Vandell: Wood, Hillhurst, and the Long Line

Los Feliz on Hillhurst Avenue is one of the last stretches in the basin where people still walk from dinner to a door. Vandell opened in the former Nossa space in December 2025 and spent 2026 becoming the room the city argued about. Michael Francesconi and Matthew Glaser of Park Hospitality—already known for Donna’s—partnered with République cocktail alumni Shawn Lickliter and Vay Su. Architect Brion Moran paneled the interior and named the house for Vandell Griffith, the longtime curator of Griffith Park and son of the land’s donor. The allusions to the park sit quietly in the design. The guests are the neighborhood’s professionals and the city’s drinkers who will wait in a line for a mini-martini. They are couples, colleagues, people who treat a last drink as the point of the night. They dress for a handsome room. They accept the wait because the wood and the glass are worth it.

The interior is the reason this diamond sits in the five. A thirty-foot bar in wood, three small rooms each lighted differently, a clubhouse scale rare in a storefront. Mini-martinis arrive so cold the glass frosts. The list runs to more than two dozen drinks: originals and classic variations, a Vandell Martini with gin and tarragon vinegar, an olive martini with smoked brine, market cocktails named for cucumber, tomato, peach, melon. Lickliter’s vintage spirits and Su’s savory, herbal work give the program two authors. A burger and fries, anchovy toast, a Caesar, steak frites: the kitchen exists so the evening can last. Most seats are held for walk-ins; the few reservations vanish early. That is both the popularity and the tax.

Order a market cocktail if you want the house at full invention. Order a martini if you want to see whether the frost is real. Ask about vintage Campari or a Japanese malt from Lickliter’s stash if the night is for bottles. Come earlier in the evening or on a quieter night if you want the service at full attention and a choice of rooms. Street parking is the neighborhood custom.

What you gain here, instead of a hotel bar with a view and a chain menu, is the year’s most complete new cocktail house, built by local operators for a walkable street. Comfort is wood, a cold glass, a burger if you need one, and the old pleasure of a neighborhood room that suddenly became a destination. Traditional hospitality here is the staff staying calm when the bar is four deep and still answering a question about a spirit as if you were the first to ask.

The limits are the limits of success. Lines form in any weather. The room can run loud at peak. Hillhurst is not a canyon garden. Guests who wanted a seated manor with a no-standing rule will remain at Wellesbourne. Guests who wanted the visual clubhouse of 2026, and who will plan the arrival, will understand the wait when the first martini lands.

Vandell is a Citywide Spotlight Nightcap Diamond Destination because it is the most popular and most architecturally complete new cocktail room in Los Angeles, independently partnered, unique to this city, luxurious in paneling and pour, and already treated as a last-drink destination rather than a trend. Choosing it is choosing craft, a handsome room, and the comfort of an evening that still believes a well-made drink can gather a neighborhood and hold it.