El Segundo’s Best Italian Restaurant Adds a Late Night Cocktail and Snacks Bar

El Segundo destination restaurant Jame Enoteca has quietly expanded its footprint, blowing out an attached wall to add a bar for drinks, snacks, and late-night bites — a serious rarity for the sleepy seaside city. The new Jame bar opened just days ago, effectively doubling the space of Jame overall, and bringing a whole new after-hours vibe to Main Street.

Jame’s bar is both an actual bar, complete with gold under-lighting and lots of dark wood (to say nothing of the booze), and a sit-down spot for food with friends thanks to a long light blue banquette that runs along the far wall to seat two- and four-top tables. The focus, naturally, is on a full lineup of inventive cocktails, but there will also be snacks like grilled cheese panino and chips with onion fonduta dip available both late-night and afternoons. Better still, there’s room for a retail area selling everything from merch to dried pasta for take-home dinners. The small opening bar menu can be found here — and be sure to note that all of the cocktails, from the Daniele Uditi negroni to the Jazz Singsanong espresso martini, are named for famous LA chefs and restaurateurs.

Jame Enoteca first opened back in 2018, when Kalb was a known local chef but well before his days on Top Chef. Since then, the pasta impresario has expanded considerably, opening Ospi in Venice in 2020 while plotting new projects in Brentwood and beyond. Kalb and company had always wanted to continue to focus on (and send new diners to) Jame Enoteca though, given its low profile and fun strip mall environment, so pushing out into a bar just made sense.

Jame’s new bar area, built by MAKE Architecture, is now open at 241 Main Street in El Segundo, and will keep late-night hours from 9 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, with an extension to midnight on Friday and Saturday.