Why Bacari Sherman Oaks matters.
Bacari Sherman Oaks is a Venetian-inspired restaurant where Sherman Oaks' boulevard culture meets Mediterranean small plates, garden dining and a family restaurant group shaped by the wine bars of Venice, Italy.
Set along Ventura Boulevard near Hazeltine Avenue and just steps from Sherman Oaks Galleria, the restaurant occupies a deep garden property between Van Nuys Boulevard and Woodman Avenue, with the Los Angeles River and Ventura Freeway tracing the neighborhood's southern edge, Studio City extending east and the Santa Monica Mountains rising beyond the boulevard to the south. A tiled passage leads from Ventura Boulevard into a courtyard filled with mature trees, planting and brick paving before reaching the restaurant's principal rooms. The Parlour Room, Sunroom and outdoor patios divide the property into contrasting dining settings, preserving the layered scale inherited from its predecessor. M. Winter Design worked with Danny and Robert Kronfli and chef-partner Lior Hillel to recast the longstanding Rive Gauche property. The result is a deeply set Ventura Boulevard restaurant whose planted courtyard, interconnected rooms, Mediterranean detailing and historic restaurant property give Bacari's small-plate format an unusually expansive Sherman Oaks setting.
What defines Bacari Sherman Oaks.
Bacari Sherman Oaks is best known for bringing brothers Danny and Robert Kronfli and chef-partner Lior Hillel's Venetian-inspired small-plate concept into the former Rive Gauche property as Bacari's sixth location in 2023. The restaurant group began in West Adams in 2008 after Danny Kronfli returned from Italy inspired by Venice's bacari wine taverns, with USC graduate Robert bringing experience from an underground supper club he operated from his apartment. Hillel began his culinary career at Jean-Georges in New York and joined Bacari during its inaugural year, creating a three-part partnership that continued through the group's expansion across Los Angeles. The brothers already carried a personal connection to the Sherman Oaks property: Danny recalled visiting Rive Gauche with their mother as children after growing up in La Cañada. Rive Gauche closed in 2018, and the brothers tracked the property until a new owner acquired it and released the restaurant space for lease in 2023. Bacari secured the site and worked with M. Winter Design to transform the 1920s-era property, carrying a concept born near USC into a restaurant the founders had known decades earlier as customers.
Lior Hillel's current menu develops Mediterranean cooking through preparations that move among Levantine seasonings, Italian ingredients and California produce. Barramundi crudo combines cucumber relish with za'atar, sumac, lemon, sesame and Frantoia olive oil, placing the raw fish inside a sharply herbaceous eastern Mediterranean construction. Mujadara builds lentils and basmati rice around caramelized onion, labneh and herbs, carrying a longstanding Levantine preparation into the small-plate program. Asian pear and brie pizza takes another route through guava fromage blanc, wild arugula, Frantoia olive oil and Brie, using fruit and soft cheese across a thin crust. Malabi closes the sequence with rosewater custard, shaved coconut, hibiscus and candied pistachio, drawing on a milk pudding found across the eastern Mediterranean. The menu's breadth follows Bacari's development beyond the Italian inspiration of its earliest years, with Hillel's kitchen using small plates to connect Venetian wine-bar origins with Mediterranean culinary traditions accumulated across the group's Los Angeles expansion.
How Bacari Sherman Oaks fits.
Bacari Sherman Oaks works as the anchor for an outing connecting the San Fernando Valley's postwar automobile expansion with its citrus economy and a public garden built around Los Angeles water reclamation.
Begin at Stanley Burke's, the 1958 Googie coffee shop designed by Armet and Davis with interiors by Helen Liu Fong during the San Fernando Valley's explosive suburban growth. Its sweeping roof, glass walls and neon sign addressed motorists directly, and Fong organized the interior around booths, counter stools and a semi-open kitchen. The restaurant later became closely associated with the Corky's name, and Los Angeles designated the building and sign as a Historic-Cultural Monument in 2020. A subsequent rehabilitation used surviving original drawings to recover the roofline, clerestory windows and spider-leg supports, earning a Los Angeles Conservancy Preservation Award in 2026. Continue to Sunkist Headquarters, completed in 1970 as Sunkist Growers moved its international offices from Downtown into a San Fernando Valley once covered extensively by citrus groves. A. C. Martin & Associates designed the reinforced-concrete building with outward-sloping walls, deeply recessed windows and tapered piers, creating an inverted profile beside the Ventura Freeway. SurveyLA recognized the building's historic eligibility in 2015, and Los Angeles approved it as a Historic-Cultural Monument in February 2026 as plans advanced to convert the former corporate offices into 95 residences. Conclude at The Japanese Garden, conceived beside the Donald C. Tillman Water Reclamation Plant to demonstrate the productive use of reclaimed water. Koichi Kawana designed the 6.5-acre garden during construction from 1980 to 1984, combining a dry meditation garden with a wet strolling garden, waterfalls, lakes and a tea garden. Tillman had developed the reclamation-plant concept decades earlier and encountered Kawana through a UCLA course on Japanese gardens, linking municipal engineering with the landscape design that followed. The adjoining plant began continuous operation in 1985 with capacity for 40 million gallons per day, then doubled to 80 million gallons per day through a second phase completed in 1991. The progression moves from automobile-age Googie architecture through a concrete corporate headquarters built for California's citrus cooperative and culminates in a Japanese garden where San Fernando Valley infrastructure became the basis for an ambitious work of landscape design.
Where your story begins.
Foresyte Travel reveals places that feel extraordinary long before you arrive.
Enjoy editorial crafted for luxury travelers.
Foresyte may earn a commission when you book.
