Bar Moruno
One of LA’s Most Cherished Spanish Restaurants Is Reborn at Bar Moruno. Calling Spanish food and fine vermouths a passion project of owners David Rosoff and Chris Feldmeier would be a disservice to the two longtime friends and collaborators. This new Moruno feels like an imperative first fused during their time at LA’s vaunted Campanile and later at Osteria Mozza. Together, they have plotted and planned for the kind of everyday Spanish restaurant they longed to have in their own backyard, while simultaneously cementing their solo LA legacies — Feldmeier as a foremost manifester of fire, Rosoff as a grinning, thoughtful wine savant. For years the pair have remained close, pushing through the too-quick closure of their first Moruno iteration to land eventually in Silver Lake, in this energetic restaurant reopening moment of 2022.
Bar Moruno, once again, is here.
As with the former Kettle Black that previously inhabited this tall, tiled space, all eyes at dinnertime will focus on the wood-fired oven in the back right corner. There Feldmeier and his team, including sous chefs Leigha Olson and Kelly Bangco, plan to bring heat and smoke to roasted salt spring mussels with butter beans and chorizo cantimpalo, or crispy hen of the woods mushrooms with fried egg and loads of garlic. Moruno’s popular butternut squash, crispy at the skin and soft inside with a wash of cashews, sesame seeds, and sumac, has returned. And it comes alongside rich, meaty mains and simple Spanish tortillas finished among the coals.