Bavel, in Downtown Los Angeles’ Arts District, is a Middle Eastern restaurant from Chefs Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis. With family roots in Israel, Morocco, Turkey, and Egypt, Ori and Genevieve have always wanted to open a restaurant that showcases the cuisines of their family lineages, bringing together the flavors and dishes they grew up with. Middle Eastern restaurants are often imagined to have design aesthetics that tend to be very dark, heavily patterned and somewhat cliché. Our menu is meant to be a feast that everyone at the table joins. Bavel bridges together fresh ingredients with slow cooking techniques, incorporating aromatic woods, spices, pickling, smoke, and herbs. We serve different versions of flatbreads and spreads, chef’s selection of cured Middle Eastern meats, cold and hot small plates highlighting vegetables, with large format meat and fish dishes. Our desserts take flavors and ingredients found in the Middle East and build on their traditions with a touch of modernity. The design for Bavel, by Studio Unltd, set out to challenge those conventions. The restaurant design embraces the influence of the regions from which the cuisine is derived, interpreting those ideas through the lens of its Arts District location. The worn, rather innocuous brick warehouse, which houses the space, served as a wonderfully textured canvas for the restaurant to evolve from.