Monolith
Step inside a bar that feels like a dream of the future imagined in the past. At Monolith, we blend retro-futuristic style with modern sophistication — serving inventive cocktails, nostalgic bites, and a vibe that’s equal parts classy, playful, and unexpected.
Cocktails
Using both classic techniques and modern bartending innovation, our cocktail programs will follow the same inspirations:
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Local, Seasonal Ingredients – Both our cocktails and our cuisine will be inspired by what’s local, sustainable, and in season. Local farmers, distilleries, artisans, and purveyors will supply most of our ingredients.
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Current Global Trends – Like the way we dress, what and how we drink is a constant rollercoaster of cycles, innovations, and discovery. Monolith will keep an eye on cocktail and culinary trends across the globe, utilize the good ones in our menus, leave the silly ones for TikTok, and maybe even start a few of our own.
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Our Staff & Guests – Most importantly, our food and beverages will be inspired by the memories and experiences of our amazing staff and guests. Using a short questionnaire, we intend on involving our friends and neighbors in our creative process by learning about their fondest food- or drink-related memories from childhood, their favorite places around the world, or a meal or cocktail that they’ll never forget. We want the lives and stories of our community to inspire what we give back to them.
Cuisine
Our cuisine is a love letter to a future long past — rewired, reimagined, and served with a twist. Expect retrofitted classics, globally-inspired fusions, and modern takes on nostalgic favorites.
The menu will change seasonally (2-3 times per year), and will have the same inspirations as our cocktails.
It will be parsed into several sections — i.e. Sushi, Tapas, Shareables, etc. — with each item taking inspiration from around the globe before being retrofitted into its designated category. This will give our Executive Chef plenty of room to create with playful, global ingredients and techniques while staying true to our menu concept.
Our food will be globally inspired, playfully executed, and designed to be snackable, shareable, and social. The menu is built for easy eating in a lounge setting — think small plates, refined street food, and upscale bar bites that complement the cocktails.
As the night progresses, we’ll pare the menu down to serve only a handful of our most popular small plates (i.e. our late night menu).
The Vibe
Monolith offers a transportive experience — an intimate escape into a retro-futuristic world where mid-century imagination meets modern sophistication. The space is inspired by a 1950s vision of the future: curving architecture, rich textures, and low ambient lighting that glows like the promise of tomorrow. It’s a lounge designed for discovery and conversation, where each element — light, sound, scent, and material — works in harmony to create an environment that’s immersive, cinematic, and just a touch surreal.
The interior will feature sleek accents, plush low-slung seating, and custom lighting that casts deep shadows and soft highlights, creating a warm, magnetic energy with underlighting and moody reflections. The bar is the beating heart of the room — a glowing altar of rare spirits, global ingredients, and creative intention.
Monolith will be built for connection. It will draw a curious, stylish crowd of young professionals, creatives, and culture-seekers who value experience as much as taste. Whether guests are gathering for a pre-dinner cocktail, an after-hours rendezvous, or an impromptu celebration, the atmosphere will always feel special — elevated but never exclusive, designed but never contrived.
This is not a theme bar. There are no gimmicks — only innovative cocktails, globally inspired flavors, and a sense of place that feels both nostalgic and ahead of its time.
As for the energy, the lighting and music will shift throughout the night. Early in the evening, the lounge will be relaxed and inviting, the perfect spot to unwind with an aperitif or grab a cocktail before a night out, but as the night deepens, the space will hum with quiet excitement, the music will subtly transition from soft beats of jazztronica to a more energetic but sophisticated rhythms of electro-swing, which uses retro swing and big band music of the past set to the more modern and contemporary house beats.
We will contract a veteran boutique firm with experience designing lounges and speakeasies to help bring our vision of Monolith to life.
The Menu
We want people to want to steal our menu. We won’t encourage it, of course. But our menu will be a small piece of artwork in itself, so cool that anyone who handles it should think to themselves that they’d like to take it home. We'll hire a boutique design firm to help us create something unique and special.
While not finalized yet, some ideas include:
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The Instruction Manual – Styled like a space-age appliance manual with diagrams, schematics, and drink components listed like tech specs
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The LED Panel – Inspired by old "mission control" panels and early computers, menu items could be printed on translucent acetate and slid into a backlit dashboard, with custom buttons that do nothing but invite guests to play
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The Pulp Sci-Fi Novel – This would look and feel like a worn-out vintage paperback, with muted colors and dotted printing
Cocktails will be first, with illustrations and copy written for each of our seasonal house cocktails (ingredients, inspiration, description). Our seasonal dishes and small plates will be next, followed by a wine, beer, and spirits list. “Our Story” will follow, with information about Monolith, its staff, its philosophies, and its inspirations.
There will also be a “House Cocktail Compendium” for indecisive guests that might want to try something new but don’t know where to start. It will be a flowchart with choose-your-own decision as the eye descends down the page. Guests can answer questions like, “Boozy vs. Bright?” or “Dark vs. Light?” or “Sweet vs. Smoky?” which would inevitably lead them to specific cocktail from a list of our house cocktails at the bottom. Ideally, we'll have a brand new, very old computer running a DOS program that will allow the guest to discover their cocktail order through the same series of prompts.
The Bar
At the center of Monolith stands its crown jewel — the bar itself. More than just a place to order a drink, it’s a stage for craft, creativity, and connection. Designed with intention and elegance, the bar will be a glowing anchor in the room: underlit stone or resin surfaces will emit a soft, futuristic radiance, while curved lines and brushed metal accents will evoke a vintage-modern sensibility drawn straight from mid-century speculative design.
Behind the bar, a curated backlit display will showcase an eclectic global collection of spirits, liqueurs, and house-made ingredients with the focal point being a large, commissioned painting in a retro-futurist style.
From small-batch whiskies to unique amaros and obscure apéritifs, the spirit selection will reflect the lounge’s cosmopolitan air and culinary curiosity. The bar menu will strike the perfect balance of making avant-garde originals out of retrofitted classics by creating cocktails that are playful, smart, and unexpected.
This is not a high-volume cocktail factory. Bartenders are trained artists and warm hosts, delivering drinks with intention, education, and a story, all while maintaining an unpretentious, welcoming, and playful tone. Service will be paced to foster conversation and discovery, and the layout will encourage guests to linger, engage, and watch the magic unfold.
The bar is both the engine and the moodboard of Monolith: a dynamic centerpiece that brings together people, flavor, and future-forward hospitality in one unforgettable setting.
The Lounge
The lounge at Monolith is where design and intention meet to create a uniquely social, atmospheric experience. Accommodating 50-60 guests, the space will be intimate yet fluid — structured to foster both quiet conversation and spontaneous connection. It will be a living room for the curious and the cosmopolitan, where every seat invites you to settle in, sip slowly, and stay awhile.
Seating will be deliberately varied to suit different moods and group dynamics. Plush banquettes and tufted leather sofas offer a sense of refinement and ease, while low-slung velvet armchairs form soft clusters that will feel as private as they are inviting. Along the perimeter, cozy booths will wrap the walls, perfect for whispered conversations or lingering over a nightcap. At the center, flexible arrangements will allow guests to flow between interactions, from intimate to communal.
High-top communal tables positioned near the bar will act as a casual hub — encouraging mingling and conversation between cocktail lovers, regulars, and new faces alike. The layout will emphasize comfort without sacrificing sophistication, using texture, light, and subtle elevation changes to delineate zones without creating barriers.
The lounge’s floor plan will be intentionally exploratory, offering guests the opportunity to find “their” corner of the space. Whether it’s a dimly lit alcove for a first date or a livelier pocket where friends toast the end of the week, every part of the room will be designed to feel personal, cinematic, and alive with potential.
Monolith isn’t a place you pass through. It’s a place you inhabit — one that invites you to slow down, lean in, and be part of something just a little out of time.
The Bathrooms
At Monolith, even a trip to the bathroom will be an experience — a moment of surprise, playfulness, and immersive design. Inspired by the hidden, cheeky elements of classic speakeasies and infused with global influences and modern mystique, the bathrooms will be more than just functional — they’ll be Instagrammable, interactive, and delightfully unexpected.
Our bathrooms will feature gender-neutral, full-privacy stalls with communal sinks and vanity mirrors. Each stall will have its own theme and/or unique and interactive touches, like:
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Jungle Noir – Lush, tropical wallpaper and dim, golden lighting with hanging vines and green draperies, as well as a subtle ambient soundscape of distant jungle rain and soft flashes of light imitating lightning.
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Hall of Mirrors – Four walls of mirrors with soft LED lighting can create an endless space, with secret messages graffitied on the glass (“Welcome to the Monkey House!”) only visible when pressing the clandestine DO NOT PRESS button.
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Speakeasy Glam – Art deco-inspired tilework, antique perfume bottles and vintage vanity mirrors with classic jazz playing softly, transporting our guests to a different era.
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Unique Touches and Easter Eggs – Like the speakeasies of old, Monolith will be full of secrets, i.e. a one-way mirror that allows bathroom guests a unique view of the kitchen (without being seen themselves), a hidden peephole through which viewers will find a nickelodeon of episodes of the Jetsons and black & white sci-fi movies from the 1920s, or a hidden wall of space-age caricatures of our most beloved regulars and VIPs.
Membership
In the ever-shifting landscape of Los Angeles nightlife, Monolith rises as something different. Not loud, not ostentatious, but an artifact from another future, unearthed and reimagined. Step past the threshold and you’ll find a lounge where time bends: the sleek optimism of the atomic age collides with the unknown possibilities of tomorrow. It is a place for the curious, the restless, the ones who never quite fit inside the lines.
Monolith welcomes everyone who crosses its doors, and will always be open to the public. But for those who wish to go deeper — who crave not just an evening out, but a community — we offer our Monolith Cocktail Club Membership.
Our membership isn’t about wealth or status, it’s about refinement, curiosity, and the desire to experience each night with greater depth and intention. Members enjoy privileges that go beyond the ordinary: priority access to reservations and events, visit credits, curated surprises, and a more personal connection to the lounge itself.
It’s less a transaction and more a covenant, a way of ensuring that your favorite seat, your perfect cocktail, and your ideal evening are always within reach. For those guests who wish to step into this more tailored orbit, Monolith Membership awaits.
Memberships are limited and highly selective. Apply below. Membership granted upon review.
