Atwater Village bar captures Eastern Europe cafe culture, complete with a family recipe for pierogis (2024)

A new all-day bar and restaurant evoking European street cafes is now open in Atwater Village, with diners perching at patio tables throughout the day, then snagging stools around a curved, marble-topped bar in the evening.

Bar Sinizki reimagines the former Kaldi Coffee space on Glendale Boulevard into a gathering place for co*cktails, croissants and Balkan salads.

Scott Zwiezen says he wanted to open an Eastern European cafe and bar since his 20s, inspired by his own family recipes and the years he’d lived in Prague during the late ’90s.

“What was so sophisticated in his mind was the cafe and bar culture of places like Vienna and Prague, Berlin and Paris,” said Zwiezen’s partner, Anne O’Malley — the two also own the Dune restaurants in Atwater and downtown L.A., and opened Sinizki with Kaldi’s Alexander Mirecki Tavitian.

“It’s just the pace, where you’ll be sitting and having a really great espresso and your friend is actually in the mood for an aperitif or a glass of wine, and you’re sitting on a boulevard and you’re hanging out, and a friend walks by and they come and join your table.”

The co*cktail program of Bar Sinizki focuses on classic co*cktails along with spritzes.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

They sought to re-create that in Atwater Village with a menu that shifts throughout the day, and patio seating adjacent to Dune’s. Mornings feature a full coffee and espresso menu alongside pastries from Out of Thin Air, with a full breakfast menu to launch soon. At lunch and dinner, tartines, thick burgers, and pierogies take center stage.

The new restaurant is heavily influenced by Zwiezen’s Ukrainian, Slovakian and Polish heritage. Bar Sinizki is named for his great-grandfather, Elias Sinizki, who opened an eponymous market in Illinois in the 1920s; it was formative for Zwiezen’s family, and when his father died, they found thick notebooks full of handwritten multigenerational recipes that Zwiezen and José Briseno (also of Elf Cafe, which Zwiezen also owns) now cook in Atwater.

The chef-owner makes the large, pan-seared pierogi by hand, with a limited number of orders available each night; in the future, he expects to add new flavors and fillings. A house-made sausage is set to join the menu as the weather gets cooler, as will another family recipe for dumplings and a carrot salad from his childhood. The recipes broaden beyond Eastern Europe, too, with steak frites and a trout rillettes smorrebrod — the latter more of a nod to O’Malley’s Scandinavian ancestry.

Zwiezen’s brother, Erik, designed a classics-forward co*cktail program that includes vespers, boulevardiers, Hemingway daiquiris and carajillos along with spritzes and wines. Bar Sinizki is open daily from 7 a.m. to midnight.

3147 Glendale Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 284-8419, sinizki.com

Walking Spanish, from chefs and spouses Rene and Stephanie Coreas, serves creative spins on Central American classics, such as pupusas inspired by birria de res, green goddess dressing, backyard asadas and Koreatown.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Walking Spanish

Ambitious Central American pop-up Walking Spanish has landed a permanent location inside West Hollywood mezcal bar Las Perlas, where guests can now find genre-bending pupusas from a pair of seasoned vets who’ve spent years in some of L.A.’s top kitchens.

When Bon Temps closed during the pandemic, spouses and chefs Rene and Stephanie Coreas were unsure what to do next, but the duo, whose combined pedigrees include Petit Trois, Patina Group, Bestia and Bavel, decided to seize the opportunity and launch their own business. Rene Coreas’s grandparents had recently died, and he hoped to honor them. With his grandmother’s pupusa recipe, they began popping up under a black tent in El Sereno and throughout L.A. Their sidewalk pop-up served options such as the Koreatown-inspired Shatto 39, packing scallion pancake-inspired masa with braised short rib and cheese, topped with kimchi instead of curtido, and the Eastlos, a nod to birria stands, the masa moistened by consomé.

The Salvi Sando fried chicken sandwich, a nod to pan con pollo, uses the same brioche buns as those found on the iconic burger at Petit Trois, where Rene Coreas worked for years.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

They’ve also crafted a pupusa in an ode to Petit Trois’ Ludo Lefebvre: an escargot pupusa, the masa seasoned with thyme and lemon. A black-pastor collaboration with Evil Cooks once found them using the taqueros’ ash to color their pupusa masa black.

“There’s no limit to what we like to do with our pupusas,” Rene Coreas said. “In this location, where we are now, it’s inspiring us to push it even further. [No kitchen] is really what was holding us back, and now the gloves are off.”

The menu at the enclosed-patio space within Las Perlas already features a new pupusa flavor, in a nod to the space: The Ranchero, an ode to a backyard carne asada, featuring two-day-marinated skirt steak and cheese inside charred-onion masa. Other new items include snackier bites to pair with Las Perlas’ co*cktails, including tacos and items paying homage to Stephanie Coreas’s Guatemalan heritage, such as tostada-like enchiladas, plus a sliders version of their pan-con-pollo fried chicken sandwich, the Salvi Sando. Walking Spanish is open Monday to Friday from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 2 p.m. to 1 a.m.

7511 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood, (323) 822-5065, walkingspanishla.square.site

Mala Class

Highland Park restaurant Mala Class specializes in Sichuan classics such as pork dumplings in chile oil, dan dan noodles, crispy shrimp, and dry-fried mushrooms.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

A casual modern-Sichuan spot is bringing dry-pepper-fried tofu, cumin-rubbed mushroom fries, dumplings in chile oil, dan dan noodles and other specialties to Highland Park. At Mala Class, from owners Kevin Liang and Michael Yang, the focus is riffing on iconic Sichuan dishes using a streamlined menu full of house-made sauces, dry rubs and chef Yang’s own interpretation of the cuisine. “We wanted to condense the menu into something that was easily able to read and understand and digest, but still hold true to a lot of authentic Sichuan flavors,” said Liang. “We’ll continue to expand with that mentality of breaking the mold and really being unique and being fun and being creative.”

Future restaurants from Yang and Liang might expand beyond Sichuan cuisine, but for their first joint venture, find dishes such as dan dan noodles tossed tableside.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Liang worked his way through Philadelphia’s restaurant scene and the Han Dynasty restaurant group before moving to New York City to open a location there, where he met his future business partner, Yang, who’d grown up in his own family’s restaurants. Years later they reconnected over hot pot in Flushing, where they hatched a plan to open a restaurant in California together. In late 2019 they drove across the country, with Yang eventually landing in Bistro Na’s in Temple City, and Liang at Pasadena’s Bone Kettle.

When they found their space in Highland Park — previously Divino Salvador — they pulled the trigger on opening their first restaurant together. With roughly 20 seats indoors at Mala Class, Yang and Liang plan to add patio seating and hope to open more restaurants in L.A. and beyond, not necessarily limited to Sichuan cuisine. “There’s a lot of opportunity to kind of spread this flavor and let people understand there’s more to Chinese cuisine,” Liang said. “There’s a lot of different depths and a lot of different regions that cook it vastly different, and this is just one of the many amazing flavors that we’re offering.” Mala Class is open Tuesday to Friday and Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. and 5 to 10 p.m., and on Saturday from noon to 10 p.m.

5816 York Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 739-0818, instagram.com/malaclassla