Some of Los Angeles’s most successful food businesses — including Mini Kabob and the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills — are joining forces as a kind of culinary Avengers with the opening of Neighborly, a new destination that hopes to reimagine the food hall with multiple menus from different restaurants offered on the same premises.
Unlike a food hall, all of Neighborly’s dishes are prepared within one multi-faceted kitchen and overseen by a single team of chefs. Neighborly promises to offer more consistent preparations that reflect the original restaurants instead of the often diminished quality that appears when popular concepts venture far from their homes. While this resembles the fast-growing Wonder in New York, which employs celebrity chefs and restaurants to serve reheated meals, Neighborly will prepare food on site like a more traditional restaurant.
Neighborly will open on December 19 at Rick Caruso’s the Promenade at Westlake Village development inside the former Social Monk space, bringing Mini Kabob, Gaby’s by prominent cookbook author and food recipe blogger Gaby Dalkin, the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, Joan’s on Third marketplace, and Flour Shop by Amirah Kassem. In addition, Social Monk will offer a refined menu that should appeal to its longtime regulars. Recall that Social Monk was the casual Panda Express-type pan-Asian restaurant by the Cheesecake Factory that never bloomed as prominently as the big Chinese food chain.
The food hall is backed by DFG Ventures, also known as Dom Food Group, which partnered with Gwyneth Paltrow to expand a successful string of Goop Kitchen restaurants that serve gluten-free pizzas, salads, and sandwiches via delivery and takeout spaces. DFG Ventures has investments in food technology, services, and branded goods, and their concepts include Suckerpunch pickles, Rick Bayless’s Tortazo restaurant, and The Kitchen. Mendocino Farms co-founder Mario Del Pero, also a partner at DFG Ventures, is leading the charge at Neighborly to bring acclaimed places like the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills and Mini Kabob to well-heeled suburbs like Westlake Village.
Neighborly’s innovation isn’t as much about creating something novel but refining what diners are already familiar with. “It’s not that new of an idea, but the amount of technology and branding we’re putting around everything is pretty modern,” Del Pero told Eater over the phone. What that means exactly isn’t clear, but expect a user-friendly takeaway, dine-in, and delivery system that brings well-regarded restaurants to more Los Angeles neighborhoods. “We got a lot of inspiration in this kind of category from everything that Eataly has done on a super grand scale,” he continued. Neighborly chose brands that Del Pero says offers an “authentic point of view that we knew delivered the best and are the most demanded.” Partners offer recipes, support, and branding while receiving licensing fees and potentially a share of the revenues in return.
Mini Kabob, which still operates a tiny take-out Armenian kebab shop in Glendale, expanded to a stall at Westfield Topanga’s Topanga Social food hall in 2023. A partnership with Neighborly promises to help the celebrated kebab restaurant reach even more Southern California locations. The same goes for the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, which was acquired by Dominick DiBartolomeo of Domenico’s Foods (no relation to Dominick’s Finer Foods) in 2022. At Neighborly, DiBartolomeo will serve artisan pizza and pastas. Joan’s On Third, a longtime favorite of Del Pero, will sell pre-made foods as one would find at its Studio City or West Third marketplaces. The Explosion Cake baker Amirah Kassem will sell cookies at Flour Shop. Author Gaby Dalkin will unleash a line of salads, bowls, and sandwiches, the kind of healthy-ish everyday fare that Angelenos gravitate to.
As for future partners, Del Pero hinted that some big names could be on the horizon to sell popular American food items like burgers. Del Pero says the Westlake Village space can accommodate one or two more partners. At the moment, DFG Ventures is looking at Manhattan Beach and Pacific Palisades for the next expansion, essentially affluent suburban or urban areas where diners don’t get to see as many “bespoke concepts” as the ones at Neighborly.
Neighborly will open on December 19 at 4000 E. Thousand Oaks Boulevard, Space C1, Westlake Village, CA, 91362 with daily hours.