Natural Wine in Los Angeles
IF YOU KNOW | NOV 4, 2020
Jonathan Yadegar
WHO
Natural Wine
WHAT
Los Angeles
WHERE
About
Jonathan Yadegar is chef & entrepreneur born and raised in Los Angeles. Growing up in a Persian household, food was always at the center of family life. At a young age, Jonathan developed a passion for connecting family and friends over food. After 5 years living in the Midwest, where he became obsessive over beer, he moved back to LA to continue his career at sweetgreen. His nerdy obsession for beer was quickly replaced with natural wine.
Eventually Jonathan’s passion for cooking and hosting people led him to start, joncooks, a dinner series bringing people to his backyard to enjoy family style meals and natural wines. In August of 2020, he left sweetgreen to start a natural wine label that is set to launch spring 2021. When Jonathan isn’t working on his wine label, he is putting on intimate private dinners for people across Los Angeles and Southern California.
The first place I think about natural wine in general, not just in LA, is Marvin. That was where I had this ah-ha moment. I first went there in 2015, when I had no idea what natural wine was. I was living in Chicago at the time, and was a huge beer nerd – wine was too expensive, too stuffy for me. I tried natural wine, this juice, and it totally flipped a switch in my brain. I got super hooked, and eventually fell into this black hole where I started looking into what it was, its producers and varietals. Max, the owner of Marvin, was way beyond the curve of everyone in LA.
They’re super well known for being the OG mecca of natural wine for retail in LA. A lot of the intimidation I had around fine wine shook off when I started shopping at Domaine, looking at the labels, picking out bottles etc.
The guys here are so romantic about wine and love telling its story. They get really personal with the winemakers they carry in their shop. Everytime you leave with a bottle, you end up knowing the day the guy who produced it was born and what his blood type was. They have an amazing collection, it’s more boutique with smaller allocations. They really struggled during COVID, not having that in-person connection with customers. They also have a publication called Visions – it’s their wine newsletter and it’s unbelievable and so informative.
My favorite bar in the country is The Ten Bells in New York. There are few places in LA where you get that same New York bar feeling, the same energy of the lights and the vibe and the music. Bar Bandini is a breath of fresh air in that respect. It does a good job of drink curation and building community.
I think their slogan is actually ‘natural wine bar disguised as Thai restaurant’. It shows – their wine list is immaculate and they’re clearly respected. Any time a cool winemaker is in LA, they’ll be pouring themselves a glass at Night + Market. I love spicy food and natural wine together – it’s the perfect marriage and they know how to marry it perfectly. A lot of places know what good wine is, but here they also know the people really well that are making these amazing wines and have that personal connection. It’s expensive to fly to places like France, Italy, Austria, Germany to meet producers, but Kris and Sarah (the owners) have created a forum, where these kinds of people are always around.
There’s no bullshit here. The food is really good (not just the pizza) and the wine list always matches. They’re constantly updating it. This place, to me, is where go for a mid-afternoon stress break. The last time I went there was to break fast for Yom Kippur. I was like, what am I craving (after all the pent-up Jewish guilt) what do I need to take the edge off – and Roberta’s was the first place that came to mind.
Everything – from the vibe, to the food and the butcher-block paper menus – it’s such a unique LA experience. It takes a lot of attention to hand-write things like they do, and to update those hand-written things multiple times a week, those are the little details that show people they really care. Being a super-freak about restaurants, what I’ve learned about the best restaurants out there is that the food is always secondary to the experience. You can get really good food at a lot of places, but when you have that experience, when the right music hits at just the right volume, when the wine list is done right, the service – that’s what can make it go from good to great. All Time is big and encompassing. It has things that are easily affordable, and then it has a lot of sophisticated stuff. The people there are pretty knowledgeable and really take the time to explain to you, top-to-bottom, what adventure you can get yourself into.
There are certain things that you should only really eat at a restaurant (unless you know how to do them well) and oysters, in my opinion, is one of them. Although I cook, I had a really poor experience shucking oysters once, where I shucked off my thumbnail, but my brother figured out that Melody does oysters to go. They put them in this sheet pan with ice, they’re all shucked and nicely wrapped, it’s so well executed. But they also have a great natural wine selection, and an outdoor patio. It’s one of the few places that feels normal during the pandemic.
Eating in a parking lot is such a foreign concept, but if you’re going to do it, eat here. The food is good, it’s different. The wine list is great, as is the service. People are happy to be there. It also has one of the best, if not THE best, cocktail program in LA. I can only drink so much wine, and I love a good gin martini.
(Please note: the parking lot seating is a temporary situation due to COVID – they normally have a beautiful covered patio and indoor dining.)
It’s a casual setting for such a surprisingly good wine list. We need more places where natural wine isn’t considered a luxury or a destination product, but more of a let’s grab a beer and a bite kind of thing, or rather, let’s grab a glass of riesling or a glass of skin contact sauvignon blanc and have a burger.
Back to that NY vibe, I think this is one of the few restaurants in LA that has that. They only have a few wine offerings, short and sweet, but it is stuff that goes perfectly with seafood, all very simple, refreshing and clean. They have the best raw program I’ve been to in LA with oysters and clams. The music is also really good. Ari, who is behind it, is a genius and I like it there because they strip everything down. They don’t hide behind anything with their food and their wine, they’re not trying to reinvent the wheel – they just have really high quality products.
I think it’s amazing that people are elevating Jewish deli food. Their wine list is the most reasonable in all of LA. It’s the type of place where you can go and just order a bunch of good food and great wine and don’t feel like you’re going to kill yourself on the budget.
It’s a great wine bar in Thai Town. They made it really fun because they launched a La Morra pop-up, which is my favorite pizza in all of LA. That’s how I found out about it actually, then I just started going back. LA has these wine bars, but they never really feel like a bar-bar. This one does. It’s dark and has that element of grunge, that scent to it, but it’s not just about hard-booze and beer here, wine is really at the forefront.
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