Culver City’s Hayden Closes Monday For Menu and Design Reboot

Culver City’s newish Hayden wine bar and seafood cafe is hitting the reset button. The six-month-old restaurant will keep its name and corner location at the buzzy Platform project, but is changing the menu format and some of the design elements inside.

Hayden is the work of talented chef Ari Kolender, who originally harnessed a vision of all-day oyster bar vibes, from coffee and pastries in the morning to salads, champagne, and natural wines through a seafood-focused dinner. Since day one there has also been a small market component selling wines by the bottle and the like, but it hasn’t seemed to build much of a following so far.

So now Kolender will close Hayden for a bit in order to reformat the interior of the restaurant. That means no more counter service (and no more breakfast), and an expansion of the takeaway market side of things. As for the menu, Hayden will reportedly start leaning more into the wine bar side of the equation, focusing on drinks instead of purely oysters and conservas. The idea is to make Hayden a more all-encompassing place for folks to enjoy, rather than being billed as a seafood-only emporium for hardcore oyster fans. Look for a closure on Monday, and a reopening not long after that.

As for the rest of the Platform project, things are still chugging along. Shops like Blue Bottle and Loqui manage to stay rather busy, while meat house The Cannibal closed last weekend. There are still a few other projects slated for the Platform, including a proposed Roberta’s Pizza from Brooklyn, and the rooftop project from West Hollywood’s Norah.

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