A downtown Manhattan institution has turned up more than 2,700 miles from its Lafayette Street dining room. Indochine, the French-Vietnamese restaurant that has fed New York's fashion and art crowds since 1984, is now serving a selection of its signature dishes at Bar Marmont, the newly renovated nightlife fixture tucked inside Hollywood's Chateau Marmont.
The pairing was first reported by WWD, which noted that Bar Marmont has reopened following a renovation and is once again welcoming guests on the Sunset Boulevard property. Despite the dishes already appearing on tables, the outlet reported that the culinary partnership between the two restaurants has not been formally announced.
What's Actually on the Plate
The menu making its way out of Bar Marmont's kitchen reads like a greatest-hits list from Indochine's downtown dining room. Per the outlet's report, diners can order a spicy beef salad with basil, mint, shallots and spicy tamarind for $26, fried spring rolls with chicken, vegetables and glass vermicelli for $22, and crispy salt-and-pepper rock shrimp with chili and jalapeño aioli, also $26.
Heartier options include a spicy chicken breast sautéed with lemongrass, Asian basil and peanuts for $32, shaking beef made with diced hanger steak, scallion and chili for $45, and baked Chilean sea bass for $48. The report notes the food sits alongside classic cocktails, Champagne, wines and spirits, keeping Bar Marmont's drinks-forward reputation intact even as the kitchen takes on a new identity.
A Nightspot Built for the Dark Hours
Bar Marmont is currently open Thursday through Saturday and has been hosting DJ nights since reopening, according to the same report. That late-night bent tracks with the bar's long-standing reputation: a Los Angeles Times review of an earlier era at the bar observed that the place only really gets going around 11 p.m., when the lights dim and the music climbs.
That earlier food program, led at the time by chef Carolynn Spence, formerly of New York's Spotted Pig, ran a tighter menu of roughly a dozen appetizers and first courses alongside about ten mains, according to the same Los Angeles Times account. A Chateau Marmont menu from that period, reviewed separately, listed items like Bacon Wrapped Bourbon Apples and Wesley's Spicy Chicken for $8 each, a Crispy Calamari plate for $14, and a burger with fries for $16 — a far cry from the $45 shaking beef now on offer, though the prices reflect different eras and cannot be compared directly as current figures.
Two Legacy Properties, One Quiet Collaboration
Indochine's own pedigree is part of what makes the crossover notable. The restaurant is owned by Jean-Marc Houmard, Huy Chi Le and Michael Callahan, and has long been known as a favorite of the fashion crowd, counting Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat among its past regulars, per WWD's reporting.
Chateau Marmont carries its own storied résumé. The building was unveiled in 1929 as an apartment property before it became a hotel, and it has welcomed guests including Marilyn Monroe and James Dean over the decades, the outlet reported. Bar Marmont itself dates to 1995, when hotelier André Balazs opened it as a separate space on the Chateau Marmont grounds — a venue that has since hosted Hollywood parties and gone through several redesigns, including, according to the Times, reupholstered banquettes and a skylight cut into the dining room roof during one earlier refresh.
Bar Marmont's history also includes operational upheaval. Eater LA reported that the bar closed its doors and laid off staff at the end of March 2017 as part of an extended food and drink overhaul, underscoring how often the Sunset Boulevard spot has reinvented its kitchen before this latest, still-unofficial Indochine collaboration.
