Do you remember Tender Greens and the pre-slop bowl era? The upstart salad shop touting seasonal produce and chef-derived recipes straight out of the Alice Waters playbook had lines out the door at its Culver City location in the late aughts. Since then,
virtually every aspirational fast-casual restaurant has planted roots in the triangle-shaped city within the city of Los Angeles, home to historic television and movie studios.
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Restaurants like Cava, Luna Grill, Home State, Mensho, Ippudo, Afuri, Cafe Vida, Kismet Rotisserie, Sweetfin Poke, and Breakfast Republic (I could go on for a very long time) operate there as a litmus test because of Culver City’s urban location coupled with its suburban character and spending habits. Sweetgreen intentionally built its Los Angeles headquarters at the chic Platform LA mall before moving to West Adams. Culver City is where fast-casual restaurants either thrive or die.
Culver City boasts plentiful (if expensive) real estate, foot traffic, takeout and delivery traffic powered by companies like Apple, Amazon, and Sony, which have offices there, plus a median household income of around $117,000. It’s also accessible to a huge swath of Los Angeles, meaning Westsiders won’t shy away from it, and curious Eastsiders might make the trek given its proximity to freeways (Angelenos know how much this matters). In recent months, I checked out three new upstart restaurants with chain-like aspirations, hoping to run through the gauntlet of Culver City before expanding elsewhere.
Merka Saltao
The Cava model showed the elegant simplicity of meat-plus-stuff in a bowl; Merka Saltao opened in fall 2025 from chef Ignacio Barros and entrepreneur Alonso Franco, along Culver City’s main stretch, serving Peru’s beef stir-fry lomo saltado. Barros actually flies into Los Angeles from Lima every month to maintain quality here, and the results are pretty great. The main attraction, USDA Choice sirloin chopped into palatable cubes, can be paired with different carbs and vegetables. (I chose the classic fries, along with rice with giant corn.) Most meals are under $20 and can be delivered/taken away in paper trays.
Since this is Los Angeles, Barros catered to locals with a lomo saltado burrito, which has caught modest flames on social media, but really the attraction here is a tightly curated, totally customizable Peruvian “bowl” menu with rocoto hot honey chicken, tofu, and even mushrooms stir-fried with tomatoes, onions, and ají amarillo chiles. Merka Saltao has a funky name paired with fresh branding that might work in tech-heavy neighborhoods like Playa Vista, Santa Monica, or the Arts District. Could it work in San Francisco, Chicago, or New York? I think it’s certainly optimized for that kind of expansion.
Mom’s List
Owner Ziad “Zee” Batal, a veteran of Mark Wahlberg’s Wahlburgers, brings a very granola approach to the fast-casual burger with Mom’s List, which opened in a Culver City strip mall in April. I don’t particularly think the name will lend itself to social media virality, but Batal is doing something unique here. Leaning heavily on wholesome ingredients, fully grass-fed ground beef, locally made sourdough buns from Häsi Bread, and all-organic produce culminate in a healthy-ish creation that flies in the face of greasy smash burgers. Fans of the new food pyramid will be happy.
There’s an elegant simplicity here, with modestly sized burgers that won’t weigh you down after lunch. Flavor comes not from the buttery fat of corn-fed beef or heavy cheese. Hasi’s sourdough buns bring depth and tang to a typically bland part of the burger. Chef Scott Howard does marvelous things to unsung parts of the menu, like the crisp Japanese sweet potato chips that I couldn’t stop eating. I think Mom’s List could gain a larger audience with sharper interior design and branding. It’s not perfect, but I’m definitely intrigued.
Mustard’s Bagels
Does the bagel need reinvention? Founder Kyle Glanville thought so. Obsessed with making sourdough bread during the pandemic, Glanville, who opened G&B Coffee and Go Get Em Tiger (and helped expand Intelligentsia Coffee on the West Coast), wanted to put his spin on the bagel. Mustard’s opened in August 2025 as more of a family affair than Glanville’s coffee endeavors. Glanville’s brother, Brent, is a partner; his 17-year-old son chips in one day a week; and the moniker comes from his wife’s surname.
Glanville says Culver City seemed to choose Mustard’s, not the other way around. After initially doing pop-ups in Highland Park, he wasn’t into the way influencers dropped in with their “scores” and never returned. He thinks Culver City has a nice mix of locals that bring more of a community feel while remaining accessible to the rest of Los Angeles.
The bagels themselves get as much attention as a Michelin-star tasting menu. They ferment local-grain Tehachapi flour for 72 hours, bringing a nutty complexity to the artisanal bagel’s signature chew and burnished exterior. The toppings are equally thoughtful: Nova lox, schmears, chile oil and hazelnut-chocolate spread are all made on the premises. The results are inventive bagel creations: anchovy butter, chives, and pickled peppers in one; lox, onions, fried capers, dill in another; cucumbers, lemon vinaigrette, and miso-scallion schmear in the signature. The lox balances salinity with an almost creamy texture, good enough to eat over warm sushi rice.
All of this attention to detail comes at a cost: flexibility. You cannot get cream or sugar with your coffee (anyone remember Handsome Coffee?). They don’t have a toaster, and they don’t really allow modifications to the bagel topping combinations. It’s all pretty rigid for something that could potentially expand, but Glanville isn’t planning to open more than a small handful, so he can maintain standards. If the systems are there, I don’t see why Mustard’s couldn’t serve multiple communities in Los Angeles with some of the best bagels out there, period.
