Some restaurants end up marking time in your life. For my husband and me, Black Market Liquor Bar in Studio City is one of them. In fact, we first ate here about ten years ago. In particular, that was the night we met the couple who would become some of our closest friends.
They live in the valley, while we live on the westside. Black Market has quietly become our neutral ground ever since. So when the four of us started planning a date night recently, it felt right to go back to where it all started.
I’ll be honest. It had been long enough that I wasn’t sure the food would hold up to the memory. Ten years is a long time in the restaurant world. After all, places change chefs, coast on reputation, or lose whatever made them special. I’m happy to report the food was every bit as good as I remembered. The service was more of a mixed bag, but I’ll get to that.
Why This Spot Works as a Westside-to-Valley Meeting Point
If you and your friends are split between the westside and the valley, you already know the negotiation. For starters, nobody wants to fight over Sepulveda at the end of the night. There’s always a quiet tug-of-war over whose neighborhood you land in.
Studio City sits right in that sweet spot. Black Market Liquor Bar on Ventura Boulevard makes an easy, unpretentious anchor for it. We’ve done the drive from the westside enough times to say it splits the difference nicely. There’s something to be said for a place that belongs to neither group, and therefore belongs to both.
The Atmosphere: Loud Inside, Perfect on the Patio
We had a 7:30 reservation on a weekend. I cannot stress this enough: make a reservation. In fact, the place was absolutely packed when we arrived. Honestly, I don’t think we would have gotten a table otherwise.
Inside was loud and buzzing, in the best and worst sense. There was a World Cup soccer match on the TVs. As a result, the whole room had that roaring, everyone-talking-over-everyone energy. Admittedly, it’s fun for about ten minutes. It’s exhausting for a two-hour dinner with friends you actually want to hear.
As a nurse, I spend a lot of my working life in environments I can’t control. As a result, I’ve become protective of my off-hours sensory experience. Sustained noise at that level genuinely raises your stress response. In other words, I could feel it the moment we walked in.
So we asked to sit outside, and that made all the difference. Fortunately, the patio has heaters, which the valley very much needs once the sun goes down. The noise dropped to a level where we could linger and actually talk. If you’re going for conversation rather than the game, ask for a patio table when you book.
One practical warning about getting there: parking is rough. It’s street parking only in the surrounding blocks, and it is very hard to find. Instead, do yourself a favor and valet. Circling the neighborhood for a spot is not worth it. You’ll arrive at the table already a little frazzled.
What We Ordered (and What I’d Get Again)
Black Market’s menu is built for sharing. That’s exactly how you want to eat with friends you’re catching up with. To begin with, we started with the dill potato chips with sea salt and a malt vinegar aioli. Of course, they are dangerously easy to keep reaching for.
Next came the hamachi with sprouted broccoli tempura, ponzu, shiso aioli, and black sesame. Happily, the fish was clean, fresh, and not the least bit fishy. In addition, the tempura added a little textural contrast that I really liked.
From there we got the ricotta gnudi with brown butter and pistachio. In particular, it was rich and nutty, and probably my favorite bite of the night. Similarly, we also had a corn ravioli with mascarpone and Parmigiano-Reggiano. It was creamy and comforting in the way good pasta should be.
The one dish I’d skip next time was the chicken taquitos. They come with achiote, corn, nopales, avocado, and cotija. To be honest, they were fine but very heavy, and we didn’t come close to finishing them.
In fact, we over-ordered so badly that we had to cancel the chicken parmesan. By then, there was simply no room left. That leads me to my one gripe about the service, which I’ll come back to. If we returned tomorrow, I’d repeat almost the entire meal. I’d drop only the taquitos to save space for everything else.
The Flufferutter: Just Order It
I’m not usually the person pushing dessert. But the deep-fried flufferutter is the one thing I’ll tell everyone to get. Specifically, it’s peanut butter, marshmallow, and fresh banana, deep-fried. We ordered a side of housemade Nutella ice cream to go with it.
How many restaurants let you order a flufferutter? In fact, I genuinely can’t think of another one. It’s playful, nostalgic, and a little ridiculous in the best way. Above all, it was the perfect ending to a long, indulgent meal.
The Cocktails Are the Real Show
Black Market bills itself as a liquor bar, and the drink program lives up to the name. For example, I ordered the Piccolo Punch. It’s made with Toki Japanese whisky, matcha, yuzu, coconut, and a coconut foam. It was so good and so unusual that I wanted to work my way straight down the list.
One of our friends ordered something that wasn’t even on the printed menu, and it was equally interesting. Honestly, the cocktails are creative enough that I’d happily order every one. Meanwhile, our other friend stuck with a Coke and was perfectly content. So it’s an easy place for a mixed group of drinkers and non-drinkers.
Where the Service Fell Short
This is the one part of the night I’d flag honestly. At first, our server started strong, but he seemed intent on pushing us to order more food than four people could eat. That’s part of how we ended up over-ordering and canceling a dish.
Unfortunately, he essentially disappeared for the back half of dinner. For instance, he never checked in after our food arrived. Our friend had to ask more than once for a Diet Coke refill. At the end, we had a genuinely hard time flagging him down for the check. On a night that’s about lingering with people you love, that drop-off is noticeable. The food carried the evening, but attentive service would have made it seamless.
What It Cost
For all of that food, plus cocktails and soft drinks, each couple paid about $150 including tax and tip. As a result, that brought the total to roughly $300 for the four of us. Overall, given how much we ordered and the quality of the kitchen, I thought that was fair. Of course, you could easily spend less by ordering more sensibly than we did. We very much let our eyes get ahead of our stomachs.
Would I Go Back?
Yes, without hesitation. Ultimately, ten years after that first dinner, Black Market Liquor Bar is still exactly the kind of place I want to meet friends. In short, the food is genuinely good, the drinks are inventive, and the location quietly solves the westside-versus-valley standoff. Next time, I’d book a patio table, valet the car, skip the taquitos, and save room for the flufferutter. Some traditions are worth keeping. This one clearly is.
