Every year, as we’re canvassing the region for restaurant research, we also seek out outstanding places for drinks. Then we narrow the year’s standouts to a select handful. This year we present five watering-hole windfalls for the city, mostly for wine or cocktails but also including an ambitiously sweeping coffee destination.
Showing Place Places
Bar Betsy
Altadena Wine Bars $$
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
This spring, Tyler Wells opened Bar Betsy one door over from Betsy, the Altadena restaurant that was reborn after miraculously surviving the Eaton fire. The bar pours espressos, matcha and coffee in the morning alongside bowls of grits or kefir and granola. When the sun sets, there’s a robust list of wines by the glass to accompany the cheese and charcuterie, or the Wagyu cheeseburger that will undoubtedly capture your attention. Sommelier David Rosoff, a longtime fixture of the Los Angeles wine scene (who sometimes freelances for this paper), consults on the bar’s wine program. It’s a primarily French and Italian list, with a few surprise favorites, including a handful of Listán Negros and a Cassis rosé. But Rosoff, or whoever you find behind the bar, is ready with a few helpful suggestions. Bar Betsy is a coffee bar. It’s a wine bar. It’s home to your new favorite burger. It’s whatever you need it to be.
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Bar Di Bello
Silver Lake Italian Cocktails $$
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Some out-the-gate clarifications: Bar di Bello, a windowless room recessed in a Silver Lake shopping complex behind burgundy velvet drapes, is technically more restaurant than bar. Early descriptors identified the place as “Milan-inspired.” That refers to the design, a dazzlingly chic room, mixing modernist and vintage elements, wrapped in walnut paneling with flowing, hypnotic grains. Menu-wise, osso bucco is about the only Milanese specialty on a pan-Italian mix of mostly ubiquitous salads and pastas and meats. The cooking, honestly, could level up. But the hospitality is as soigné and engaging as the space, and the aperitivo-leaning cocktails are roundly excellent. Show up, then, and inquire about seats at the short, proper bar. Order the Greenhouse Martini lightened with tomato water alongside a snack like guanciale-studded suppli Amatriciana. Bask in the gorgeousness. Take your evening from there.
Quat
Glassell Park Coffee $
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
A gated “coffee compound” best summarizes the two-building, 3,500-square-foot project in Glassell Park conceived by AJ Kim and Scott Sohn, the pair behind the local Kumquat cafes and their roaster-coffeehouse counterparts Loquat. Effectively, Quat fulfills just about any caffeine need. Looking for a $4 cup of balanced drip coffee, or a latte made with ceremonial-grade matcha? Grab it and then, like everyone else, vie for a shaded seat at one of the outdoor tables. This ambitious undertaking, though, mostly aims to excite coffee geeks, or those looking to explore the seemingly limitless flavor possibilities in coffee. An ever-changing menu of specially fermented, house-roasted beans for espresso and pour-overs sports expressive notes similar to wine or chocolate; they can range from honeysuckle and citrus to blackberry, nectarine and lemongrass. Next door, a retail room highlights shelves of coffee from stellar roasters around the globe, and tables displaying nerd-out brewing gear. Atelier Q, a side room with an eight-seat bar, will, I hope, one day open as planned for coffee omakases. Meanwhile, the space hosts weekly tastings of micro-lot rarities.
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Real Charmer
East Hollywood Cocktails Tiki Bar $$
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Somehow, this nearly 2-year-old Virgil Village bar flew under our radar, but with a self-serve popcorn machine and icy martinis in cool leather booths, it became a favorite destination for cocktails over the summer. Veteran bar owner Dustin Lancaster transformed the former Smog Cutter Lounge into a red-hued cocktail den with a binder full of libations. For something that will leave your mouth tingling, there’s the tequila-based Savory Bay, zingy with Thai chile bitters, ginger, bell pepper and smoked paprika. I’ll steer martini drinkers toward the Meze Martini, savory with Kalamata olive and dill oil, or the No. 5, like a noticeably richer, classic gin martini with the addition of pear brandy and grapefruit. Mondays are tiki themed. Tuesdays are reserved for karaoke. And if you get hungry while you sip whatever you’re sipping, there’s Spam musubi, and anchovy-stuffed olives. Let this serve as your official reminder to go visit and be charmed.
Vandell
Los Feliz Cocktails $$
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
Since opening in December, crowds have gathered outside Vandell’s forest-green door and down its patch of Los Feliz sidewalk, waiting to join the civilized chaos inside. The popularity is earned. This isn’t just a fresh, cool bar. It’s an exceptional one, an L.A.-specific one, built on a bedrock of talent and vision and experience. The newsy narrative that no one’s drinking anymore? Vandell pushes forward our drinking culture by writing a surprise bestseller: part urban biography, part California fantasia. Shawn Lickliter and Vay Su, industry veterans and partners in the business, are the bar’s engines of success. Su is remarkably skilled at intensifying the flavors of a single fruit or vegetable in a drink of many elements. Exhibit A: the herbed, spiced, mezcal-laced Smoked Tomato. It’s my cocktail of the year. Lickliter, meanwhile, is a savant at vintage spirits. Savor his expertise via a Manhattan made with 1960s-era whiskey. Pause, too, to soak in the space’s many exquisite details, especially the pastoral mural sketches by artist Molly Bounds inspired by nearby Griffith Park.
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