Every May the jacarandas flower across Los Angeles like a slow firework, and for a few weeks the pavements of Hancock Park and Hollywood turn violet. On Melrose Avenue, at the corner of North Citrus and not far from Osteria Mozza, a restaurant named for the trees opened in May 2026, timed to the bloom after a fortnight of previews for friends and family. From the street it is a dark, slatted box fronted by lilac-tinted, floor-to-ceiling glass, in the old Koast space, and at dusk it glows like a lantern somebody forgot to switch off.
A chef, a DJ and a front room
Daniel Patterson opened Coi in San Francisco in 2006 and took it to two Michelin stars; he kept hold of it until 2022. He co-founded LocoL in Watts with Roy Choi and Alta Adams in West Adams with Keith Corbin. Sarah Lewitinn came by a different road: she DJed and threw parties in New York, championed bands including My Chemical Romance and worked as a music editor. They met in 2021 and married in Copenhagen the next year, with René Redzepi helping to organise. From October 2023 they hosted Shabbat dinners at their Hancock Park house, cooking Egyptian Mizrahi dishes from her family recipes, and in 2025 the house became a supper club, Jaca Social Club. Jacaranda is its grown-up successor, self-funded from their savings.
“A tasting menu that still remembers it began at a dining-room table.”
The room
Preen Inc. designed it as a living room that happens to hold a tasting menu: white grass-cloth walls, rust-coloured banquettes, pale wooden tables and a sculpture in the shape of a jacaranda leaf floating overhead, Calder-style. The walls carry paintings by Landès Lewitin, Sarah's great-uncle and a founder of the New York art collective The Club, and a commissioned jacaranda tree by Adele Renault. There is no dress code and there is a communal table where strangers are encouraged to swap notes. Diners can tell the team their favourite songs in advance, and Lewitinn works them into the soundtrack, which leans towards nineties and early-noughties alternative rock. It suits a long night with friends who like being fed and talked at in equal measure.
What to eat
There are ten courses, vegetable-forward and shaped by the farmers' markets, and the menu turns with the season. Early in the run, the first bites included a puffed brown rice cracker with avocado and radish, and a yuba roll filled with kelp and mushrooms. Then came soft tofu with fresh seaweed and caviar, cool and silky, and grilled and raw vegetables in a green juice of yerba santa, nopales and lime. Stuffed morels arrived with new potatoes and spruce tips, earthy and rich, and a steamed Kauai prawn with yellow squash and habanero.
Order the duck first, if it is on. The pepper-crusted breast with roasted blueberries and wild bay is the standout, backed by a salad of pickled shallots and duck cracklings and a cup of broth made from grilled bones. Matthew Tinder, the James Beard-nominated pastry chef from Coi, handles Tehachapi-grain bread with house-cultured butter and desserts such as cherry and cherimoya over shaved ice, a raw chocolate and roasted kelp tart, and Fruit Anarchy, a plate of preserved fruit that has used etrog citrus from a Fresno farmer. Andrew Miller, also from Coi, runs the line.
A fair hedge: this is a single seating that unfolds over several hours, and the menu changes so often that the dishes described here may have moved on by the time you arrive. Patterson, asked about stars, has said it is not something he thinks about, which suits the mood of the evening.
Drinks
Rick Arline, formerly wine director at Camphor, favours small, independent, minimal-intervention producers with California at the centre, and there are fine sakes and craft beer too. The non-alcoholic pairing has drawn praise for a sparkling elderflower kombucha and a rare 1978 aged oolong, and a hybrid pairing is on offer for the undecided.
Come in May if you can, when Melrose is still warm at seven and the windows turn lilac as the light goes. From the pavement, Jacaranda looks like exactly what it grew out of: somebody's dinner party, with the door left open.
- The vibe
- Lilac-glass living room, communal table, art on the walls, nineties alt-rock soundtrack.
- The food
- Seasonal vegetable-led tasting menu: soft tofu with caviar, stuffed morels, pepper-crusted duck.
- The drink
- California-led, low-intervention wines; non-alcoholic pairing with kombucha and rare tea.
- A tip
- Dinner Wednesday to Saturday, Sunday lunch; tell them your favourite song when booking.
