Empire Building

Rolling Stone Plans a Hollywood Restaurant and Club

Photo: Rolling Stone

Trying its hardest to gather no moss, Rolling Stone is opening a restaurant and nightclub at The Hollywood and Highland Center next summer. It’s tricky not to think of tourist-propped Planet Hollywood and Hard Rock Café as its potential peers, but the mag’s partner, U.K. club operator and possible Kurt Cobain impersonator Niall Donnelly, insists to the L.A. Times that both the menu and “the venue itself will be for higher-end audiences.”

The 10,000 square-foot space will occupy two levels, none of it covered with the hand-me-downs of musicians but decked out in black by Brodin Design, with vaulted ceilings and exposed brick. There will be a tourist-friendly American and California cuisine restaurant on the second floor with “some Mexican-inspired stuff,” says Donnelly, not exactly convincing us it’s the western coming of Rivera.

The street level space will attempt a trendy lounge and bottle service nightclub that is not only very hard to get into, but made much more insulting by the fact that it’s the former counter culture telling you “you’re not on the list.” It sounds like this exclusive, corporate-contrived bottle-service venture would have been a huge success in 1993, but alas Rolling Stone, the times truly have a-changed.

Rolling Stone to launch restaurant chain in L.A.
[L.A. Times]

Rolling Stone Plans a Hollywood Restaurant and Club