Destroyer Jordan Kahn Destroyer

Destroyer Awards

Chef Jordan Kahn's avant-garde breakfast and lunch spot in Culver City offers unique, beautiful creations.
Openings: Open Wed.-Sun. 8 a.m.-4 p.m.
Destroyer, Culver City, CA


Destroyer Restaurant Review:


When chef Jordan Kahn shuttered Red Medicine his inventive cooking was greatly missed. Now, with Destroyer, serving breakfast and lunch, his creativity is again unbound. The architecture of Culver City’s Hayden Tract makes you feel like you’re in some far off Eastern European metropolis; Kahn’s dishes are equally transportive, and allusively architectural as well. The tiny, minimalist space is bright and airy; an open kitchen bustles, jars overflowing with heaps of blue borage flowers and budding wild grasses. There are echoes of Kahn’s The French Laundry roots in technique, but perhaps longer shadows of new Nordic cuisine in these alternately robustly rustic and ethereal plates, especially when it comes to ingredients. You’ll find English peas with Job’s tears (a kind of barley), gooseberries and frozen cream shaved into tiny snowdrifts inside a locally handmade pottery bowl. An earthy beef tartare snuggles with smoked egg cream and pickled mushroom. Consider the rhubarb with skyr, Icelandic rye bread with sour butter and preserved citrus, and pike roe with verbena. Each dish comes as a tiny avant-garde masterpiece --- it’s hard to stop looking and start eating, but once you do it’s an experience, even until you scrape up the last drops of onion caramel. A handful of indoor seats is complemented by the sprawling patio that’s delightful on a sunny morning.