Darling: Hollywood’s Hip Hi-Fi Restaurant

We recently explored the concept of the Hi-Fi Hotel — a home away from home for the audiophile who wants high-quality music playback to be part of the vacation experience. (See our article Hi-Fi Hotels: The Audiophile Vacation Destination.) But here in Los Angeles, the hunger for Hi-Fi is now making itself known in another public space: the restaurant. Sean Brock is an award-winning chef with successful restaurants in South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. If you’re into food, you might have seen him featured on Anthony Bourdain’s The Mind of a Chef, or on season 6 of Netflix’s documentary series Chef’s Table. He’s received multiple James Beard Foundation Awards — the food world’s version of a Pulitzer Prize, and one of the highest honors a chef can aspire to. Throughout his career, Brock has been firmly rooted in the southeast United States and the elevated Southern-style cuisine that made him famous. But given his long-standing appreciation of California ingredients, I was not surprised to learn that his first restaurant west of the Mississippi would be in my neck of the woods, in Southern California. His ambitious new restaurant, called Darling, opened in West Hollywood on August 31st, 2025. Brock made a name for himself cooking over live fire, so I also wan’t surprised to learn that Darling’s kitchen is equipped with custom-built, hand-forged wood-burning grills, where Brock is cooking New York strip steaks over oak coals, and grilling Dungeness crab over almond wood. I was very surprised, though, when I learned that the restaurant is also kitted out with a custom-built DJ booth and a bonafide Hi-Fi system. In fact, if you go to Darling’s website, you will see that its creators refer to the restaurant as “a live-fire grill house and Hi-Fi lounge in the heart of West Hollywood.”

Inside, the restaurant is segmented into a dining room on one side, and a bar and lounge on the other. The bar itself has a small sound system, but the lounge is built around that custom-built DJ booth, where Brock himself (and a revolving roster of other jockeys) can be seen playing 45-rpm records right up until closing time. On the restaurant side, diners are surrounded by folk art, but interior windows allow peeks into the restaurants’ well-stocked pantry shelves. The food is fancy grilled fare focused on seasonal ingredients, moving with the market. Darling’s website says that “citrus, oak, and almond woods give smoke and depth to seafood, vegetables, and dry-aged meats.” On the lounge side, the music is as much a part of the experience as are the drinks. “Cocktails and vinyl set the rhythm of the lounge. Each drink is seasonal and considered, matched by the warmth of analog sound. Together they shape an atmosphere that is unmistakably Darling,” according to the website.

Chef Sean Brock: Background

Now one of the most influential chefs in the American South, Sean Brock grew up in a rural part of Virginia’s Appalachian mountains, and attended culinary school at Johnson & Wales University, graduating in 2000. He had become executive chef at Husk in Charleston, South Carolina, by 2010 — the same year he won the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Southeast. His first cookbook, Heritage, also won a James Beard Award and became a New York Times bestseller. After helping to open and/or run other notable restaurants, Brock moved in 2019 to Nashville, Tennessee, where he opened Joyland, his first solo restaurant, in 2020. Brock has said that the main reason he moved to Nashville was to be closer to the city’s vibrant music scene. Since moving there, he has become obsessed with music, even learning how to build speakers and rebuild mixing consoles. Now Brock splits his time between Nashville and Los Angeles, where his new restaurant Darling allows him to combine his passions for food and music. The restaurant’s website tells visitors that “Darling is more than a restaurant: it’s a space where food and music set the pace for the night. Every dish is touched by flame, every moment soundtracked by vinyl. The vision is simple — fire in the kitchen, vinyl in the lounge, and experiences made with purpose.”

Every project I do will have just as much emphasis on music as it does food. Over time, my obsession with music has outgrown my obsession with food. I’ve always loved music. I’ve always collected records. I’ve always played music.

— Sean Brock, via Los Angeles Magazine

Brock says that he began collecting records in high school, but the impetus for a Hi-Fi restaurant really began about 15 years ago, when he visited Japan and fell in love with the country’s popular listening bars.  Throughout Japan, you’ll find bars where sitting and listening to records is the main attraction. Some even have rules prohibiting loud conversation and cellphone use. The goal is to maximize the listening experience, which typically involves expensive, often vintage stereo equipment. Horn speakers and tube amps — the likes of which many patrons can’t afford to have at home. Known in Japan as “ongaku kissa” or “music cafes” (sometimes called jazz kissa or simply jazz cafes), these listening lounges date back to the early 1950s, when American military personnel involved in the Korean War passed through Japan with their American jazz records in tow. Now, these nightlife spots are seeing something of a revival in Japan, and are starting to pop up in other countries as well.

In Japan, listening lounges are kind of a fad right now, and those come and go. But in the West, I think it’s hard to find a place where you find a chill drink and just sit and listen to someone play records. That’s why I think Japanese-style listening lounges are starting to open in other countries.

— Nobuo Miyamae, DJ at Tokyo’s Little Soul Cafe

What really stuck with me and made the biggest impact on me was the obsession of listening to (records) properly. The idea that people would create spaces so people who can’t afford that Hi-Fi audio or have access to the latest jazz from America could come in for the price of a cup of tea and experience that — to me, that’s true sense of community.

— Sean Brock, via Los Angeles Magazine

On a more recent trip to Japan, Brock heard a pair of vintage Tannoy speakers at one such establishment, and there was no going back. By the time he returned to the USA, Brock had tracked down his own pair of customized vintage Tannoys, previously owned by a producer for the legendary band The Highwaymen, a country music supergroup consisting of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. After trying to accommodate the sizable speakers in his Nashville home, Brock decided to transform his local steakhouse, the Continental, into a listening bar. He reportedly bought a collection of 3,500 45-rpm records, and listened to them all while organizing them by decade. That listening bar is now closed, but the closure allowed Brock to focus his attention on the Los Angeles project, where Darling’s music director, DJ, and in-house speaker specialist, MaxV (a.k.a. Max Ville), built seven custom speakers to be used inside the restaurant, along with vintage Tannoy gear. According to Ville, the custom speakers are up-cycled from 1990s movie theater speakers. Interior designer Sean Leffers reworked the lounge area, building a C-shaped seating area that faces the booth, framed by a wall of records encased in walnut and birch. The main system features an Accuphase E-4000 integrated amplifier ($14K) — another hint of Japanese influence, alongside the Japanese cartridges used on the dual Technics turntables. According to an article in Eater LA, Darling fulfills Brock’s dream of creating a space where people can “slow down and pay closer attention to music and food.”

Darling boils down to thinking in an analog way. To slow down, and listen with intention through records, beautiful mixers, turntables, and speakers. We’ll echo analog in the kitchen by making sure that most of the dishes are touched by fire. It’s an incredible privilege to have the ability to be able to create a space from your ideas. From your ideas to a great guest experience opportunity in Los Angeles, I wish you could have seen the smile on my face when I realized that I could actually do this.

— Sean Brock, via Eater

More information: Darling LA