dining in some millionaire’s upscale den. The restaurant, our server tells us, features 58 strategically placed speakers that pipe in clear, even sound no matter where you’re seated. Live bands take to the stage each night, including residencies from notable names such as Terrace Martin and Ozomatli, the latter of whom is ongoing every Thursday in February.
The menu from chef Oscar Torres pulls broad Mesoamerican and Mexican influences, resulting in creative plates including maple-glazed pork belly over butternut squash risotto, Mediterranean octopus and squid ink-glazed potatoes floating in a moat of pipian verde and cheesecake topped with briny caviar for dessert. The cocktail menu features creative and classic options, including a Negroni blanco with mezcal.
The menu from chef Oscar Torres pulls broad Mesoamerican and Mexican influences, resulting in creative plates including maple-glazed pork belly over butternut squash risotto, Mediterranean octopus and squid ink-glazed potatoes floating in a moat of pipian verde and cheesecake topped with briny caviar for dessert. The cocktail menu features creative and classic options, including a Negroni blanco with mezcal.
Read All Read Less
Route Details
(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)
Somerville
View Park-Windsor Hills Soul Food New American $$$
Entering Somerville feels like stepping back in time, with velvet-clad booths, Art Deco light fixtures that cast the space in a sepia glow, and a grand piano that anchors the stage under a crystal chandelier and billowing canopy. The menu from chef Geter Atienza (formerly of New York’s Bouchon Bakery and Broken Spanish) blends steakhouse, new American and soul food influences, and local musicians of note such as Terrace Martin regularly take the stage. Menu highlights include fried chicken sliders smeared with honey mustard and caviar-dotted crème fraîche, and a creamy lasagna with braised collard greens. The beverage menu features a wine list curated by Westside Winos, the group behind West L.A.’s Offhand Wine Bar, with a similar emphasis on West Coast and organic wines, and the cocktails are named after jazz and soul hits. Try a Love Supreme, a chartreuse-hued drink with rice vodka, Midori, Cointreau and lemon.
Read All Read Less
Route Details
(Danielle Dorsey / Los Angeles Times )
Ristorante Per L'Ora
Downtown L.A. Italian $$
Wander down the mirrored hallway until you find yourself in the bustling lobby restaurant in downtown’s Per La hotel, with coffered ceilings, plush booths and a marble fireplace that towers in the back of the room. Originally built as the Bank of Italy headquarters in 1922, the hotel features Italian-inspired touches throughout, and the restaurant menu follows suit, along with plenty of local influence. That means you’ll choose between dishes such as salmon crudo in a zesty pomegranate sauce with Fresno chiles, orecchiette with short rib guajillo ragu and Sicilian-style duck over apple and celery root puree. Cocktails weave similar themes, including Ciao Bella with gin, Creme de Violette, sparkling wine and lavender, and a mezcal Negroni with white cacao and chocolate mole bitters. A brief wine list includes West Coast and European bottles. Live jazz bands play near the host stand every Thursday from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Read All Read Less
Route Details
Beverly Grove Italian restaurant Florence Osteria & Piano Bar hosts live music in its main dining room.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Florence Osteria and Piano Bar
Beverly Grove Italian $$
It’s hard to tell which takes center stage: the food or the piano. At the first standalone restaurant from Francesco Zimone, who owns the L.A. and Santa Barbara locations of the world-renowned L’Antica Pizzeria da Michele, both vie for their place in the spotlight. Zimone’s new Beverly Grove restaurant puts the piano in the center of the dining room, where live music can be found every Thursday to Saturday from 7:30 to 10 p.m. Pianists might be joined by an upright bass, a trumpet, a vocalist or some combination thereof — and sometimes play more than one instrument themselves.
To dine, find Tuscan cuisine with upscale flair: There are Wagyu meatballs simmered with heirloom tomatoes; house-made ravioli stuffed with braised oxtail; caviar-topped linguine with scampi tartare; dry-aged steaks; and more. The wine list — nearly all Italian — offers plenty of range to complement the jazz no matter your mood or tastes. Florence Osteria and Piano Bar is chic without feeling stuffy, a casual but elegant night set to music.
To dine, find Tuscan cuisine with upscale flair: There are Wagyu meatballs simmered with heirloom tomatoes; house-made ravioli stuffed with braised oxtail; caviar-topped linguine with scampi tartare; dry-aged steaks; and more. The wine list — nearly all Italian — offers plenty of range to complement the jazz no matter your mood or tastes. Florence Osteria and Piano Bar is chic without feeling stuffy, a casual but elegant night set to music.
Read All Read Less
Route Details
(Andrea D’Agosto/For The Times)
The Georgian Room
Santa Monica American $$$
This basement speakeasy attached to the Georgian Hotel feels like the sort of old-school-inspired haunt where, decades ago, you might have seen Frank Sinatra flirting with some Hollywood starlet in the corner, in between sets played on the Steinway & Sons piano built into the golden quartzite bar. No cell phones are allowed and you’ll have to make a reservation to be shown to its secret alleyway entrance, but this only adds to the time capsule allure. The food blends Italian and classic steakhouse influence, including doppio ravioli with braised lamb shoulder (get the truffle supplement) and grilled lamb sirloin with smoked tomato jam, with classic sides such as cream spinach. The beverage menu features a worldly wine list and house cocktails that put a modern spin on classic drinks, such as Ruby Slipper, based on a Manhattan but with scotch, port wine and absinthe.
Read All Read Less
Route Details
Singers Matt Forbes and Jesse Goddard do jazz standards and lounge tunes every other Friday night at the Dresden Room in Los Feliz.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
The Dresden
Los Feliz Jazz venue
An institution, a time warp, a neighborhood watering hole, a steakhouse, a musicians’ gathering place: The Dresden remains all of these things and more at 70 years and going strong. The 1950s aesthetic lends to the eternal charm of this Los Feliz landmark, which is split into two sections. In the main dining room, large curved white booths and rouge-colored walls make a striking setting for a full menu of steaks, chops and pastas. The other half of the space comes to life with music from Wednesday to Sunday, when soloists and bands let it rip in front of the lounge section’s rock wall, and play to the guests perched on bar stools or on the swiveling chairs at low tables lit by candles.
The abbreviated lounge menu includes Americana stalwarts such as wedge salads, prime rib French dip sandwiches and a fanciful shrimp cocktail served in a vintage vessel with a silver rim to trap the tails’ shells. This is a space that calls for a martini or two as you take in one of L.A.’s most consistently diverse jazz lineups: There are Old Hollywood-inspired crooners, jammy modern ensembles, soft instrumental sets, funk trios, yacht rock covers and more, depending on the night of the week. Casual and with a crowd just as eclectic as its programming, this remains one of the city’s most fun live-music finds to pair with good food. There are never any covers at the Dresden, but note there is a two-drink minimum on Fridays and Saturdays.
The abbreviated lounge menu includes Americana stalwarts such as wedge salads, prime rib French dip sandwiches and a fanciful shrimp cocktail served in a vintage vessel with a silver rim to trap the tails’ shells. This is a space that calls for a martini or two as you take in one of L.A.’s most consistently diverse jazz lineups: There are Old Hollywood-inspired crooners, jammy modern ensembles, soft instrumental sets, funk trios, yacht rock covers and more, depending on the night of the week. Casual and with a crowd just as eclectic as its programming, this remains one of the city’s most fun live-music finds to pair with good food. There are never any covers at the Dresden, but note there is a two-drink minimum on Fridays and Saturdays.
Read All Read Less
Route Details
Eat your way across L.A.
Get our weekly Tasting Notes newsletter for reviews, news and more.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
