Chef Jordan Kahn’s Meteoric Rise

“When we first opened Vespertine (in 2017), we set out to create a beautiful gastronomic experience centered around our ingredients. We incorporated multi-sensory elements, allowing the diner to deepen their connection to and understanding of the taste and impact of those ingredients,” he says. “It was about creating a place where people could reconnect with the raw materials—essentially connecting with nature. We were very grateful for the opportunity to do that,” he says. Diners were equally delighted, and Vespertine was awarded Two MICHELIN Stars. Then, Covid brought everything to a screeching halt.

“It was crazy, challenging, difficult, unexpected—every emotion possible that you could have we were having, like everybody else.” Of course, with a restaurant laser-focused on delivering a one-of-a-kind experience, how do you move forward when the world has closed its doors? “I sat down with my wife one day and said, ‘how do we translate what we do?’ Restaurants were pivoting to takeout but how were we supposed to do that? She was the one who said we didn’t have to translate the experience, but we had to translate the way that we make people feel.” 

Connecting—with his own staff, guests, and ingredients—is integral to understanding what makes Jordan Kahn tick. It’s also what spurred the launch of Vespertine’s extraordinary at-home dining. “We started with a few and said, ‘let’s see where this goes.’” It was immediately popular. “We had an enormously overwhelming response that we were not expecting. We did 100 orders, sold out within minutes, and had a wait list of 2,000 people after the second day.”

Over time, the meals became more personal, whether honoring restaurants where Kahn cut his teeth, including Three MICHELIN Star and Green Star The French Laundry and Three MICHELIN Star Alinea, or paying homage to his roots in Cuba, the American South, and Mexico. “The level that we were executing at, still to this day it’s one of my proudest moments. We really tried to distill the experience of dining at those restaurants at home,” he shares. “You would open the box and on top was a little card with a note from me about what was inside.” Kahn included anecdotes to connect with his customers. “In The French Laundry box, we served salmon cornets and I talked about the first time I learned how to make those and how I burned them all,” he laughs. 


While other restaurants in Los Angeles and around the country began reopening, Kahn was slow to reopen Vespertine as a sit-down restaurant, choosing instead to take stock of where they had been and where they wanted to go. “The pandemic gave us this beautiful gift to learn how we can engage and connect with people in a deeper way through our storytelling and through the ingredients. It’s a weird thing to say, but the pandemic made our purpose clearer.”

It was also during this time that the opportunity to open Meteora arose. “It came into our orbit and I felt it was a really important opportunity to pursue as a response to the pandemic, because for me the pandemic did a few things. It accelerated the digital age by probably 10 years. Everything became hyper digital, which isn't a bad thing, but it also makes it so that there is maybe a little bit too much emphasis on the digital age and less emphasis on our natural world. We really wanted Meteora to be a little bit of a reciprocal response to that—not forgetting that very basic premise, which is nutrition is how humans access nature.”

Jordan Kahn reopened Vespertine in April 2024. He describes the new restaurant by sharing what it always was. “It's a modern exploration of exceptional ingredients that incorporates multisensory elements to deepen our diners’ and our guests’ connection, understanding, impact and taste of those ingredients.” Of course, just like the takeout boxes, Vespertine is also deeply personal. “Dining at Vespertine is sort of like dining in a museum of my life, and as with time, it's evolved and matured in the way that I have evolved and matured. Its purpose remains the same, but it is even more clear now. Our tenets of culinary approach remain the same, but we’re just more fine-tuned. He’s also quick to credit his dedicated team at both restaurants. “With a new chapter of course comes a new team, new collaborators, new perspectives, new life experiences, and a new moment in time, and so all of these elements complement and fuel the evolution. It's very much the same soul, just four years older.”

Now with two fine dining restaurants and Destroyer, a café located across from Vespertine, Kahn is running a constellation of restaurants, one that he sees as complementary. “Their essential purpose is the same, however, the way that we execute it is specific to each of the restaurants. Vespertine only has 20 seats, so it allows us to craft experiences that are extremely detailed, and we have a very specific choreography. Meteora is in a place where you really feel like you're in a jungle, and that's by design, to take people out of feeling like they're in the middle of a metropolis. Walking into Meteora is truly like walking into a portal into another world. We apply the same ethos in very different ways across the two restaurants because the setting is a bit different and the context is a little bit different, but it is essentially the same kind of end result.”

And that end result? Connection, naturally. “There is a tremendous impact with every single dish that we serve. Everybody talks about the way that the dishes and the experience make them feel. It's incredibly emotional because we play in these ethers of the human consciousness. One of the proudest things that we experience every day at both restaurants is talking with people who got our takeout during the pandemic and they share how important it was for them. And, for me, that’s the biggest thing about MICHELIN. It does so many wonderful things (awarding recognition, etc.) but also reminds us that eating is an important practice that requires you to be present. Every single meal doesn't have to be every day, but occasionally you need to show up and be present for your own dining experience so that you can then experience something extraordinary.” 


Hero image: thegry.space / Chef Jordan Kahn