Botanica — a restaurant cum market cum online journal — is a delightful spot on Los Angeles’s Silver Lake Boulevard; where the design and interiors are as natural and inviting as the food and beverage on offer.
Situated within a former liquor store, the eatery is the brainchild of friends and longterm collaborators Heather Sperling and Emily Fiffer — having spent years eating and writing about food for a living (including running online publication Botanica Magazine and contributing to the wider online botanica conversation), the duo decided to put their money where their mouth is and turn the written word into reality, opening the acclaimed 58-seater restaurant and marketplace.
Focussing on local vegetables, fruits and dairy, a rainbow of colours and lashings of oil, a strong philosophy presides at Botanica; despite their disdain for the rulebook. The aim is to create fresh, fulfilling and healthy dishes using the best produce available — Sperling and Fiffer want you to leave feeling satisfied and revived, and inspired too; a feat easily-achieved by some jaw-dropping handsome design touches and an overall sense of cool calm.
A neighbourhood joint where you can start your day with gratifying granola, tuck into a hearty salad at lunch, and indulge in the likes of grilled lamb kabobs; spiced braised chicken; and low and slow king salmon come dinnertime — each washed down with coffee, cocktails, natural wines or beer; Sperling and Fiffer IRL foodie journal is the sort of place We Hearters would need crowbarred out of come closing time.
Photography, Alan Gastelum / Gentl and Hyers / courtesy Botanica
