Hollywood just handed the spotlight to oxtail. ABL Hollywood, a 35-seat dinner spot painted in deep reds, opened April 22 and comes from mother-daughter team Aja and Barbara Dawson. The pair brought their A Beautiful Life flavors west into a former boba shop, turning the compact room into a stage for Jamaican and Chinese family recipes that mash up into hybrid plates like oxtail mac and cheese, chen pi ji wings, and a brunch where honey-jerk chicken lands next to red-velvet waffles.
As reported by Eater LA, the Dawsons reworked the old boba space into an intimate dining room that Aja herself designed. The piece notes the deep-red banquettes, glowing neon, and a focused set of hours, and quotes Aja calling the project "my most honest expression of food."
According to A Beautiful Life, Aja first built her following by selling patties at pop-ups and on a food truck, then opened a sit-down restaurant in Downtown Los Angeles in 2013. That climb from grassroots vendor to brick-and-mortar operator helps explain why ABL Hollywood leans so hard on family recipes and playful cross-cultural riffs.
What to Order
Headliners on the menu include jerk-fried oysters, oxtail egg rolls that can be filled with oxtail, jerk chicken, or vegetables, oxtail lo mein, and oxtail macaroni and cheese, as reported by Eater LA. The cooking leans into Jamaican-Chinese crossings, a culinary lineage that scholars trace back to 19th-century Chinese migration to the Caribbean, according to a thesis at Digital Commons.
Where to Go
A Beautiful Life lists the ABL Hollywood storefront at 1649 N. Cahuenga Boulevard and offers a reservations widget on its site, with bookings and basic details handled through the restaurant’s online tool. Inside, the room functions as an intimate counter on Hollywood’s busy corridor, so checking availability on the ABL website before you roll up is a smart move.
The arrival of ABL adds a diasporic-fusion voice to Cahuenga’s lineup and highlights how Los Angeles chefs are remixing family recipes into compact, high-focus dining rooms. For now, the Dawsons’ blend of Jamaican staples and Chinese-influenced preparations is what diners are squeezing into that little red room to try in Hollywood.
