Brian Malarkey is Opening Herringbone at the Mondrian

Confirmed at last! Asia de Cuba at the Mondrian hotel will shutter on September 3 to make way for a second branch of Top Chef alum Brian Malarkey's La Jolla based seasonal seafood restaurant, Herringbone.

During renovations, the Herringbone crew will begin to assume all of the hotel's culinary operations, and breakfast, lunch and dinner service will be carried out in the hotel's poolside cabanas until the restaurant's NYE debut.

Although Top Cheftestant Amanda Baumgarten was originally set to helm the kitchen of both outposts, plans have changed after her sudden departure last month from Enlightened Hospitality, the parent company the owns all of Malarkey's fabric centric concepts. (Baumgarten is now set to open her own spot called Waypoint Public in the southland.) For now Malarkey will supervise the culinary operations at all his locations and is busy interviewing current employees of the imminently shuttering Asia de Cuba, as well as others to staff the spot.

Following Baumgarten's departure, Malarkey continues to maintain Herringbone's seafood focus, but has begun to offer more terrestrial proteins and a larger number of daily specials. Hopefully his whole fish ceviche makes an appearance in LA, but presently his top sellers are a surf and turf and wood-fired bone marrow.
·Brian Malarkey Debuting Restaurant in Mondrian Dec 31
·Asia de Cuba to Become Brian Malarkey's Herringbone
·Brian Malarkey's Herringbone to LA, Searsucker to Austin
— David Morris