Review: Vespertine returns after four years. Is 2.0 worth the splurge?

No restaurant in the history of Los Angeles has been scrutinized, ridiculed and defended like Vespertine, the modernist experiment housed in the four-story Culver City building called “Waffle” by its architect, Eric Owen Moss. From the beginning, in 2017, chef Jordan Kahn approached food as an abstraction: a procession of dishes in alien sculptural forms, served over four or more hours. Deliciousness wasn't always the only goal.

Their intention was to disrupt: to feed diners in the context of performance art, incorporating theatre, music, painting, dance and even perfumery. Some fine restaurants hand out granola on the way out; Kahn often presented a small bottle of his own fragrance.

Vespertine's outward character, along with a starting price of $250 per person before drinks (it's now $395 per person), seemed designed to spark a debate: Was it too weird or not weird enough? How far can emotional discomfort be taken in the area of ​​good dining? Were these unidentifiable dishes an eating-the-rich prank? After so much extraterrestrial madness, do we long to end the night with a burger like Anya Taylor-Joy's character in “The Menu”?

A waiter pours the vinaigrette over sweet shrimp and currants. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

The almond and wild onion cream is topped with small flowers and herbs. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

Kahn's talent was obvious. Among the enigmatic powders, pastes and restructured vegetables that obscure recognizable seafood and meats, the compositions revealed a disciplined technique and astonishing but compatible combinations. Almost everyone held on to their love for the snack that started the meal: a tasty burnt onion and blackcurrant biscuit buried under edible flowers. It was simple and thankfully enjoyable.

Today, pleasure much more defines Vespertine's second coming, where Kahn's heart more readily informs his intellectual cuisine.

To get here, he had to overcome a global health crisis. Vespertine closed at the start of the pandemic, when Kahn and his team pivoted to preparing some of California's most creative takeout meals, including meals that traced the chef's Southern and Cuban heritage.

Jordan Kahn of Vespertine, Meteora and Destroyer turns crispy-skinned pork belly into a Cuban sandwich with cheese, Gruyere, pickles, and mustard.

After four long and financially difficult years in Los Angeles, Vespertine returned in April. While he stuck to his abstractionist principles, Kahn also allowed himself to humanize many aspects of the dining experience. Dinner offers down-to-earth rewards; Unfiltered delights balance cryptic intrigue. The pace has been reduced to a consistent and never boring three hours.

Vespertine chef Jordan Kahn with his wife, Zara Ziyaee Kahn.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

What remains almost unchanged, even with some reconfigurations, is the settings. Moss's moody, futuristic structure exists to evoke your favorite sci-fi comparisons. This year I realized that its shape reminds me of the Death Star play set, which was my big Christmas gift in 1978. In July, at our first meal inside in half a decade, a colleague and I joked that That the sunset seen through the gridded glass walls gave off spooky “3-Body Problem” star system vibes. In the darkness of November, I think I should go through a location scout for a supposed second season of HBO's “Dune: Prophesy.”

The Culver City building called “Waffle” by its architect, Eric Owen Moss, is home to Vespertine.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

A new setup inside the reopened restaurant is set up with tables for two diners.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

No matter where your imagination takes the backdrop, the evening begins with an elevator ride. On two floors, doors open to the kitchen where Kahn, unmissable in his charcoal apron and asymmetrical haircut, greets you with sincerity in his eyes.

Go down a flight of stairs to the dining room, where most of the tables have been arranged as two-seater banquettes. A pair of two-tops have been placed center stage and I feel like I'm dining on display in an aquarium. I would prefer a more comfortable arrangement, especially if my partner has joined me. The tonal, repetitive music that fills the space creates an auditory sense of privacy, but you must be close to your companions to hear them.

The current menu begins with a kind of oblong ceramic tureen that suggests a wide-open oyster shell. It has a pale landscape of petunia petals, arched horseradish-flavored fries, and segments of large Alaska-caught Weathervane scallops. They hide a reduction of passion fruit juice and yellow pepper. Kahn's food rule is: Dip your utensil deep to catch all the elements.

Quail coturnix with heather and sacred pepper and porridge bread with quail fat.

(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)

Something about the flavors conveys “ceviche,” giving your mind a place to anchor. Contrasts please. The petals whisper. The astringency awakens the appetite. This is a cozy start.

Next comes much more rustic, free-form pottery, filled with a cream made from almonds and wild onions, sprinkled with fresh peas, fermented split peas and yuzu bark, and topped with small flowers and herbs, including lemon thyme. Serving such a spring-like creation in the middle of autumn is a statement: Kahn cooks according to his own seasons. He calms us with these gentle flavors, prompting us to trust the journey into his worldview.

We move on to a visual marvel: a block of ice, surrounded by a juniper wreath that smells like Christmas, hollowed out to hold a small portion of sweet and tart prawns, with currants in a nectarine vinaigrette.

The fourth course of the evening's 14, presented in smooth, heavy bowls as bright as raven wings, cements for me the differences between the previous and current versions of Vespertine.

“This is the obsidian mirror,” says one of our servers. He goes on a spiel about the dish's inspiration, which involves “people of ancient Mexico” looking at crystals as a “path to divination,” and then details the dish's ingredients. A top layer of gel, as black as the container, hides a smoked mussel cream mixed with mussels, salted plums and chopped water chestnuts. A sheen of toasted algae oil on the surface creates rippling colors, like a rainbow glowing on an oil slick.

My first thought upon seeing it is, “Oh, no. Not again.”

I'm going back to 2017, when the highlight of dinner was a granite bowl covered with a veneer, almost a skin, that resembled sharp onyx geodes hiding fish suspended in labneh. No one could analyze these ingredients without guidance. Instead, the waiter just muttered “hirame,” a Japanese word for halibut, before walking away. It was infuriating. So was the oily film the unpleasant mixture left on my tongue.

At present, my dining companion and I are much happier. They've given us giant mussel shells, polished and shinier than new pennies, to scoop out the contents. The first sensations are textural, soft and slippery but not cloying, with the occasional crunch. Flavor-wise, my closest association is smoked seafood pâté topped with gelée, but remodeled in ways most of us could never conceive.

It's wonderful and disappears in just a few bites, which feels exactly right. A small mystery remains.

The feeling of surprise is part of the fun of dining at Vespertine. I will say that the smoky flavor of the mussels marks the beginning of a series of warm flavors that extend into a sequence of fish, quail and lamb.

For dessert, you'll be escorted downstairs to the ground floor, which has a room-long suspended plaster sculpture that looks like dinosaur vertebrae hanging in the Natural History Museum. Kahn will tease out the savory and the sweet in more dishes than you might expect, leaning entirely toward the latter in a final layer cake interpretation that only he could come up with.

Hospitality staff reinforce the most tangible joys. Previously, the tenor of the room felt cold, almost hostile, in its opaque ceremony. Today, the crew has free rein to express their individuality. Cody Nason, service director, has the life force this restaurant needed. His job includes overseeing the beverage program, which understandably highlights combinations to best complement Kahn's unique conceptions. Whether he's mischievously bragging about the six highly allocated bottles of Burgundy he scored, or describing a juice made from redwood buds (there's a certain California sense of place!) for unusually thoughtful non-alcoholic options, Nason is the best evening reminder: Great performance art incorporates interaction and humanity.

At a time of deep economic uncertainty in Los Angeles, when dozens of community-focused neighborhood restaurants have collapsed in the last year, a wave of fine dining appears on the horizon. The latest iteration of Vespertine precedes the newly opened 2.0 of Aitor Zabala's Somni fantasy tasting menu, which moved to West Hollywood. They will be followed by Seline, Dave Beran's return to tasting menus after the closure of his innovative Dialogue in Santa Monica; Ki, a 10-seat counter in Little Tokyo by Ki Kim, who made her impressive introduction to the city with Kinn; and Jaca, a leap into the tasting menu genre for Daniel Patterson and Keith Corbin, the couple behind Alta Adams and Locol.

Will these aspiring luminaries find the support they need among the moneyed class? Impossible to predict. But speaking of Vespertine: I used to tell connoisseurs with inclination and capital to make a reservation to form their own opinion about such a polarizing restaurant. Now I will tell people: go for the extravagant. and for the pleasure.