Monkey 47 gin with a lemon twist and a rinse of Vermouth; it’s how The Hundreds’ Ben Shenassafar takes his martini — a focus on the cocktail menu of his debut restaurant. “Served really cold,” the entrepreneur said inside the new joint, The Benjamin Hollywood.
“It was the hardest part,” he said of naming the restaurant, located at 7174 Melrose Avenue on the corner of Formosa Avenue in Los Angeles. It officially opens to the public June 25.
“Because I did not want to name it after myself,” he continued. “I didn’t want this restaurant to be about me. I told Jared and Kate, ‘This is a test. This restaurant is a test. We don’t know if we’re gonna succeed. I don’t know how it’s gonna do. If we fail, my name is on the building.’”
He’s referring to his business partners in the endeavor, well-known proprietor Jared Meisler of The Roger Room, The Friend and new cocktail bar The Moon Room (which is housed upstairs, replacing Bathtub Gin), among others, and culinary strategist Kate Burr of consulting agency A La Mode.
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“I don’t want it to be about me, so I fought it for a long time,” Shenassafar went on.
He turned to longtime friends, The Hundreds cofounder Bobby Kim and Vinny Dotolo of Jon & Vinny’s: “I asked them both for suggestions on names, because I was really struggling. And both of them came back with The Benjamin Club. And I liked it, but I didn’t want it to be the club. It’s funny, they texted right after each other. I knew right away that was the name. And instead of it being a club, you know, we’re in L.A. and so we put Hollywood at the end — and The Benjamin Hollywood was born.”
An homage to old-school Americana, The Benjamin Hollywood has all the makings of your favorite neighborhood hangout — but also worth the trek. The menu is filled with American classics, overseen by executive chef Johnny Cirelle of Bestia, Bavel and Spago.
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Starters include $26 shrimp cocktail and $25 orange chicken wings with sweet and sour glaze. In mains, the $29 Benjamin Burger is made with New School American Cheese, hickory sauce, grilled onion, house pickles and served with fries; there’s a $79 Australian wagyu New York strip, with cognac cream sauce and peppercorns, a $38 roasted chicken and a $68 branzino. Among the sides is a $15 twice-cooked baked potato, served with crème fraîche, chives and cheddar, with the option of adding bacon lardon for $8 or 30 grams of Astrea Caviar for $80.
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For dessert, there’s $18 Cookies and Cream, brown butter chocolate chip cookies served with house whipped cream (Burr’s idea); a $16 carrot cake; a $14 dark chocolate pudding, and $16 sticky toffee date cake with gooseberry and pistachio ice cream. But everyone will leave with a sweet treat; as a parting gift, alongside the check, tables will receive custom The Benjamin Hollywood-branded mint chocolate truffles from Valerie Confections.
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At 4,000 square feet, located in a 1920s building (formerly Stone Street Coffee), the interior is inviting with warm lighting and caramel-stained wood paneling, featuring a 15-seat oak bar that’s front and center and surrounded by cozy banquettes. Designed by Meisler, the dining room seats 58, showcasing Art Deco details with its custom, black and gold carpeting and wedding cake pendant fixtures. Back walls are covered in Gucci wallpaper with a black, white and orange lily pattern, leading to a bright and spacious outdoor patio that will open later this summer. On the speakers expect the music to lean into R&B and hip-hop, with the likes of Kaytranada, Frank Ocean — and both Kendrick and Drake — curated by friends including producer Alexander Spit. And all around, staff will be uniformed in custom black chore coats designed by The Hundreds, made in downtown L.A.
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“We have raised them all a little bit, so the tables are bar height,” said Shenassafar of the indoor booths, upholstered in olive-colored mohair, before pointing out drawings of characters on the walls created by artist Jo Beck. “We call them the dudes,” he said of the figures, seen in various poses and phases of martini making.
The cocktail menu is developed by Nathan Oliver, using seasonal ingredients for his take on classics. Some of the martinis come with snacks — to the delight of anyone who’s ever hoped for a small bite with a cocktail while sitting at a bar (a rarity in L.A.). Ben’s Martini ($35), as Shenassafar likes it, comes with a side of chips, while the Dirtier Martini ($22), with Tito’s Vodka and a house-made mix, comes with olives and capers.
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“We have a tequila martini and a porn star martini and just getting kind of a little playful with it,” explained Burr. “And then for our sparklings, we have everything from a yuzu spritz to an apricot spritz that’s going to be seasonally changing in and out with whatever we’re finding at the farmers market.”
There’s something for everyone. The $22 Porn Star Martini is made with Amass vodka, Champagne, passion fruit and coconut. There’s a Manhattan on the pricey side at $40 using Wolves Whiskey, with sweet vermouth, bitters and orange; a seasonal $20 spicy strawberry margarita with El Tesoro Blanco Tequila, shiso, lime and serrano pepper, as well as beer starting at $8 and nonalcoholic options at $14 and $18. For those looking for wine, the list is kept tight with less than 20 bottles, curated by sommelier Sam Rethmeier of République and Chi Spacca. And after dinner, there’s digestifs, port and dessert wine.
“What I asked of Sam was, although we don’t have a big wine list, if someone that’s a wine snob came in and took a look, they would be stoked to order a bottle of wine off of what we have to offer,” Shenassafar said.
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A known name in fashion, streetwear culture and a fixture in the L.A. scene, Shenassafar started The Hundreds with Kim in 2003 while bonding over a love of sneakers while the two were at Loyola Law School. It was also a shared love of food that had them branch out to create the Family Style Food Festival, a wildly popular L.A. event with top chefs and streetwear merch, with producer Miles Canares in 2019.
The event was acquired by media and entertainment company Complex in May for an undisclosed sum. (Livestream shopping platform Ntwrk acquired Complex from BuzzFeed Inc. for $108 million about three months earlier.)
“I feel that Complex Media is the perfect fit for Family Style Food Festival. They understand what we represent in the food world, bringing food and culture together in one place for everyone to experience,” said Shenassafar, who also hosts Tastemade’s “Big Appetite” video series — where he travels across the country to highlight restaurants and share food experiences.
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Anything he’s learned through those endeavors and brought to The Benjamin Hollywood?
“It’s hard for me to answer, because everything that I’ve learned through The Hundreds and food festival and my travels is just second nature to me,” Shenassafar said.
What has always stayed with him is the value of genuine customer service.
“I worked at Nordstrom when I was a teenager, and at Nordstrom the customer is always right, no matter what,” he continued. “And I learned that at an early age. I brought that into The Hundreds, and something that Bobby and I always prided ourselves on is our customer service. When someone walked into our store, we wanted it to be the opposite of when you walked into Supreme. And I want that same mentality here for The Benjamin…I know that in the end, making people feel good and giving them what they want — to an extent — will always have them coming back for more.”
Going on, he added, “People are going to come here and spend a lot of money to have dinner and drinks, and I want them to leave having felt like they had the best night of their lives. I want them to feel like they got one over on us for how much they paid for dinner because of the experience they had.…The experience is going to be not just about food, not just about hospitality, not just about drinks, not just about the music, not just about the room and the comfort, it’s a sum of it all.”
Staff is made up of service professionals who understand the art of hospitality, emphasized Burr: “Obviously, we want the food to be incredible. And it will be. But one thing that we always talk about, from inception, was the idea of hospitality and hospitality as a sixth sense or language.…It’s about the experience of dining with people. That present dining experience is what fuels me and what I really want to focus on here. So for us, it’s about all those little touch points. You know, knowing what someone’s favorite martini is on our menu when they come in and having it ready to go.…We want people to leave with a feeling.”
The Benjamin Hollywood will be open for dinner Tuesday through Saturday from 5:30 p.m. until late, with reservations available via Resy.