“This is the Obsidian Mirror,” croons the server, motioning to the earthen dish in front of us. Its surface shimmers black and reflective. We’re instructed to use an iridescent shell to eat the dish, scooping to the bottom of the bowl to excavate layers of mussel gel and then smoked mussel cream suspending fileted mussels, salted plum and water chestnut. The textures are slippery and smooth, with the occasional juicy crunch, and the overall effect brings to mind shellfish pâté overlaid with gelée, refashioned in ways most of us could never conceive. It is as beautiful as it is delicious.

In April Jordan Kahn reopened Vespertine, his polarizing modernist restaurant that employs the arts — theater, music, painting, dance, perfumery; I could even argue for literature in the description of courses — in ways that no other restaurant does in California, possibly the world. Dinner in architect Eric Owen Moss’ Culver City building, aptly named “Waffle,” is $395 per person. If you can swing it, and you enjoy haute cuisine as high culture, go for the operatic experience. (Go early; dinner is about four hours.) Service and atmosphere can feel rigid in their idiosyncrasies, but the evolution of the cooking delivers far more tangible pleasures than pre-pandemic Vespertine, when what you were fed could come across as alien and hostile. While Kahn still pushes food to the furthest edges of abstraction, there are more moments of warmth and relatability now. You will leave satiated, and perhaps a little confounded. I’ve come to believe that’s the point. — B.A.

3599 HAYDEN AVE., CULVER CITY, (323) 320-4023 l VESPERTINE.LA