Giving up on breaking the rules

Sqirl dinner and LA's new bistro moment

There are two tells that show me someone is full of shit: You say you don’t like The Killers, or you claim the food at Sqirl isn’t good.

Sure. I, too, have seen a Boston darty on an early afternoon when “Mr. Brightside” kicks in. It isn’t pretty. I’ve also spent dreary mornings on Virgil Ave watching a group of influencers stand atop tables taking identical pictures of the Famed Ricotta Toast. But conflating the culture around a thing with the quality of the thing itself is broken brain nonsense. Brandon Flowers’ band has been ripping 18-song, bangers-only setlists for two decades. And Sqirl is still full of dishes better than what you’ll find at 95% of all-day cafés.

There are three Sqirls: the idea, the place and the food. The idea became Los Angeles’ most influential restaurant export of its era. The food rocks. The place remains divisive. This week, I broke my “never spend more than $75 per person to eat outside” rule and tried Sqirl’s new dinner concept to see how all three still fit together. The menu leads with cute soft opening language in a classic Sqirl stamp, a welcome hug of the familiar with a hint of caution.

It was no shock that everything photographed incredibly well. Greens and yellows and purples on plain white plates. Wood tables. A lamp at just the right height and hue to highlight each dish.

Sqirl knows how to do aesthetics (non-derogatory). It worked on me like a beacon when I first moved to Los Angeles, settling walking distance from a sorrel pesto rice bowl, daily quiche or black sesame frozen coffeeccino. The cookbook wormed its way into my brain, taking over how I cook before 2pm but also how I pictured my new home. In the vision of Los Angeles where you’re hotter, happier and 25% less interesting than you were in New York, Sqirl basically runs the customs department. Before TikTok waves drove pastry lines and before marketinggg👏, the version of cool that founder Jessica Koslow established coalesced behind her singular vision, from the dish names to the website to the casually dressed celebrities sharing the small space with you.

Sqirl dinner is an evolution, one you feel even before you arrive if you’ve been following the journey. The high-level menu items read so classic bistro that at first it feels like a bit. Crudo, tartare, bread service, Caesar, big green salad, fries, a couple pastas, an entrée run of steak/chicken/fish/pork/big veg. But as you scroll down to the italicized descriptions, you see a distinct point of view return in the form of cheffy, high-flavor accents. Jimmy Nardello chili jam. Dill-laden whey butter. Membrillo gastrique. A pickled cherry bomb. This is still spiritually the promise of Everything I Want To Eat, just served after dark.

I don’t have much interest in doing deep reviews of dishes so early into an opening. That kind of restaurant take is also not really my thing. I will say that I was not surprised by how much I loved nearly everything that hit the table. The Sqimps, the most classically Sqirl-named dish on the menu, with stuffed shrimp chorizo in grilled squid and aioli over a fennel salad, is a knockout. The texture on the beef tartare is my favorite in a long time. A fermented shallot vinaigrette perfectly dressed a heaping bowl of California greens. They get fries right, a rarity in LA. But Sqirl doing great food is fairly table stakes to me, an earned level of trust in quality even for something brand new. I’m more intrigued by the direction Koslow has taken this place and how it’s landing in Los Angeles at this specific moment.

“This is the restaurant I opened when I was 30,” Koslow told Eater of the original café. “This dinner part is the restaurant I want to eat at now.”

Last night at Le Chêne, a new-ish French restaurant in New York, a kind server sold me on a dry-aged turbot, flown in from Brittany and broken down from its 15-pound whole into servings ranging from 8 to 11 ounces. The final plate featured two filets over a seaweed beurre blanc with pickled ginger, veg and a few onion rings, priced between $220-$250. This is part of the New York dining experience now. Getting a good Friday night table is one level of exclusivity. Balling on their three-digit special is another. With so much demand, FOMO and cash flowing around, it’s exactly how small, upscale restaurants like Le Chêne should be responding. Star chef Alexia Duchêne gets to have fun with a rare product. Her team gets fatter tips. The diners get their show and social media status.¹

Sqirl dinner is meeting a different kind of moment in LA, one that’s finally getting more adults out to eat in the wake of multiple blows to the local restaurant industry. You see the bistro bingo surfacing at Vandell in Los Feliz and Hermon’s near Highland Park, two places I’ve been quoted 90-minute waits on recent weekdays. There’s the spare dish names followed by italicized swerves — fresno chili condiment, cream cheese clouds, lots of yuzu. There’s often a liquor license and branding with the promise of a good date-night. Some combination of instinct and market fluency has pinned what gets adults off the couch. If everyone just wants to eat at Houston’s, bring Houston’s to them.

My favorite versions of this show up at places I’ve already written about plenty. The most expensive dish at Wilde’s is a $68 meat pie followed by a couple $38 mains. The clientele here might have the money for a $200 turbot, but it’s not what gets them excited to leave their bungalow. The cooking at Wilde’s rivals that of any New York restaurant reaching for the same flavors, with twice the comfort. At Morihiro you can stroll in for some of the time zone’s very best sushi, à la carte, paired with simple, high quality cocktails. A four-top at Ètra piled with pasta and vegetables is often me at my happiest. Even Baby Bistro marries peak dish creativity with perhaps the city’s most welcoming, homey mix of service and dining room. The roaming Bruce pop-up takes what these chefs did well at Horses and makes it lighter, brighter and more fun. The now controversial Substack pastina got described at my table as "the ideal version of something I'd make when stoned in my kitchen." Exactly.

After dessert clears back on Virgil, the check arrives with a little candy on a classic Sqirl plate bearing a quote from local architect Reyner Banham: “You might wonder what I’m doing in Los Angeles which makes nonsense of history and breaks all the rules.”

I’m not sure we’re breaking that many rules out here anymore. While New York leans into high-ticket grandeur, LA is settling even further into accessible ease. It’s a shift from the pre-pandemic surge of impossible creativity that made this the best dining city in America. It’s a stage of maturity that doesn’t so much concede such competition as ignores that any competition ever existed. A more apt inscription for the moment might be a dialogue.

“I feel sorry for you.”

“I don’t think about you at all.”

1. I settled for a $56 halibut with a parsley clam sauce and XO. It ripped.