Hotel of the Week: A Beverly Hills Icon Refreshes Its World-Class Dining Spaces

The Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills created an instant grande dame when it opened in summer 2017. The sweeping landmark rose beside the iconic Beverly Hilton in a Hollywood-inflected Streamline Moderne style by Gensler and Perkins+Will, while Pierre-Yves Rochon orchestrated sumptuous interiors imbued with Art Deco panache by way of ample white stone, burnished bronze, and lustrous Lalique crystals. Rochon, whose formidable portfolio already encompassed the Four Seasons Hotel George V in Paris and the Peninsula Shanghai, rigorously studied 1930s Los Angeles architecture and strove for the property to resemble a private residence instead of “just one more hotel” in the city. 

Unlike such storied contemporaries as the Beverly Hills Hotel, Chateau Marmont, and Beverly Wilshire, whose identities draw heavily from the histories of their buildings, the Waldorf fashioned its own interpretation of Golden Age Los Angeles. The building also possesses a rare advantage in Beverly Hills: height. At 12 stories, it boasts sweeping vistas across the sprawling metropolis, while each of its 170 rooms and suites pairs floor-to-ceiling windows with a private terrace to embrace the indoor-outdoor living that has long distinguished Southern California architecture. Its other opening-day calling card came courtesy of Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who selected the hotel for his inaugural West Coast dining venture.  

After six years, however, the property began rethinking its culinary program. Vongerichten’s flagship restaurant closed in 2023, clearing the way for an ambitious new chapter that arrived earlier this year. On the ground floor, Baldi celebrates the culinary chops of Edoardo “Edo” Baldi, whose nearby e.Baldi has cultivated a devoted and unusually starry clientele for over two decades, into a Tuscan steakhouse centered on exquisite olive wood-fired meats and family recipes. (Entrepreneur Beny Alagem, whose Alagem Capital owns the hotel, has long counted himself among e.Baldi’s regulars.) Twelve stories above, Gemma ventures even farther afield thanks to Chef Peleg Miron’s California-inflected Pan-Asian cooking with indisputable views of the Hollywood Sign.  

Baldi hardly resembles a standard-fare hotel restaurant. Visitors pass through an entryway animated by a whimsically illustrated mural of a dinner party before entering a transportive evocation of Edo’s longtime home in the verdant Chianti countryside. Ezequiel Farca Studio masterminded the transformation by conjuring the warmth of Italian hospitality through vivid woven lanterns, supple leather banquettes, sun-baked terracotta tones, and olive trees scattered throughout the dining room and outdoor terrace. “We were inspired not only by the architecture and landscape of Tuscany,” explains Farca, “but also by the rituals of Italian hospitality: gathering around a table, sharing food, and creating an atmosphere that feels generous, familiar, and deeply personal.” He also softened the former Jean-Georges dining room’s monumental proportions with slatted partitions, latticed screens, and semi-enclosed booths to carve the vast room into more intimate enclaves.  

The handsome new backdrop suits Baldi’s deeply personal cuisine—and signals some culinary curveballs are afoot. “For me, contemporary means understanding what makes traditions meaningful and allowing them to evolve naturally,” Edo tells Galerie. He applies that philosophy to a menu anchored by prime and Wagyu steaks cooked over an olive wood fire alongside Italian classics drawn from generations of family cooking. Several house-made pastas also carry forth that lineage, including the standout sweet corn tortellini, an inventive iteration of the Baldi family’s signature agnolotti that Edo has served for decades. Here, taut parcels encase roasted sweet corn blended with mascarpone and ricotta beneath truffle-flecked butter, which tempers the filling’s sweetness with an earthy richness.  

Beverage director Jim Kearns looks to Italy as well, with nightcap-ready tipples such as the citrus-bright Limone Spritz and deeper Negroni Classico di Baldi. Upstairs, Gemma sends Kearns on a more tropical journey with brisk concoctions that riff on Tiki traditions. The indulgent Scorpion Bowl mixes aged and Jamaican rums with cognac, gin, orgeat, passionfruit, and lime in a shareable format; a raspberry-lychee martini and rosy Paloma offer lighter alternatives. Coravin wines by the glass accompany chef Peleg Miron’s Pan-Asian cuisine as it travels from delicate sashimi and lobster wontons to aromatic curries and Singaporean noodles. 

The reimagined rooftop by local talent Marc Ange gives Gemma an equally adventurous setting. Most distinctive is a procession of sunny yellow floor lamps inspired by Old World European street lanterns, fixtures Ange conceived as a “sensorial surprise” that reflect his vision for an outdoor salon suspended above Los Angeles. “The lamps bring a little poetry of a city street onto the rooftop,” he muses. “As evening arrives, they become points of warmth around which the life of the restaurant unfolds.” Both dining options hardly follow a predictable script. Nearly a decade after its splashy debut, the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills proves that even a modern grande dame can benefit from a little reinvention.