Jordan Kahn Has a Ridiculously Expensive Fine Dining Destination in the Works

Jordan Kahn is not a chef who follows the restaurant opening playbook. When his newest restaurant, Destroyer, opened last year, it attempted to do so without any media attention—there was no press release or pseudo-Space Invaders game website for weeks following its debut.

Well now it seems the chef attempted similar antics with another restaurant, dubbed Vespertine, according to the LA Times. Far from the casual breakfast and lunch fare intended to feed the local office working crowd (albeit with rather stark aesthetics and a head-scratching soundtrack), Vespertine will offer a $250 tasting menu with two seatings per night.

For context, Trois Mec is $85 for five courses plus snacks, and Maude’s tasting menu floats around $150 for ten courses.

The move to fine dining seems like an appropriate step for the former Red Medicine chef, who will serve around 20 courses to the 22-seat dining room. Here the menu draws inspiration from architecture rather than current dining trends. Apparently “rampant fermentation” is off the table.

Kahn is working with architect Eric Owen Moss to open the restaurant in the glass and steel construction right across the street from Destroyer in Hayden Tract. That building, known as “The Waffle” is an undulating two-story structure divided into four levels. Beyond constructing the building, Moss will also have a heavy hand in the design elements right down to the pitchers on the table.

This focus on architecture will carry over to the food, as Kahn states it is currently a primary source of inspiration. After three years in the making, Vespertine is scheduled to open this spring.

Do yourself a favor and check out the website, composed of an artsy-as-hell modernist video and the following restaurant description:

Vespertine is a gastronomical experiment seeking to disrupt the course of the modern restaurant

A perceptual and cognitive experience, where deliciousness is driven by form and texture is crafted into sculpture

Blurring interrelationships between materials and ideas, environment and context, of sound and dissonance

Vespertine
3599 Hayden Ave.
Culver City

• Red Medicine's Jordan Kahn Opens Super Serious Breakfast Spot in Culver City [ELA]