It's that time again—time for the company holiday party. Here are new restaurants, bars, and other event spaces (or venues with special holiday menus) that can work for corporate holiday events, employee gatherings, and other end-of-year festivities.
1. The family behind An Catering's new Santa Monica restaurant, known as Tiato Market Garden Café, is offering a new holiday menu. The limited-time menu includes sustainable fare and biodynamic wines, as well as the Ans' "secret-spiced" organic turkey with sides from around the world. Helene An is the chef, and Tiato serves breakfast, lunch, and happy hour, plus events and catering. Tiato seats 200 inside the 2,414-square-foot cafe and 300 in the 4,300-square-foot patio garden. The venue has a total standing capacity of 500, and the bar fits 17. There is also a 240-square-foot private dining room for 14 at the venue, which opened in June.
2. For a bigger-scale, splashy holiday party, the former Los Angeles Stock Exchange building has reopened as Exchange LA, a nightlife and event venue offering top-end audiovisual capabilities. After a $5 million retrofit and restoration of the property, the space began booking private events in June and is available for buyout with room for 1,000 people; special permitting can increase that number by several hundred, if necessary. The building, which broke ground just before the stock market crash of 1929, was once home to the Los Angeles branch of the now defunct Pacific Stock Exchange, and its room names pay homage to the its past: The main event space and dance floor is called the Trading Floor; the reservation-only mezzanine is known as the Federal Reserve; and the private fourth-floor area is known as the Board Room. The entire venue is 25,000 square feet and includes four stories, four bars, and private access to the Board Room by way of a restored vintage elevator.
3. Casa has a new taqueria-inspired modern Mexican menu and executive chef, Alex Moreno, as well as a special holiday party menu and cocktails. The venue holds 200 and is available for full buyout. Smaller areas within may also be booked individually. The space is anchored by an indoor-outdoor bar that has large rounded booths on the patio known at the venue as "casitas." The casitas can seat anywhere from four guests to 40, and come with a variety of amenities, such as lounge chairs around a fire table.
4. After months of buzz, the Hard Rock Cafe debuted in July in the Hollywood & Highland Center, just a few steps from the Grauman’s Chinese and Kodak theaters. The 20,000-square-foot venue has a capacity of 906 guests and is Hard Rock's second location in Hollywood. The space was designed and constructed to meet Silver LEED certification standards. A private room seats 40, and top-end audiovisual systems are in place for events. Catering, entertainment, and event merchandise can be customized. The whole cafe is convertible into a live music space at full capacity.
5. Red O opened in April on Melrose Avenue, serving Mexican cuisine by Rick Bayless. The menu includes both authentic Mexican and lighter, California-style dishes. The restaurant's dining atrium seats 58 for events. Glass garage doors open up to Melrose on one side and the main dining room on the other. The glass roof is also retractable. The main dining room seats 60 for events, with a 14-foot communal table, banquettes and tables, a bar with leather swings for seating, and a semiprivate dining area. A tequila lounge holds as many as 30 people for a more casual dining experience. It has a 25-foot-long fireplace, bar, and a direct entrance from outside.
6. Bar210 and Plush at the Beverly Hilton are, respectively, a lounge serving small plates and cocktails, and a nightclub, which both opened in February. Tom Ford's contemporary design concept employs shades of purple and black, as well as textures like velvet, chains, and crocodile. Bar210 serves global cuisine from executive chef Marcel Vigneron, with a seasonal small-plates menu that includes tiger prawn ravioli, pork belly sliders, and mushroom tart. There is an extensive wine and microbrew list. Plush offers bottle service and DJs spinning on a high-end custom sound system. A large patio leads out from the dance floor. Together, the spaces offer 7,000 square feet for groups as large as 400. There are multiple full-service bars, plasma TVs, projectors and audiovisual equipment, V.I.P. booths, tiered seating, an outdoor lounge area with a fire pit, and adjacent outdoor space that can increase the total capacity to 2,000.
7. Adding to the air of luxury at the Montage Beverly Hills, chef Scott Conant opened Scarpetta at that hotel property on November 1. The bar area holds 44 while main dining room seats 80. There's room for an additional 45 in the courtyard. A chef's counter in the kitchen holds five, and a chef's table seats 12. Designed by Studio Gaia (which worked on Tao Las Vegas), the bar, main dining room, and courtyard flow into each other. The architecture of the room includes double-height windows framed by sweeping curtains. Unfinished dark wood flooring and millwork round out the rustic and natural details in the spacious venue.
8. Holiday dates are still available for booking at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County in Exposition Park, where the Haaga Family Rotunda reopened this summer as part of a five-year transformation at the museum. Dedicated when the Natural History Museum opened its doors in 1913, the rotunda can accommodate 250 for receptions or 120 for seated events. Lined with marble columns and topped by a stained-glass dome and coffered ceiling, the room houses the first piece of public art funded by Los Angeles County: a Beaux-Arts statue entitled "Three Muses," which represents the disciplines of art, history, and science. With glass doors that overlook the park, the rotunda space may also be used in conjunction with the Exposition Park Rose Garden.
9. The Innovative Dining Group's Delphine restaurant at the W Hollywood Hotel & Residences has a classic French menu and offers Provencal cooking with Mediterranean influences. New York-based design firm Zeff Design created the look for the indoor-outdoor space, which has a palette of blue and white and is framed by archways for an open feel. Bistro seating, wicker furnishings, silver gilded antique cabinetry, a marble-topped bar, reproduction subway tiles, barrel wood ceilings, and modern wind-turbine-style ceiling fans round out the look. Executive chef Sascha Lyon (who has worked at Daniel, Balthazar, and Pastis in New York), helms the kitchen, and introduced a new seasonal menu on November 3, with hearty dishes and traditional winter-weather recipes including new appetizers, entrées, and daily specials, as well as healthy dining options. The space is available for buyout with a capacity of nearly 300, and there's private space for 40.
10. Opening with SBE's new Redbury hotel in October is the restaurant Cleo, helmed by SBE executive chef Danny Elmaleh. The restaurant serves lunch, dinner, and late-night fare from noon to midnight daily. There's a mezze bar, with small-plate selections of meats, seafood, and vegetables, as well as salads, homemade lafa flat-breads, a raw bar, and a variety of vegetarian items. An array of dishes are prepared in a stone oven. There's room for 150 in the restaurant. In addition to Cleo, the Redbury has 24-hour room-service and catering throughout the property's spaces, which are available for full or partial buyout.
