Mistral Reimagined: Iconic LA French Bistro Will get Trendy Update

A pair of next-gen restaurateurs has rebooted Mistral, the almost four-decade-old French bistro alongside Ventura Boulevard within the Valley. Long a popular haven for execs from the close by Warners, Universal and Radford heaps — together with their spouses and affair companions — it’s “this secret country club in Sherman Oaks,” in line with Jonah Freedman, who with Josh Migdal bought Mistral from the retiring founder-operator Henri Abergel. Think a membership the place everybody from Leslie Moonves and Lisa Vanderpump to the solid of General Hospital had been unofficial members.

Freedman and Migdal had been drawn to the notion of preserving and enhancing its traditions whereas extending its attraction to a youthful demographic, a lot as Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson — veterans of Keith McNally and Daniel Boulud’s Manhattan temples of French delicacies — have restored and enlivened Upper East Side legend Le Veau d’Or to a lot acclaim. “We’ve wanted to lean into what Mistral already was,” explains Freedman, who runs the favored Greekman’s in Silver Lake with Migdal. “We’re interested in elevating a classic for an intergenerational crowd.”

That’s meant including wooden paneling and classic sconces, retaining the chandeliers and tile ground and honing signature dishes like a roast hen with mustard sauce, escargots, rack of lamb ratatouille and steak frites. “We’ve been here for a while now — quietly, delicately and slowly updating the menu,” says Migdal. (The Pulitzer-winning eating critic Jonathan Gold sealed Mistral’s repute in 1988 with a rave Los Angeles Times overview by which he lauded “a husky Gérard Depardieu of an onion soup.”)

Up subsequent, Freedman and Migdal will flip an adjoining non-public eating room into Henri’s, a small seafood bar named in honor of the dapper Abergel, who’s a throwback to an period when French eating places dominated L.A.’s eating scene, from L’Orangerie to L’Ermitage. (He got here up on the long-gone Ventura Boulevard stalwart La Serre.) Among the current guests for Mistral 2.0’s friends-and-family dinners was Valley royalty Alana Haim and her Licorice Pizza director, Paul Thomas Anderson, who solid Abergel within the 2021 movie because the aware supervisor of yet one more storied, since-shuttered close by restaurant, Studio City’s Tail o’ the Cock.

For now, Abergel is trying ahead to visiting as a visitor himself. “There’s an excellent preparation of branzino on the menu,” he says. “Now I can just enjoy it.”

This story appeared within the Sept. 9 situation of The Hollywood Reporter journal. Click here to subscribe.