LA Dining Stars Return With Takeaway Greatest Hits Menus

Two of Los Angeles’ most essential restaurants, Bestia and Bavel, are returning to life this week after shutting down at the start of LA’s coronavirus pandemic. The sister Arts District restaurants will each be offering their own spin on family-style take home meals, available for pickup in timed slots in front of the restaurants beginning tomorrow.

Bestia/Bavel owners Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis announced the planned return of their restaurants in a newsletter blast yesterday, saying:

Both Bestia and Bavel will be offering takeout family-style menus to continue providing healthcare for our entire staff. It is incredibly important to us to support our dedicated team during these unprecedented times, many of whom have been with us since the beginning.

Bestia’s menu runs $49 per person, minimum two people, and includes a variety of starter dishes (house-cured salumi, ricotta, a little gem salad) as well as the restaurant’s signature cavatelli with pork sausage, plus wagyu short ribs and some of Gergis’s chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Bavel’s menu is also $49 per person, and includes popular dishes from the restaurant like the hummus and lamb neck shawarma.

Pickup reservations for each can be found on Tock. Ownership is also selling gift cards, t-shirts for the restaurants, and the Bestia cookbook to help support healthcare for the staff.

Now that this tumultuous restaurant life amidst the outbreak of COVID-19 has come into somewhat clearer focus — at least for now — some of the city’s most prominent restaurateurs are beginning to figure out a new service model moving forward. While other big-name operators like Majordomo and Angler remain closed, others like n/naka are focusing on inventive ways to still serve food.

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