The Sunset Strip needed this. Not another craft cocktail bar masquerading as a speakeasy, not another celebrity-bait hotspot with Instagram-ready interiors and forgettable food. What it needed was Galerie—a supper club that treats nostalgia as a launching point rather than a destination, where the 70s aesthetic frames something genuinely contemporary: a restaurant where people under 40 actually want to spend their money and time.
Founders Trae Meyer-Whalley and Simon Pompan identified a real gap. "We really thought there was a need for a fresh concept—one that's catering to a younger demographic," Meyer-Whalley explains, and the evidence is already mounting in packed dinner seatings and a celebrity sightings list that needs updating weekly. They've done something rare: opened a fine-dining establishment that doesn't feel like a museum or a stage set. The room breathes. The vibe actually matches the food.
Executive Chef Gabriel Lindsey, who cut his teeth at Dudley Market, is working from a menu that respects French technique without genuflecting to it. A French onion-inspired burger arrives substantial and umami-forward; Wagyu beef skewers sing with their own beefy intensity; Lumache pasta shows restraint and confidence in equal measure. The shrimp cocktail with caper rémoulade is the kind of retro-luxe move that could read as gimmicky but instead feels like remembering what that dish was always supposed to taste like. Fried brussels sprouts with green goddess provides brightness without preaching. Ben Ford's presence as partner and lead advisor grounds the operation in serious LA restaurant pedigree, and it shows.
But Galerie refuses to be just another restaurant. By blurring the line between dining room, cocktail bar, and art gallery—with quarterly rotating exhibitions featuring emerging artists—the venue creates a legitimate third space, the kind that used to define nightlife before everything got algorithmic and atomized. Live jazz performances anchor the week, four nights of musicians who actually play, with sound quality that respects both the music and the eaters trying to have a conversation.
This is what happens when people who understand both Los Angeles and the current moment decide to open a restaurant. Galerie doesn't apologize for wanting to be glamorous or fun. It just executes at a level that makes both feel earned.