Bar Etoile Lights Up Melrose Hill with Natural Wines and Chic Bistro Fare

The wines are the star of the show…

“This is a wine venue, first and foremost,” says Bernheimer, “with great food that marries well with it.” Though Bar Etoile does have a full liquor license, and serves a tight list of classic cocktails accordingly, the overall philosophy is that wine is a part of the meal itself. 

To that end, and unsurprisingly given the partners’ backgrounds, the list is large, with 10-12 options by the glass, and some 200-plus bottle selections. “Making wine accessible and encouraging people not to be scared to order a bottle is important to us,” Bernheimer says. “We don’t just have two bottles that are $60 — we have a lot in that $50-70 zone,” she adds, many of them prominently displayed in the three enormous glass refrigerators along the back wall of the dining room. “The wines aren’t hidden in some back room or vaulted cellar — they’re part of the restaurant, and we want those displays to be a centerpiece and a conversation starter,” adds Kurland. 

Appropriately given Bernheimer’s focus on natural wine, “the bottles that we care about are from smaller producers who, first and foremost, work with really well-farmed grapes,” Bernheimer says. Stylistically, offerings will range from “more classic to more avant-garde,” she says, hailing primarily from France, along with Italy, California, and a “smattering” of other locales. 

…but the food shines just as bright 

That said, Bar Etoile, despite its name, is very much a full-service restaurant, with a robust food menu to accompany all of the aforementioned wine. Chef Travis Hayden has history with natural wine, as a longtime friend of Justin Chearno (The Four Horsemen in Brooklyn), and as the former chef at Voodoo Vin in Virgil Village. His approach to food mirrors the natural winemaking ethos: “Find great ingredients, let Mother Nature do its job, and hopefully get a great product out of it,” he says. 

Bernheimer and Kurland gave Hayden free reign over menu development, asking only that he include some type of steak frites and a rotisserie chicken. Inspired by modern wine bars like Le Verre Volé in Paris and Brawn in London, Hayden obliged, putting together a French-leaning menu with a few riffs of his own, like his oft-requested mortadella (served here with thin slivers of pickled celtuce) and the Caesar beef tartare that he’s been making since his first cooking job at Rustic Canyon. 

Early standouts include a tall, wobbly tart made with a savory Gruyere-enhanced custard (“I’ve been pretty tart-obsessed throughout my career,” says Hayden), draped with a thin, nearly incandescent layer of chive gelee and topped with a shower of fresh chives. Other small plates include trout rillettes with pickled binquiho peppers and potato chips, root vegetables with a heady guajillo-enhanced sabayon, and an endive salad with a savory meringue (an idea borne from one of Hayden’s failed experiments at Rustic Canyon), caramelized yeast, and a concoction known as “pear cheese,” essentially a rich pear-enhanced cream sauce. 

Of the entrees, the aforementioned rotisserie chicken is an undeniable star. “When Jill and Julian mentioned they wanted it for the menu months ago, I went out and bought a single-bird rotisserie for my apartment, and I made so much chicken between now and then, tweaking every variable,” says Hayden. The winning formula involves a 12-hour brine and three days of drying the chicken in the walk-in before it’s slow-roasted on the rotisserie. It’s served with a persimmon-spiked bearnaise, a riff on the classic French sauce choron (which traditionally uses tomatoes in lieu of persimmons). 

The steak frites that Bernheimer and Kurland requested are indeed in play as well, along with a rockfish with fennel and a creamy polenta with verjus-braised leeks. And this being a mostly-French restaurant, there are, of course, proper desserts, like a chocolate tart with passion fruit and crème pâtissière and a seasonal fruit sorbet. 

A space that “just felt right”

Berhnheimer and Kurland both live nearby, so they’ve seen firsthand how the area has changed in recent years, largely due to developer Zach Lasry (who owns the building Bar Etoile is housed in, along with several nearby properties). “When we first started envisioning this project, back in 2021, we were hesitant to come to this block,” Bernheimer says. 

“But when we walked into the space that is now Etoile, it was a visceral, emotional response — we knew that this was a special building. And the way that Zach talked about being very respectful to the neighborhood, not tearing down these old buildings with character, but instead really lovingly restoring them, resonated with us. I don’t know how else to explain it, but it just felt right,” she says. 

The restaurant was designed by Lovers Unite (Dunsmoor, Bar Chelou), who outfitted the 2,400-square foot, 75-seat space with a striking, sprawling zinc-plated oval bar in the middle of the room. “We still wanted to have that wine bar feeling, where you could come and post up for a while,” Kurland says. But with the extra square footage of a full restaurant, they could afford to add more seating.

Flanking one side of the 22-seat bar is a row of gleaming, lacquer-finished banquettes; a line of deeply curved monochromatic booths line the other. “Each side of the room has its own purpose and feel, but it all works together very harmoniously,” says Kurland. “In my mind, the booths to the left are for the Magnums and the parties, while the banquettes are for date nights or birthday celebrations, and the bar is for a solo glass of wine or catching up with friends.” 

Stay tuned for collabs and a leisurely Sunday lunch

Although the restaurant is still settling in, the partners are looking forward to what comes next. Hayden would like to tap his chef network abroad for potential collaborations, and Bernheimer dreams of hosting “not awkward” winemaker dinners. 

And though Etoile is likely to remain an aperitif-and-dinner-only destination for the foreseeable future, the partners are inspired by Brutos, a restaurant in Paris that serves a Sundays-only late-afternoon chicken special straddling the line between lunch and dinner. “Maybe, potentially, we’d do a Sunday afternoon service at some point,” Bernheimer teases. But for now, you’ll have to pop in to Bar Etoile in the evening, once the sun has set and the stars start to rise. 

Jamie Feldmar is Resy’s Los Angeles editor and a five-time cookbook author. Follow her on Instagram. Follow Resy, too.