Classic Asian Restaurant Crustacean Returns to Beverly Hills

Farley Elliott is the Senior Editor at Eater LA and the author of Los Angeles Street Food: A History From Tamaleros to Taco Trucks. He covers restaurants in every form, from breaking news to the culture, people, and history that surrounds LA's dining landscape.

Welcome back to Crustacean, the glitzy Beverly Hills corner restaurant run for more than two decades by the An family. Following a protracted remodel, the celebrity-filled hotspot is up and running once again, albeit with an entirely new look and more than a few fun food surprises.

The official reopening date for Crustacean Beverly Hills is Tuesday, March 13, but take a look around now at what fans and newcomers will find a week from today. Orange County’s Jh2 Architects have completely redesigned the building to be a multi-level, multi-functional modern restaurant, incorporating several floating walls that can shapeshift to accommodate more private dining or larger group meals. The main dining area is filled with tufted gray and pink seating across two- and four-tops, plus booths, with a tall, glowing bar in one corner and lots of moody detail throughout. A small outdoor patio area will offer al fresco dining, while inside the nature weaves through nearly every table thanks to the restaurant’s enduring underfloor water feature.

As for the kitchen, owner Helene An has almost entirely revamped the menu, keeping some of the classics (read: garlic noodles and caviar-topped tuna egg rolls presented in smoking cigar boxes) while also playing to the modern food movement with a variety of rethought Vietnamese menu items. She’s also brought in chef Tony Nguyen to oversee the day-to-day, as Nguyen spent years at one of the An family’s other restaurant properties down in Orange County.

Perhaps most interesting is the future arrival of the still-unnamed upstairs restaurant, which will be markedly different than the posh downstairs dining. Expect an exclusive room with limited seating and a menu of so-called “secret kitchen” items, dishes mostly only available over the years to in-the-know diners at the An family restaurants in San Francisco, LA, and Orange County. Rumor has it, that restaurant will be open by invitation only.

Crustacean reopens to the general public on Tuesday, March 13, with some limited friends and family nights to run beforehand. The upstairs restaurant is still in the works, with a hopeful opening later this spring.

Crustacean
468 N. Bedford Dr.
Beverly Hills, CA