Michael Mina’s Massive Beverly Center Restaurant Will Play the Coastal Italian Hits

Things are starting to come together (on the dining side at least) for the Beverly Center, with plans laid out for a food hall, a new expansion of national restaurant Yardbird, and a massive restaurant from celebrity chef Michael Mina himself. That restaurant is to be called Cal Mare, and according to San Francisco Chronicle critic Michael Bauer, it’s essentially just a renaming of an existing Mina concept known as Postcards from La Costiera.

Postcards from La Costiera has been operating as a pop-up of sorts, a limited-time dining experience held within the larger Mina Test Kitchen up in San Francisco. Much like Wolfgang Puck’s test kitchen dinners called The Rogue Experience, the idea is for Mina and his massive crew of chefs from across the country to use the room to explore new restaurant concepts and dishes before taking them to the greater public. Postcards from La Costiera is earning just that chance, after first coming to life following a trip to coastal Italy between Mina and chef Adam Sobel.

So now Postcards will become Cal Mare, says Bauer (who always seems to have the inside scoop on such things). The menu is likely to earn some tweaks along the way as well, but there are plenty of reference points along the road to fruition. In fact, there’s a whole album of photos dedicated to dishes from a Postcards dinner that happened up at the test kitchen around the turn of last year. It’s mostly light fare like fish served whole or as a crudo, but with a fair balance of fresh pastas and bright cocktails as well.

The space itself is said to be massive, occupying over 8,000 square feet of real estate at the ground floor level of the Beverly Center. That means diners won’t have to access the current labyrinthian parking structure and under-construction passageways of the property, but instead can swing through for a meal on the fly, and get out smoothly.

Update: Mina’s team reached out to say that Cal Mare (the correct name after all) is indeed on pace for a late-year opening, likely in November.

Cal Mare by Michael Mina
8500 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA

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