By Jenny Hontz
For dineLA.com
Los Angeles, a city known for the isolating effects of its car culture, is suddenly embracing community. Diners across the city are gathering at communal tables, where they sit side-by-side with strangers, sharing conversation and cuisine.
At AK Restaurant + Bar and Gjelina, two new hot spots on Abbot Kinney in Venice, you can drop in without reservations and grab a chair next to your neighbors. And a communal table takes center stage at The Bazaar by José Andrés at SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills, where diners enjoy raw bar selections and cotton candy wrapped around foie gras.
“I think of it as a way of bringing people together,” says Conny Andersson, the Swedish-born chef/owner of AK, which built two tall communal tables to blend in with the energy of the bar. “Anybody who sits down there seems to be happy. It turns into a little bit of a party.”
Joan’s on Third added an antique communal table when it tripled its size a year and a half ago. Hollywood types hold meetings there. Mothers bring babies. Friendships, even romances have formed. You never know what might happen at the communal table, where serendipity and spontaneity rule.
“It is so wonderful, I cannot even tell you the response,” says chef/owner Joan McNamara, who describes the table as magical. “Last week, a couple stopped me and said, ‘I had to tell you, we met at the communal table, and we’re getting married.’”
Of course, the element of surprise can also add a level of danger to the dining experience. Evan Kleiman, host of KCRW’s radio show “Good Food,” started experimenting with communal, family-style dinners at her restaurant, Angeli Caffe, in 2001 because “I decided I wanted a venue to just play.”
At one point, she held family-style dinners once a week, serving everything from Indian food to tapas, but she scaled back because some diners were terrified by the concept, and no-shows were a problem. “Some people would walk in and then immediately turn and start to walk out -- I’m not sitting by somebody I don’t know. We’d have to sort of cajole them to sit down. And then they’d sit but leave spaces between them.”
Rob Roedel, manager at Blue Velvet, says it’s been tough to pull off in his sceney downtown destination, too. The restaurant has a sunken granite communal table in the lounge area, but they usually reserve it for big parties now. “It never really worked,” he says of the table, which is situated low to the ground. “It’s a bad idea. If you’re not young, it’s hard to get in and out, and you have to look at the server’s butt.”
Nevertheless, the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing, especially in LA’s casual beach communities and neighborhoods with pedestrian traffic. The new Huckleberry Café and Bakery in Santa Monica features a communal dining area, as does Coast at Shutters on the Beach and Tender Greens in Culver City.
“I think it’s a generational shift,” Kleiman says. “The children of Boomers grew up eating good food and have a much less precious view of it. They’re more interested in the overall sense of dining as a breaking bread experience.”
Many members of the Millennial Generation prefer group socializing to dating, so they don’t view eating out as an intimate, formal occasion. Lean times also make people cooperate and share what they have.
“I don’t think people want to feel isolated, especially in this economy,” says McNamara, who had an elderly friend once tell her the Great Depression wasn’t so terrible “‘because we were all in it together.’ Maybe that’s what people are finding now. If you were sitting at two separate tables, you would almost never hand food to someone else. There’s something about the communal table. It’s like being at home.”
AK Restaurant + Bar, 1633 Abbot Kinney Blvd, Venice, 310.392.6644
Angeli Caffe, 7274 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, 323.936.9086
Blue Velvet, 750 Garland Ave, Los Angeles, 213.239.0061
Coast at Shutters on the Beach, 1 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica, 310.587.1707
Gjelina, 1429 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, 310.450.1429
Huckleberry Bakery and Cafe, 1014 Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, 310.451.2311
Joan's on Third, 8350 West Third St, Los Angeles, 323.655.2285
The Bazaar by José Andrés at SLS Hotel at Beverly Hills, 465 S. La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, 310.246.5555
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