This is the World’s Best Pastry Chef’s first full-service restaurant.
2017 continues to be the sweetest year yet for chef Dominique Ansel. After being named the World’s Best Pastry Chef 2017 last week, today he announced that his new L.A. restaurant, which is set to open this fall, will be located at one of the city’s most trafficked destinations, The Grove.
“I am incredibly excited to be opening a full restaurant in Los Angeles for the very first time and doing so at The Grove, a destination that is in the heart of the local community and welcomes visitors from all over the world just as our own bakeries do,” Ansel said in a press release. “A few years ago, we launched a one-day pop-up at The Grove, during which 750 people showed up in the pouring rain on a February day starting at 2am. That stuck with me over all these years, and I’m looking forward to being a part of The Grove and join a team that truly values service and hospitality.”
The new restaurant is Ansel’s largest project to date and will be his first time behind the helm of a full restaurant. The new venture will include all-day seated dining, a bar program with inventive cocktails, indoor and outdoor terrace seating, brunch service and an open kitchen, along with a new outpost of his eponymous bakery.
Set on two floors, the new restaurant will house a second-floor dining room with seating for 150, including indoor and outdoor terrace seating, along with a 10-seat private dining room with its own private terrace. Additionally, the bakery will be located on the first floor with indoor and outdoor café seating for 70.
Dominique Ansel demonstrates his new dessert corn dog collaboration with the chefs of Wildair and Contra.
Ansel plans to pay homage to his restaurant’s new home by dedicating a large portion of the menu to creations made exclusively for L.A. that aren’t available anywhere else. This isn’t the first time that Ansel has created a locally-inspired menu for a new location though. Just last month he revealed a number of new pastries that were created specifically for the opening of his new Mitsukoshi Ginza bakery location in Tokyo.
By Max Bonem