Downtown’s Upcoming Rappahannock Oyster Bar Adds Chef Nick Erven

Things are really starting to light up at Downtown LA’s ROW project, with a slew of new restaurants and coffee shops all looking to come online starting this spring. That includes popular East Coast seafood name Rappahannock Oyster Bar, a shellfish staple that does more than just shuck oysters.

To help with their first West Coast expansion, the Rapphannock crew has brought on chef Nick Erven to run the show. Erven has been consulting as of late, most recently with a menu relaunch for Koreatown club The Venue. His eponymous formerly vegan Santa Monica restaurant is now closed and his partnership with Eric Greenspan and Jim Hustead is now mostly dissolved, so Erven thought it best to jump into this new casual project in Downtown.

Expect much the same look and feel as the company’s existing oyster outlets in cities like Richmond, VA, Washington, D.C., and Charleston, South Carolina. That means a raw bar of course, but also a full selection of cooked fish, sides, dessert, and drinks. The company’s Richmond location was even named one of the best new restaurants in America by Esquire back in 2014.

Look for an opening for Rapphannock sometime in early March, ideally. As for some of the other projects coming to life down at the ROW, there’s Ria Dolly Barbosa doing her thing at Paramount Coffee Project, an upcoming high-end Japanese kaiseki restaurant that’s already serving bento boxes for lunch, and of course all things Tartine and Chris Bianco.

Rapphannock Oyster Bar LA
777 S. Alameda St.
Los Angeles, CA

• Ria Barbosa Jumps to Upcoming Paramount Coffee Project at DTLA’s The ROW [ELA]