For 13 years, the Hwood Group ran the room at 9229 West Sunset as Bootsy Bellows, a nightclub. On Monday, October 19, the same team reopened it as Little Luck, an izakaya whose kitchen closes at 10:30 p.m. Just under three weeks earlier, at Melrose and Hayworth, the Hart and the Hunter came back to its original room. It ran dinner service when it opened in 2012, and it now serves only until 3 p.m.

Look at West Hollywood's openings since June and the same thing keeps happening. The new businesses are in spaces residents already know, and most of them have moved those spaces earlier in the day.

Six openings, six rooms with a history

Three of the six close by 5 p.m., and a fourth serves lunch as well as dinner. Only one stays open into the early morning. The sections below follow those rooms from Melrose to the Sunset Strip.

Hayworth and Melrose gets its biscuits back, before 3 p.m.

The Hart and the Hunter ran inside the Palihotel Melrose from 2012 to 2021. Eater LA groups it with the class of 2012 that included Bestia, Alma, Sycamore Kitchen and Plan Check. Its founding chefs, Kris Tominaga and Brian Dunsmoor, later went on to Manuela, Hatchet Hall and Dunsmoor. During the pandemic the restaurant left Los Angeles to focus on its Pike Place Market location in Seattle. It reopened at 7950 Melrose on September 30, and The Infatuation's October roundup of new openings lists it as open again.

The room will look familiar. Blue Daisy Melrose had kept much of the original Hart and the Hunter fit-out, so the revival needed only touch-ups, new art and new fixtures. The schedule is what changed. Under James Siao, Palisociety's managing director of culinary, the menu is built for daytime. It includes a traditional breakfast platter, smoked corned beef hash, chicken pot pie in puff pastry and a Reuben. The biscuit with chile butter, which Jonathan Gold once praised, is back on the menu.

The pricing is set for regulars. A $30 weekday menu, served from noon to 3 p.m., includes a biscuit, an entree, a salad and a nonalcoholic drink. Cocktails top out at $15. From 1 to 3 p.m., happy hour brings $4 beer, $7 wine and $12 cocktails, and the beer list sticks to Skyduster. "I wanted to be reasonable and approachable with the food, but also the cocktails," Siao told Eater LA. Siao told the outlet that monthly shrimp boils on the patio will return as well.

Santa Monica Boulevard's two old coffee counters

Melrose got a daytime restaurant back. Santa Monica Boulevard got two coffee counters, each in a space that had been a café before.

Ministry of Coffee went first. It began a soft opening the week of June 21 at 8253 Santa Monica Boulevard, in the former Go Get 'Em Tiger. According to WEHO TIMES, its soft-opening hours were 6:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., with a planned regular close of 5 p.m. The menu includes sandwiches and egg dishes. The company describes its approach as Turkish coffee traditions combined with Australian-style third-wave coffee, and it also runs locations in Downtown Los Angeles, Venice, Sherman Oaks, USC and Westwood.

The Front Porch opened farther west in the Rainbow District, at Santa Monica and Hancock Avenue. It occupies 8735 Santa Monica, which WEHO TIMES notes was a Coffee Bean for decades. It soft-opened on Wednesday, September 30, and a ribbon-cutting was planned for October 14. The café is operated in connection with the Men's Health Foundation. WEHO TIMES lists hours of 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. and a menu of specialty coffee, baked goods, a breakfast burrito, salads and sandwiches.

Of all this season's openings, the Front Porch is the clearest about wanting daytime business. Dr. Anthony Mills told WEHO TIMES that Café D'Etoile is gone and the "Big Gay Starbucks" has closed, and that he wanted a gathering spot where people could catch up over coffee instead of meeting only after dark. "I wanted to bring a space where people can congregate and meet, not necessarily to go and dance, but a place that you would go to meet your friends and share a coffee," he told the outlet. The café also plans to host community events.

On Sunset, a nightclub room now runs on a kitchen

Mills' comment about meeting without dancing describes the Front Porch, and it also fits what happened at Bootsy Bellows. Little Luck is the Hwood Group's izakaya in that former nightclub. Co-founders John Terzian and Brian Toll brought in chef Erik Idos, who has cooked at Per Se, Jean-Georges and Nobu and recently moved home to Los Angeles. Eater LA says the concept looks back to the early 2000s, when Koi, Katana and Geisha House made Asian dining the city's moodiest night out. "We live and breathe West Hollywood, have been in that space for 13 years," Terzian told the outlet.

The menu starts with egg salad on milk bread, which can come with caviar. It continues through a katsu chicken tender, quail karaage, and a raw bar of sashimi, nigiri, oysters, and scallops and uni on the half shell. The California roll is made with blue crab. Larger plates include Santa Barbara spot prawns and a bone-in short rib ssam with gochujang miso. Kevin Lee of Tokyo Noir wrote the cocktail list.

Some of the old room's night energy remains:

• The dining room seats up to 196, and there is a 10-person bar and two private dining rooms.
• A DJ booth sits beside a vinyl wall of about 4,000 records, with DJs on Fridays and Saturdays.
• Hours are 5 p.m. to midnight, Monday through Saturday, and the kitchen closes at 10:30 p.m.

Eater describes the late-night crowd as one that "has been fading in recent years." Toll said it this way: "The places with good lighting, music, and good energy are thriving. People want the balance of good dining and good energy."

A few blocks east, the Sun Rose took a similar approach on its roof. Oleander, the hotel's rooftop restaurant at 8430 Sunset, debuted August 7. It serves lunch daily from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. and dinner from 5:30 to 10 p.m. The chef de cuisine is Grace Dong, a Korean American chef raised in Los Angeles. The August launch menu listed oysters with yuzu-kosho mignonette, Huli Huli half chicken and steak frites at lunch. Dinner included bincho-grilled wagyu skewers and wood-fired Puerto Nuevo lobster, and a banana chocolate cake with brown-butter banana ice cream was among the desserts. Menus written in August may have changed by now, but serving lunch daily is the main fact.

The one room still open at 2 a.m.

Ten Cash Bar keeps West Hollywood's late hours. The Infatuation reviewed it on October 7. To get in, you dial a red payphone next to Bar Lubitsch at 7746 Santa Monica Boulevard. Inside is a Prohibition-themed speakeasy with Art Deco paintings and crystal chandeliers, open every night until 2 a.m. The bar comes from the Blue Collar team. In May, What Now Los Angeles tied the project to Vincent Laresca, whose other businesses include Bar Jubilee, Roadside Taco and Cold Shoulder.

The name comes from the house deal, which is $10 well drinks for anyone paying cash. Even the late bar has an early start, with happy hour every day from 5 to 7 p.m.

A Saturday on the new schedule

With these hours, it is now possible to spend a full Saturday in West Hollywood at places that opened this year:

1. 7:00 a.m. Coffee and a breakfast burrito at the Front Porch on Santa Monica at Hancock.
2. 11:30 a.m. Lunch at Oleander on the Sun Rose roof, when its service starts.
3. 1:00 p.m. Happy hour at the Hart and the Hunter on Melrose, with a biscuit for the table, before the 3 p.m. close.
4. 5:00 p.m. The $10 cash well drinks at Ten Cash Bar during happy hour.
5. Before 10:30 p.m. Garlic lobster noodles at Little Luck while the kitchen is still open, then a DJ set from the vinyl wall.

New tenants in old spaces affect how a block feels day to day, whether you're thinking about how your own street is changing or about a move within West Hollywood. If you'd like to talk through what this fall's openings mean for the blocks around Melrose, Santa Monica or Sunset, Marshall Peck is glad to share what he's seeing. Let's Connect.