“Neighborhood restaurant” branding is being used aggressively in Los Angeles. Wilde’s in Los Feliz positions itself as a walk-in neighborhood restaurant, yet it has had impossible reservations, two-hour waits, and a small menu with high prices. Hermon’s uses a similar promise of being a neighborhood restaurant regardless of where diners live, but it quickly became a prominent see-and-be-seen destination. Both places have become victims of their own success, with bookings staying full and lines forming nightly. The resulting demand disrupts nearby residential areas and makes the concept feel less like a local staple and more like a destination experience.
"Wilde's, a seasonal modern-British spot in Los Feliz, aspired to be “a walk-in neighborhood restaurant,” according to its owners. It has an intimate interior and upscale comfort food - but it's spent much of the past six months sporting impossible-to-book reservations and two-hour wait times, and the menu, while well-executed, is tiny. It has its charms, but it's difficult to imagine visiting over and over for a $26 zucchini appetizer and a $42 entree of pork with sage and charred onion."
"Hermon's opened with a similar ethos: “Hermon's can be your new favorite neighborhood restaurant, regardless of where you actually reside,” declared the Los Angeles Times, an arguably oxymoronic claim. It rapidly became one of the city's premier see-and-be-seen dining rooms. I had a great martini and steak frites there recently, but, like Wilde's, Hermon's has become a victim of its own success. I would like to go more often, but it's been booked solid since the holidays. It's also probably driving its immediate neighbors bonkers; it punctuates a formerly sleepy residential block with a nightly line out the door, a valet lot, and"
Read at Eater LA
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