There is a particular kind of bar that exists in old Milan, warmly lit, unhurried, slightly theatrical, where the aperitivo hour stretches luxuriously toward midnight and the Negroni arrives in a glass the size of a small fishbowl. Los Angeles, for all its gifts, has never quite managed to replicate that feeling. Until now. Bar di Bello opened at Sunset Row in Silver Lake this April and, from the moment you push through those deep maroon curtains, something shifts. You want a martini. You want to stay.
The name, as co-owner Alex Wilmot will happily admit, doesn’t quite mean anything in Italian “bar of beauty” is the loose translation, and when his Italian friend Davide first heard it, the response was a bemused shrug. Wilmot didn’t care. “It rolls off the tongue,” he says. And he’s right. The name lands with the same breezy confidence as the room itself, a room that has clearly been thought about very, very carefully.
A Space That Earns Its Atmosphere
The interior was designed by Dean Levin, founder of Los Angeles-based multidisciplinary studio 22RE. Levin grew up eating at the city’s great Italian-ish institutions, Musso & Frank Grill, La Scala and brought those formative memories to a brief that asked for something modern but timeless, sophisticated but never cold. His references for Bar di Bello were ambitious: classic Milanese design, Italian Futurism, and the great mid-century rooms of Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, particularly Johnson’s legendary Grill Room at the Four Seasons in Manhattan.
The result feels, somehow, like Carlo Mollino’s spacecraft-like Turin opera house had a slow, glamorous collision with a steamship cabin. The bar is fashioned from Iranian red travertine, its veining warm and geological against the dark American walnut that runs through the rest of the space. Burgundy banquettes hug the walls. Basalt and travertine tiles on the floor are arranged with deliberate intention — laid in a pattern calculated to guide the way you move through the room, subtly choreographing the entire evening without your realising it.
The curved booths were hand-crafted by Set Acronym, whose woodworkers achieved a curvature that the team freely admits is technically extraordinary
The Craftspeople Behind the Room
The woodwork throughout, the booths, the panelling, the quiet details that give the space its sense of weight and presence was executed by Set Acronym, a specialist firm whose craftsmanship is, by all accounts, quietly extraordinary. The curvature of those booth backs required a level of technical woodworking skill that even the owners struggle to fully describe; they simply point at the result and let the timber speak.
The vintage pieces woven through the room are not decoration, they are conversation. The sconces are by Tobia Scarpa, the postmodern Italian master and son of the legendary Carlo Scarpa. The 1970s chairs are by Vico Magistretti, the Milanese designer who understood better than almost anyone how furniture could feel both functional and quietly glamorous. These pieces were brought from Italy, and their presence gives Bar di Bello a kind of curatorial depth that distinguishes it from any newcomer merely referencing Europe from a safe aesthetic distance.
On the walls hang works by artist Brendan Lynch, reproductions of Morandi and Modigliani that feel less like decoration and more like a quiet thesis about taste, placed alongside custom built-in vases sourced from Ceramics by STAUD, filled with fresh flowers. The effect is of a room assembled by someone with genuine knowledge and genuine conviction, not a mood board executed by committee.
The Menu & the Mood
Bar di Bello is the project of four partners: Wilmot, sommelier Kristin Olszewski (founder of Nomadica), Michael Kassar (owner of Wexler’s Deli) and Mike Moonves, a Silver Lake native. Between them, three of the four partners bring fifteen-plus years of experience at Michelin-recognised restaurants including Osteria Mozza, and the ambition here is not to open a wine bar masquerading as a restaurant, but a full-service room with genuine hospitality as its backbone.
The menu, shaped by the creative direction of Special Offer, Inc. (whose client list includes Charli XCX and Rosalía), keeps things refined and regional. There is a Negroni di Basso, a double Negroni served in handblown goblets of genuinely monstrous proportions, an homage to Bar Basso in Milan. The Greenhouse Martini blends tomato water with gin; the Prima Donna pairs raspberry balsamic with gin and Amaro dell’Etna. On the food side: trofie alla Genovese, a tableside-finished chicken cutlet, and a lingua di pane that elevates the bread basket into something you actually want to talk about.
The playlist – Italo Disco, naturally seals the contract. Wilmot says simply: “We want it to feel like a party in there.” On the strength of everything that has gone into this room, it will.
Bar di Bello is located 3300 Sunset Blvd, Silver Lake, Los Angeles, CA 9002