You enter Cipriani through the main entrance but head straight for the staircase toward the back of the dining room. Walk past the guests tucking into pastas and truffle-laced risotto, and up the staircase with the lacquered-wood walls, a signature design element of the world-famous, Venice-founded restaurant and bar that debuted in Beverly Hills earlier this year . At the top of the stairs is a host stand and closed doors.
You’ve reached your destination: A new Cipriani jazz club that hides above the restaurant’s main dining room, where trios, solo vocalists and other musicians fill the stylish space with music Thursday to Saturday. Inside the Jazz Café small palm trees bend in S-shapes from the walls over zebra-patterned banquettes in a space meant to evoke both Hollywood’s Golden Era and the supper clubs of the 1930s and ’40s. Servers in white tuxedo jackets ferry some of the world’s most iconic dishes to small tables, including items that Cipriani’s founder, Giuseppe Cipriani, created in Italy: the bellini cocktail and beef carpaccio.
The nearly century-old Cipriani brand now operates roughly two dozen restaurants, bars, clubs and hotels around the world, but few offer jazz cafés. Beyond the new outpost in Los Angeles, New York offers a members-only version, while a Bahrain iteration is open to all. After months of fine-tuning, the Beverly Hills version is now open with an abbreviated menu of the dishes found downstairs, including caviar service, plus jazz.