A.O.C. West Hollywood
Casual Dining Restaurant, Wine Bar
Los Angeles, USA
About A.O.C. West Hollywood
There isn’t another chef-sommelier partnership anywhere in California that comes close to matching the longevity or successful track record of Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne. For over 25 years, the two have been an inseparable force on LA’s dining scene, opening game-changing restaurants, writing instant-classic cookbooks, spearheading one of the country’s most effective food-driven charities (Alex Loves Lemonade), managing food and drink at the iconic Hollywood Bowl, and racking up award after award in the process.
The duo originally opened a.o.c. in 2002, intending it to be a wine bar and a supportive adjunct to their first restaurant, the much-beloved Lucques (which closed in 2020 after a 22-year run). a.o.c. was among LA’s earliest pioneers of a convivial style of eating — small plates of beautifully-prepared produce, big boards of artisanal charcuterie and cheese, long by-the-glass lists of small-production wines – which has since become so widespread as to be commonplace.
In 2013, Styne and Goin relocated to much larger, grander digs just down the road, and though the new incarnation reads as much more of a restaurant than a wine bar, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing: Goin cut her teeth at Chez Panisse and Campanile (among others), and it’s wonderful to see her relaxed, soulful, polyglot approach to cooking given a bit more room to roam. If you’re looking for cutting-edge tasting menus full of tweezer food, this isn’t the place, but if you’re in search of a quintessentially Californian dining experience designed to please and restore rather than challenge and push, it’s hard to think of a more suitable setting for it than a.o.c.’s candlelit patio.
In a similar fashion to Goin, who eschews faddishness in lieu of an unwavering honesty, Caroline Styne’s approach to wine speaks to her decades in the business, her long-held focus on sustainable viticulture – the list has been composed only of wines made with sustainable, organic or biodynamically grown grapes for over 10 years now – and an abiding love for the wines of both California and France.
It all makes for a refreshingly straightforward wine program that reads like the work of a seasoned pro, light on insanely-priced unicorn wines and annoying dogma, heavy on responsibly-produced, easy-to-enjoy selections from the Central Coast, the Loire, Burgundy and beyond. A good chunk of the California offering comes from winemakers who have become personal friends of Styne’s over the years, providing some welcome vintage depth as well as the chance to try some very small-production bottlings that aren’t available elsewhere.
Great for
- By the glass