By 
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from going to highly anticipated openings, it’s to lower my expectations – especially with hospitality group-owned restaurants. The newest opening that has caused yet another commotion among food publications is Hermon’s, opened by Last Word Hospitality cofounders Holly Fox and Adam Weisblatt – who are behind some of very familiar names like Found Oyster, Barra Santos and Rasarumah.
Hermon’s is located in Hermon, a tiny neighborhood east of the 110, nestled between Highland Park, South Pasadena, and Montecito Heights. While Northeast LA has boomed in the last 10 years, Hermon still hasn’t experienced the renaissance of their heavily gentrified neighbor, Highland Park. It’s a raw, less developed Silver Lake, if you will.
The reason as to why this neighborhood was chosen for the restaurant is because Holly lives in El Sereno, and her sister is a Hermon resident. For many years, Holly would drive past the now-closed Hermon Community Church. She said to SF Gate: “There was something about it we were just drawn to.” Besides the quiet shopping mall plaza across the street, the only business in the area was a coffee shop that closed a decade ago.
When the space became available for lease, the landlord was hesitant to convert it into a restaurant, but after long negotiations with both the landlord and the neighborhood council, Fox and Weisblatt acquired the space in late 2023.
Wick Architecture did a beautiful job with the interior. They adhered to the former banquet hall space, which feels like it’s housed in a Craftsman bungalow that has been there for a long time: vintage light fixtures, artworks collected from flea markets, upholstered booths, warm wood flooring and ceramic tile countertops.
To craft the menu, Holly and Adam enlisted the help of their partner/chef DK Kolender, whose brother is the head of culinary at Last Word Hospitality. The menu also includes a curated cocktail program by Eric Alperin and Angus McShane of Day by Day Hospitality, and a wine program by wine director Evelyn Goreshnik.
Hermon’s is intended to be an elevated steakhouse, offering a modern take on New American cuisine, with an emphasis on California produce. The menu offerings include a lasagna vongole — somewhat of an acquired taste — steak frites, a decadent cheeseburger, tuna crudo, a grilled ribeye, and ragu Bolognese with whipped ricotta.
I got there around 4:20, but it was too hot to stand outside the door, so I explored the area by car and came back 15 minutes prior to the opening time, where there were already four people waiting.
There’s nothing quite like a glowing PR review by the LA Times, Variety, or Eater LA, with buzzy headlines like “LA’s Hottest New Restaurant” or “LA’s New Sophisticated Bistro”, to have a line of people outside the door clamoring to taste your food. “We saw the restaurant in the LA Times. We heard it’s really good!” said the couple in front of me. Five minutes later, the line kept growing.
My biggest gripe with many of these restaurant openings is that the chefs try to be experimental, yet they miss the mark big time. When the team is doing taste tests, does everyone have an input or do they just sheepishly agree to whatever the chef makes?
Brace yourselves.
Steak tartare
When it comes to steak tartare, you want barely any seasoning to let the quality of the meat speak for itself.
This steak tartare tasted like chorizo with hints of berries. For this dish, Chef DK added salsa macha to the raw meat — a Mexican sauce used to add a kick to grilled meats and tacos — along with a red sauce made of goji berries, lending a tart note to this ill-suited pairing.
Overall, not the most appealing combination. Additionally, for a restaurant that touts itself as an elevated steakhouse, I expected the steak cuts to be more even and have a better presentation. Instead, it looked like the meat had just been ground. The texture alone was off-putting, so I left half of it.
The chives were amazing. The chips were hard as a rock. I only had two. A piece of toasted bread would have been a much better choice. Here’s a better close-up of the tartare.
Ode to Chez Cheeseburger
This burger is currently making waves on TikTok and Instagram, deeming it “the best new burger in LA”.
A good burger is all about balance. Here, all I could taste was the Dijon mustard, which slightly burned my nose with every bite. “Sometimes it tastes like that,” said the server who asked me how it was.
The patty was thick, juicy, and well-cooked, but I wish the rich Soubise fondue and bordelaise onions had taken precedence. Was this the best burger? Not even close.
Two-sheet lasagna vongole
“I’m so excited for you. This is my favorite.” said the server. The other server said it was also his favorite and that the restaurant was pretty much known for it. I guess I’m in the minority of people who didn’t get the hype.
Despite the name, this is a single skinny pasta sheet, filled with a sauce made of whipped ricotta, cream and clams — a “creative” twist on the traditional vongole pasta.
There was no boldness in the sauce. The biggest offense, however, was adding Parmesan cheese, mixing it with the cream sauce that was already so rich with whipped ricotta and clams. This past summer, I went to Naples, where I ate spaghetti alle vongole nearly every day. Adding not one, but TWO types of cheeses to the briny, oceanic flavor of the clams is a major incongruity.
If that weren’t enough, the sauce was further muted by bits of guanciale — a salt-cured meat — and breadcrumbs.
Two other unnecessary garnishes were the wedge of grilled lemon, which barely brought any acidity to the two cheeses and cream sauce (what was the point?), and a scattering of parsley leaves. There was too much going on.
The pasta sheet was the only redeeming quality about this patchwork of whatever it is chef DK was trying to achieve. The presentation, just like the tartare, was poorly executed. On another note, if the pasta sheet is too big, get a bigger plate and don’t let it touch the countertop like mine did.
Cookie skillet
This was the only thing I ate in its entirety, but even the scoop of vanilla ice cream didn’t taste much like vanilla. I didn’t mind it as much since this time, the cookie was actually perfect: ultra soft with crispy edges and a gooey interior. It was very satisfying to dig into it with the spoon, the scoop of ice cream melting into the warm cookie.
As good as it was, the cookie skillet alone wasn’t enough to redeem the overall meal. Sadly, Hermon’s was another disappointment: a stunning interior that looks straight out of Architectural Digest, a nepo-hire chef, and odd food pairings that food publications love to call “quirky” or “reinvented classics”. If you’re going to reinvent something, please do so in a way that the ingredients complement and enhance each other.
On one Hermon’s Instagram reels, Chef DK said: “In college, I loved having people over for dinner. I would have these big feasts and that’s how I started to teach myself how to cook. I think designing a plate is very much like designing an outfit. What are the colors, the textures, the heights you see first? The more food I can get in front of someone and the more I can create on a plate that people can enjoy is the best feeling in the world.”
It’s clear that he’s very visually driven, but when it comes to crafting a dish, less is more. Even the $46 branzino (pictured below), which has a mild, delicate taste, is heavily garnished. There’s too much going on and it distracts from the star of the show. There’s no need to overload plates to make them visually appealing, just let a few ingredients shine. The white dollops of cream are toum, a Lebanese garlic sauce. 😭
Be aware that a 4% restaurant charge will be added to your bill if you decide to give it a try.
The highlights: The great hospitality and exploring Ernest E. Debs Regional Park prior to the opening time.
Walk-ins are welcome to sit at the bar, but the earlier you go, the better. If you want to seat in a booth, reservations open on Resy two weeks in advance. There’s a $10 valet, but there’s plenty of street parking.
Hermon’s: Website and Instagram
Address: 5800 Monterey Rd. Los Angeles, CA 90042
