Dante is a rooftop destination at the Maybourne Beverly Hills hotel.
The aperitivo lifestyle has leveled up in Los Angeles with the summer opening of Dante Beverly Hills. This is the first West Coast location of Linden Pride and Nathalie Hudson’s beloved New York City drinking destination and restaurant that topped the World’s 50 Best Bar list in 2019. And this new spot, where cocktail connoisseurs and beautiful locals and discerning tourists sip Garibaldis and Negronis, has a gorgeous ninth-floor perch on the rooftop of the Maybourne Beverly Hills hotel.
Open for lunch and dinner, Dante Beverly Hills is here for afternoons or evenings of drinking spritzes (with options including an aperol-and-passionfruit spritz and a pina colada spritz) or tequila martinis in between bites of light and bright dishes like an heirloom tomato and peach salad or a crudo with caper leaves, Calabrian chili and citrus. Pizzas, including the diavola with spicy soppressata and hot honey, are popular here too. The crowd-pleasing menu also has raw oysters, pasta and entrees like crispy Ōra King salmon, steak frites and roasted cauliflower.
Plus, there’s poolside service on the roof, so feel free to set the tone for your sunbathing with a smoothie or a bloody mary. And really, a Garibaldi with its Campari and fluffy orange juice is a nice pick-me-up day or night.
Pride and Hudson are adjusting to Los Angeles in all sorts of ways. There are new agave-forward drinks at Dante Beverly Hills, and the bar/restaurant’s decor and color palette simultaneously feel European and Californian. The indoor-outdoor setting is lovely, with vistas of the Hollywood Hills and beyond. If you’re lucky, you might peek down and see a professional sports team walking into the hotel.
Dante is a transporting destination.
Dante is part of an overall leveling up of Beverly Hills dining and drinking. Glamorous new Italian restaurants like Funke and La Dolce Vita glitter at night, and steak spot Matū excels at grass-fed Wagyu dinners and also at bar-only cheesesteaks. There’s lots of buzz about the sandwiches at the new Lorenzo and also at the new location of the The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. High-end New York powerhouses like Cafe Boulud and Marea are on the way.
Dante is also part of a Los Angeles cocktail scene that has attracted some of New York’s most prominent mixology players. (While L.A. can be a tough place for out-of-town chefs, the city seems to be more welcoming for out-of-town bar owners.) There’s an Employees Only in West Hollywood, an Apotheke on the edge of Chinatown and a Death & Co. in the Arts District. But none of this feels derivative.
What Dante and other New York bars understand is that coming to Los Angeles means you embrace doing things in a different way. In the case of Dante Beverly Hills, there’s a sense of California breeziness atop the roof of a luxe hotel (in a building which also happens to have some of the most coveted condos in Los Angeles). It’s the type of vibe, refreshing and relaxing and upscale all at once, that will probably make you want to order another fruity spritz.
