A caviar-topped baked potato that ranges from $120 for 30 grams of royal white sturgeon to $1,035 for 125 grams of top-tier oscietra. Angel hair pasta with cream and the choice of including caviar or shaved truffle or each. A grilled cheese sandwich, adorned with garlic flowers and, in fact, lined in caviar. These are just some of the over-the-top objects on the new West Hollywood location of Caviar Kaspia, which additionally gives conventional caviar service, Cinco Jotas Ibérico ham, Wagyu tenderloin, lobster salad, king crab salad, Dover sole and caviar-topped crispy rice.

Stroll-ins are welcome throughout lunch, however dinner is just out there for family and friends and their friends. You possibly can apply to be on the waitlist if Caviar Kaspia doesn’t already know you.

This LA outpost of Caviar Kaspia, which Sam Ben-Avraham and Rahav Zuta opened on Melrose Place in October, is about luxurious on luxurious. The restaurant has already hosted events for elite manufacturers like Giambattista Valli, Rolls-Royce, Cartier and Rodarte. The trendy celebrities who’ve popped by embrace Ciara, Winnie Harlow, Alessandra Ambrosio and Kiernan Shipka.

Ben-Avraham, a serial trend entrepreneur (Atrium, Kith, Liberty Gala’s) who’s making his first foray into the restaurant enterprise, remembers many nights he spent at Caviar Kaspia in Paris. That’s the place the model began in 1927.

“I’ve been going to Paris for possibly 25 years, each time there’s Vogue Week, so not less than twice a yr,” Ben-Avraham says. “Typically, I’d be there 4 instances a yr. And someway throughout each go to, anyone is arranging a dinner at Kaspia. It’s a kind of moments the place everybody celebrates.”

So when it got here time for Ben-Avraham and Zuta to determine what to do with an area immediately in entrance of the Maor jewellery retailer in West Hollywood, the thought of gems and caviar was compelling. It was so compelling, in actual fact, that the imaginative and prescient for Caviar Kaspia in Los Angeles jolted Ben-Avraham awake at 4 a.m. sooner or later. Maor had been engaged on a corridor that will home pearls and different valuable stones. And abruptly, Ben-Avraham couldn’t get the thought of caviar pearls out of his head.

“The following day, we known as the blokes from Caviar Kaspia in Paris and stated, ‘Hey, now we have this loopy thought to open in LA,’” Ben-Avraham says. “‘We have now a stupendous house.’ They got here down right here, noticed it and favored it. That’s how we ended up doing it.”

There’s a wealthy Caviar Kaspia historical past to replicate in Los Angeles. However quite a lot of what govt chef Corey Burgan (who previously cooked at Maude, the Beverly Wilshire lodge and 208 Rodeo) is doing in West Hollywood is about respectful reinterpretation and innovation. Caviar Kaspia is legendary for its caviar baked potato in Paris, the place it makes use of French Samba potatoes. In LA, after intensive analysis, Burgan determined to mix Russet and Yukon potatoes. With the starchiness of a Russet and the creaminess of a Yukon, he can have each the flavour and fluffiness he needs.

“You sort of get the perfect of each worlds,” Burgan says. “We roast off the Russets, after which we combine in 25 to 35 % of the Yukon.”

Burgan’s caviar grilled cheese, in the meantime, was born in LA. It comes on potato bread, as a result of Caviar Kaspia is understood for potatoes and since Burgan realized that the low moisture of the bread means he will get extra crispness on the surface of every sandwich. There’s a mixture of mozzarella (for stretchiness) and Beemster cheese (for sharpness and saltiness).

“Like some other enterprise, even in trend after we open a retailer in a overseas market, we at all times attempt to adapt to the native buyer and perceive that not each idea is a copy-paste,” says Ben-Avraham, who provides that he labored with Burgan on a menu with salads, fish and vegetable dishes that “folks can eat each day.”

To create a lobster salad, for instance, Burgan experimented with completely different lettuces, fruits and dressings earlier than nailing the mixture of butter lettuce, hearts of palms, avocado, radish, sorrel, apples and a citrus French dressing. His artistic high-end cooking at Caviar Kaspia is the end result of a profession during which he honed his fine-dining chops underneath Curtis Stone at Maude after which continued to prepare dinner for a well-heeled clientele whereas operating large Beverly Hills kitchens.

Regardless of all of the glamour at Caviar Kaspia in West Hollywood, there’s additionally a purposefully low-key component right here. (On a current afternoon, a reality-TV persona who was having lunch inquired about dinner. The employees briefly mentioned the right way to deal with placing him on the waitlist with no promise of a dinner reservation.) There’s a please-no-photos coverage printed on the menu.

“We don’t let folks take photographs except it’s a personal occasion,” Ben-Avraham says. “I simply don’t need my house to turn out to be a kind of Instagram moments the place everyone takes 10 minutes of photographs on the staircase or one thing like that. I really feel I’m very old school in a approach. I get the brand new world and I perceive the necessity for that, however I simply don’t need to find yourself with a bunch of individuals utilizing the house as staging for their very own Instagram.”