When Marc Rose and Med Abrous—partners behind Los Angeles venues the Spare Room at the Roosevelt Hotel and New York-style Szechuan spot Genghis Cohen—decided to fill what Abrous calls “a void in the marketplace” for a higher-end, three-meal comfort food restaurant, they opened Winsome in the city’s Echo Park neighborhood.
Located on the ground floor of the now-residential, circa-1961 Elysian building designed by William Pereira—once the Metropolitan Water District headquarters—Winsome pays homage to the restaurants of the owners’ youth, where “you could have breakfast with your parents, lunch with your friends, and go on a date at night,” Rose says. Working hand in hand with local designer Wendy Haworth, they created something just as relaxed, though decidedly more upscale. “It was key for us that the restaurant respected the building’s history and design,” Haworth explains, so a warm, coffee shop vibe is complete with Pullman-style booths; deep blue barstools at the curving, white-tiled bar; and lots of wood—including a white oak midcentury-style screen and maple tongue and groove ceiling.
An expansive, open-air patio was a blank slate, so they added benches, a fence, tables covered in tiles handcrafted by a local artist, and a steel structure hovering above, because “though California is blessed with great weather, there’s a lack of outdoor dining space,” Abrous explains. “We didn’t want to cover it too much.”
The pair’s attention to detail is clear in elements like Russel Wright water pitchers (one found at a flea market led to a six-month search to outfit the restaurant) and the check presenters, which are old cocktail serving boards they found in Japan. But the standout is the mural that anchors the back of the space—a reproduction of 1938 Phil Dike watercolor “Sunshine in Echo Park,” which Rose and Abrous found and loved so much they tracked down the painter’s son to obtain the rights. “There are a lot of those details that are so special to us and we put so much time into,” Rose says. “But we don’t want it to feel like that when you walk in. We want you to feel super comfortable, like you’ve been there before.”
