Quirky Brutalist-Meets-Victorian Cafe 2001 Opens in LA’s Arts District

Cafe 2001, a new restaurant next to Yess in the Arts District that transitions from sunny daytime cafe to vibey wine bar hangout, opened on February 3, 2025. Yess owner Kino Kaetsu teamed up with former Yess sous chef Giles Clark, a veteran of St. John in London, Den in Tokyo, and Chez Panisse in Berkeley, to bring Angelenos breezy pork tenderloin katsu sandwiches, egg and relish salad sandwiches, a BLT with Benedictine spread, and smoked trout with hash browns and huckleberries. The cafe space had long been imagined as a daytime companion to chef Junya Yamasaki’s modern Japanese restaurant.

At Cafe 2001, Japanese convenience store-style sandwiches are cut into three parts and displayed cut sides up, served as a prelude or side dish to the cafe’s assortment of pastries. Those sweets include fruit tarts, chocolate and wild fennel cookies, lemon tarts, and almond jelly with grape and verjus coulis. Drinks include matcha beer shandy, house-spiced coffee, and red shiso shrub, or just a curated set of natural wine and sake.

Clark and Kaetsu quietly announced Cafe Oh! No in mid-November, reported the Los Angeles Times, with plans to open in mid-December. Between then and late January 2025, the two renamed it Cafe 2001 after the building’s address, though most of the original menu has been retained. Clark says the goal was to conjure the easygoing spirit of an American diner but with a “somewhere accessible for a steadying brew, satisfying feed, and a good hang,” a phrase that makes more sense when uttered in a British accent (Clark is from the U.K.).

Perhaps the cafe’s most distinctive feature is its ambience — the restaurant is set in a bi-level former bank space whose walls have been stripped to exposed brick. Ornate but weathered Victorian chairs look like they were pulled from a grandma’s dining room, while the second floor boasts more modern furniture. A commanding skylight offers ample sunlight while bare concrete reinforces a kind of Brutalist feeling in the space. Once dinnertime rolls around, dishes include freshly shucked oysters with pickles chiles and citrus; a Dodger dog-length hot dog with Japanese pickles and potato salad; and pan-fried gyoza with carrot salad. Tables will be covered with cloths during dinner service to gussy up the room while the volume on the stereo will promote a buzzy wine bar vibe.

The entire space feels appropriate for the Arts District, a neighborhood no longer known for its art-making but rather for the sensibility of creative types who tend to linger at coffee shops like Maru or nibble on French Japanese dishes at Camélia. These days, the area is known for destination restaurants like Bestia, Bavel, Baroo, Damian, and Kato, but a quirky spot like Cafe 2001 seems destined to find an audience. Clark is one of the city’s most talented chefs, striking out on his own (somewhat, since Yess is next door) with this all-day restaurant.

Cafe 2001 is open daily from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. and is located at 2001 E. Seventh Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90021.