DESTINATION L A
THE TASTE MAKER Chef Melissa Perello, a talented restaurateur with an equally visionary design sense, ventures south from San Francisco to Los Angeles to open her third, and most ambitious, restaurant yet.
meet us for dinner at
LOS
ANGELES,
M. GEORGINA
CALIFORNIA
DESTINATION L A
THE TASTE MAKER Chef Melissa Perello, a talented restaurateur with an equally visionary design sense, ventures south from San Francisco to Los Angeles to open her third, and most ambitious, restaurant yet.
meet us for dinner at
LOS
ANGELES,
M. GEORGINA
CALIFORNIA
M. Georgina is a 4500-square-foot shrine to culinary
ingenuity and not an inch of space is wasted. Whole beasts
her career trajectory now, the road to LA was paved slowly.
smoke and sizzle on hot coals over here. Dry goods stand
Very slowly. “Los Angeles was never part of the plan,” she
at attention on rows of open shelves over there. There
says. “I had no thoughts of leaving San Francisco. At all.”
are stations for prepping the housemade ricotta cheese,
yogurt and other from-scratch ingredients that populate
behind ROW DTLA had been courting Melissa from afar,
at the ready and an open-air pick-up window called The
checking in every so often in an effort to convince her
Slip for lunch on the go. Everything about this restaurant,
that LA—and their complex—was the place for her next
right down to its slick glass-and-metal construction, exists
restaurant. In their minds, she was integral to the project
for one reason: to bring chef-owner Melissa Perello’s brand
and they wanted her as an anchor.
of elevated yet accessible market-driven food to delicious
life in the biggest and best possible way.
“That’s when I started thinking, this might be
worth considering,” Melissa says. “Then I started getting
Situated prominently within ROW DTLA, a sprawling
interested and it all snowballed from there. The food
mixed-use development in Los Angeles’ burgeoning Arts
scene in LA has changed so dramatically over the past few
District, M. Georgina feels like a secret discovery—at once
years, and I was struck by how exciting it all felt. I wasn’t
unique within the landscape of LA’s evolving food scene
expecting it, but I also couldn’t deny it. It just felt right.”
and also completely at home among the new tastemaker-
led restaurants propelling the city’s palate forward. Like
To understand the influences behind Melissa’s
culinary vision, it’s crucial to go back in time. Before she
its location, M. Georgina manages a delicate balancing
became the darling of the food world for reinvigorating
act; it is historic yet experimental, old-school with a new
San Francisco’s fabled Charles Nob Hill restaurant at
vision, foundational in technique yet fluid in expression,
the tender age of twenty-four, before she became one of
serious and unsentimental but with a whiff of whimsy.
But other forces were at work behind the scenes.
For the better part of the past eight years, the developers
the menu, plus uncommonly delicious bread and butter
But while the move feels like the natural next step in
Food & Wine magazine’s Best New Chefs at twenty-seven,
It’s a bigger, bolder, glitzier twist on the kind of high-
before the accolades and the Michelin star she earned at
quality, unpretentious flavor that has become Melissa’s
Fifth Floor restaurant, before she opened two restaurants
signature over the past decade, and propelled both of her
of her own and earned two additional Michelin stars for
San Francisco restaurants, Frances and Octavia, from
those, too, and long before this LA venture ever presented
dining spots to destinations.
itself, Melissa Perello was a little girl toggling between two
seemingly disparate destinations that heavily shaped the kind of chef she would become: New Jersey and Texas.
“When I was younger, we lived in Hackensack, New
Jersey, where my father’s family was from,” she says, “so
in the summers, my parents would ship us off to Texas,
"THE FOOD SCENE IN LA HAS
where my mother’s family was from, for six to eight weeks.
We’d be in the middle of nowhere, in northern Texas, the
CHANGED SO DRAMATICALLY
panhandle, with nothing to do.” To stave off boredom,
OVER THE PAST FEW YEARS, AND I
Melissa watched cooking shows on PBS. Soon, she was
spellbound by the dishes she saw chefs like Nathalie
WAS STRUCK BY HOW EXCITING IT
Dupree, Jacques Pépin and Julia Child conjuring on
ALL FELT. I WASN’T EXPECTING IT,
the screen. “I’d go home to New Jersey with this whole
repertoire of things to cook,” she says. “I remember being
BUT I ALSO COULDN’T DENY IT.
about seven or eight years old telling my mom that I
IT JUST FELT RIGHT."
just had to cook this leg of lamb dish I had seen and she was like, ‘Alright.’ So we went and got two legs of lamb
and bound them and stuffed them with thyme and dijon
mustard and then roasted them on the grill just like I had
THE CURRENT VOL. 2 50
Chef Melissa Perello preps a tasting menu in the weeks leading up to M. Georgina’s opening.
THE CURRENT VOL. 2 51
A moment of calm in the dining room.
Melissa's second San Francisco restaurant, Octavia.
seen. I was very fortunate that my parents always gave
her culinary credibility in San Francisco, instilled in her
kitchen.” It helped that her grandmother, Frances, for
enduring success: the first, a deeply rooted appreciation
me the opportunity and space to just play around in the
three things that, in hindsight, likely contributed to that
whom Melissa named her first restaurant, was also a
for food inherited from older generations; the second,
proficient and enthusiastic home cook who nurtured the
a love of the energy of restaurant dining, along with an
passion she saw budding in her granddaughter.
awareness of the sense of pageantry that goes along with
Later, when the family moved from New Jersey to
it and a keen ability to separate artistry from artifice; the
Texas, the lure of restaurants continued to tug on her. “I
third, an intuitive understanding that a meal is meant to
can’t remember my first restaurant experience, but I do
savor as well as sustain.
remember dragging my parents out to a lot of fine dining
spots in my younger years, which is kind of strange for a
kid growing up in Texas,” she says. “I was obsessed with
when combined, have the power to create real culinary
the level of service and the way the plates were executed
alchemy—but the magic extends beyond just the food. As a
so artfully.”
M. Georgina, named for Melissa’s father’s mother
this time, is a reflection of how all of those attributes,
chef, Melissa has always thrived on the sense of community
After graduating from the Culinary Institute of
a restaurant naturally creates, from the chemistry of the
America in Hyde Park, New York, in the mid 1990s, Melissa
staff to the vibe of the people in the dining room. As a
moved to San Francisco, cutting her teeth under the toque
restaurateur, she applies that spirit of connection to the
of chef Michael Mina at Aqua. From there, she went on
non-culinary aspects of the business, as well, especially
to Charles Nob Hill, where her star began to rise after she
when it comes to design. “It is extremely important to
took over the head chef reins following her mentor Ron
me to collaborate with people who share my sensibility
Siegel’s departure. “Ron was the first person who showed
and commitment to quality,” she says, “which is why I’m
me the way the front and back of a restaurant could and
involved in every decision that goes into creating and
should work together,” she says. “He was always out in
sustaining my restaurants.”
the dining room, selecting linens and certain types of glassware. He was very exacting, and it made me realize
that a restaurant is more than just its kitchen and I could impact diners beyond just the food I was serving. I could
give them an experience.” A subsequent stint at Fifth Floor, another lauded but now shuttered San Francisco restaurant, earned Melissa her first Michelin star. But she
"I REMEMBER BEING ABOUT SEVEN
was tired.
OR EIGHT YEARS OLD TELLING MY
At the end of 2006, she decided to take a break and
reassess her path. The time away was therapeutic and
MOM THAT I JUST HAD TO COOK
cathartic and by 2009, she had returned to the food world,
THIS LEG OF LAMB DISH THAT I
this time with a restaurant all her own.
Frances was an instant success and a reminder
HAD SEEN ON PBS, AND SHE WAS
soulful flavor didn’t have to be fussy or uptight. Its sister
LIKE, ‘ALRIGHT.’ SO WE WENT AND
that refined food with market-fresh ingredients and restaurant, Octavia, channeled that same message when
GOT TWO LEGS OF LAMB, BOUND
it opened in 2015. By 2017, Melissa had earned two more
THEM, STUFFED THEM WITH THYME
Michelin stars.
In today’s food-obsessed world, where chefs are
AND DIJON MUSTARD AND THEN
influencers whose profiles rise and fall as spectacularly
ROASTED THEM ON THE GRILL."
as those of film stars and reality show celebrities, Melissa’s longevity and steadfast resolve are no small accomplishment.
Those early years and that nascent
spark for cooking, combined with time spent burnishing
THE CURRENT VOL. 2 54
At M. Georgina the details matter, from the type of wood to the tableware.
Evidence of her exacting eye is everywhere: She
personally sourced the water glasses for their superior
hand feel, and worked with Bay Area antiques dealer Laurie Furber at Elsie Green to find culinary collectibles.
“Relationships are very important to me,” Melissa
says. “When we opened Frances, I worked with a ceramicist named Akiko Graham out of Seattle to make a lot of special
things. Then, with Octavia, I met Sarah Kersten, who’s
EVERYTHING ABOUT M. GEORGINA RIGHT DOWN TO ITS SLICK GLASSAND-METAL CONSTRUCTION
another ceramicist out of Berkeley, and really loved her
work. She’s most known for these fermentation crocks,
EXISTS FOR ONE REASON: TO
which are really beautiful. After we collaborated on the
BRING MELISSA'S BRAND OF
dishes for Octavia, everyone wanted them. Now they’re
part of her full line. Most recently, we worked together to
ELEVATED YET ACCESSIBLE
create a whole new set of special plates for M. Georgina.
MARKET-DRIVEN FOOD TO
So in a lot of ways we kind of grew together.”
To build the wood-burning oven and hearth that
sits center stage at M. Georgina, Melissa enlisted the
DELICIOUS LIFE IN THE BIGGEST
Oregon-based specialist, Jeremiah Thorndike Church.
For lighting, she scoured magazines and antiques auctions for inspiration before discovering some Urban Electric
fixtures, which now boost the restaurant’s glow. Her
father, a hobbyist carpenter with near-professional skills,
contributed to the woodworking by building some of the restaurant’s banquette seating—a tradition continued from the days in San Francisco, when he and Melissa supervised
most of the design and build-out of Frances and Octavia. “I inherited my drive and pluck from my dad,” she says. Indeed, there isn’t much that escapes Melissa Perello’s watchful eye and uncompromising standards.
Just months into M. Georgina’s run, the restaurant
is already garnering rave reviews from critics and diners,
further cementing Melissa’s place in the firmament of star
chefs. For her part, though, fame is beside the point. The glory of a restaurant, she feels, firmly rests in two things:
the dishes and the details. “It’s about being thoughtful with every element of the experience, whether it’s the cooking or the design. Precision is everything,” she says, “and precision pays off.”
THE CURRENT VOL. 2 57
AND BEST POSSIBLE WAY.
ROW DTLA LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA T H U R S D AY, N O V E M B E R 7 , 2 0 1 9 4:03PM