Why Something About Her matters.
Something About Her is a romantic sandwich shop where West Hollywood West's design-conscious restaurant culture meets Ariana Madix and Katie Maloney's women-founded business, actress-named sandwiches and an interior developed by longtime Nancy Meyers production designer Jon Hutman.
Set along Robertson Boulevard near Melrose Avenue and just steps from West Hollywood Park, the sandwich shop occupies the southern edge of West Hollywood between the Pacific Design Center district and Beverly Grove, with Beverly Hills beginning farther west and the commercial corridors of La Cienega Boulevard extending east toward the Los Angeles city boundary. Jon Hutman shaped the intimate dining room around the romantic-comedy atmosphere Madix and Maloney envisioned, translating his film-production background into a real restaurant interior. Floral wallpaper, patterned textiles, framed art and small café tables build the room through domestic-scale details associated with the cinematic interiors that inspired the project. The compact footprint keeps the sandwich counter and tightly arranged seating close together, reinforcing the lunch-parlor scale at the center of the original concept. The result is a small restaurant whose feminine interior, film-design pedigree and Robertson Boulevard setting turn a sandwich counter into a carefully composed extension of West Hollywood's fashion and hospitality district.
What defines Something About Her.
Something About Her is best known for turning Ariana Madix and Katie Maloney's friendship and television careers into an independently owned sandwich shop conceived during Vanderpump Rules. The pair publicly developed the business during the program's ninth season, choosing a site near SUR, the restaurant where their professional histories had previously intersected. Madix and Maloney centered the concept on a romanticized lunch, drawing particular inspiration from Nancy Meyers films and seeking out Jon Hutman, the production designer behind Something's Gotta Give, The Holiday and It's Complicated. Development stretched across multiple years before a private soft opening on May 16, 2024 and public debut on May 22. The opening connected the restaurant unusually directly with the screen references behind its creation: its sandwiches took women's first names associated with film performers, and Diane Keaton visited during the opening weeks and ordered The Diane, her namesake tuna sandwich. The founders describe the business around femininity, creativity and connection, placing design and food together as the central premise of the company. Hutman's participation gave that premise unusual authorship for a sandwich shop, transferring decades of film production design into a permanent hospitality interior rather than a temporary set.
The sandwich selection develops the actress-name concept through sharply differentiated combinations rather than variations on a single deli formula. The Diane places Sicilian-style tuna salad with marinated radish, arugula, dill and olive oil on baguette, balancing richness with peppery greens and fresh herbs. The Drew combines chive-infused goat cheese with fig and Calabrian chile jam, shaved apple, cucumber, arugula, mint and balsamic glaze, building sweetness, heat, acidity and crisp produce around the soft cheese. The Cameron moves toward an Italian deli construction through salami, capicola, provolone, sun-dried tomatoes, banana peppers, red onion, basil, Italian spices and pesto aioli on focaccia. The Reese uses chicken salad, lettuce and balsamic mustard on seven-grain bread, giving the menu a simpler combination organized around creamy filling and mustard acidity. Plant-based ordering receives its own composed preparation through The Kerry, which layers chickpea salad, marinated radishes, lettuce, herbs and vegan herb aioli on ciabatta. The Kate adds burrata, heirloom tomato, red onion, house-made balsamic onion marmalade, basil, oregano, balsamic glaze and pesto aioli, concentrating the vegetarian side of the menu around fresh dairy, tomato and sweet-acid onion.
How Something About Her fits.
Something About Her works as the anchor for a West Hollywood outing connecting an experimental modern house, César Pelli's three-building design complex and a Hollywood-era restaurant preserved around a surviving Pacific Electric trolley car.
Begin at Schindler House, completed in 1922 by Viennese-born architect R.M. Schindler as a dramatic rethinking of domestic architecture for two couples, Rudolph and Pauline Schindler and Clyde and Marian Chace. Concrete walls were raised through Schindler's slab-tilt construction process, sleeping baskets occupied the roof and shared living and kitchen areas challenged conventional divisions of the single-family house. Pauline Schindler turned the residence into an important gathering place for artists, writers, musicians and architects, extending its architectural experimentation into Los Angeles cultural life. The MAK Center for Art and Architecture made the house its headquarters in 1994, connecting preservation of Schindler's work with exhibitions and contemporary architectural programming. Continue to Pacific Design Center, where César Pelli developed a 14-acre complex through three immense buildings completed across nearly four decades. The 750,000-square-foot Blue Building opened in 1975, the 450,000-square-foot Green Building followed in 1988 and the 400,000-square-foot Red Building completed Pelli's original conception in 2012. The three structures transformed the Melrose Avenue and San Vicente Boulevard intersection into a major concentration of interior-design showrooms, creative offices and architectural color, giving West Hollywood a commercial complex whose development spans Pelli's changing practice from the 1970s into the twenty-first century. Conclude at Formosa Café, whose origins reach to 1925, when a former prizefighter converted a retired Pacific Electric Red Car into a luncheon counter beside the movie-studio property now known as The Lot. Hong Kong-born chef Lem Quon joined the business in 1945, later assuming ownership, and the restaurant developed deep associations with studio-era performers working across the street. Closure in 2016 threatened that history before 1933 Group assumed a long-term lease and completed a two-year rehabilitation exceeding $2 million, restoring red booths, terrazzo flooring, celebrity photographs and the surviving trolley before reopening in June 2019. The progression moves from Schindler's 1922 reinvention of domestic architecture through Pelli's multidecade construction of a design-industry complex and culminates at the Formosa Café, where a Pacific Electric car, Chinese American restaurant history and the neighboring film industry converge within a surviving piece of twentieth-century West Hollywood.
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