For self-described Los Angeles foodie Naibe Reynoso, walking into newly-opened restaurant Vespertine was like entering a different dimension.
The staff all dress in post-apocalyptic clothing. It's located in a curvy Culver City tower that seems to defy gravity. Its Instagram account is filled with photos of dishes that don't really look like food at all.
"It's not the shape of anything that you've ever seen before because he's transformed the food," Reynoso said. "You don't really know what it is."
The unusual restaurant opened July 6 after stirring up hype in recent months with its futuristic take on the dining experience and astronomical prices — the full experience with dinner and drinks plus tax and tip costs up to $1,200 for two people, LAist pointed out last month.
And not everyone thinks the restaurant is worth the check. A review in the Hollywood Reporter published Monday called the restaurant "intentionally joyless" and criticized the food as overly obscure and complex.
But with its own custom-made perfume and post-rock soundtrack, the lavish eatery headed by Los Angeles-based chef Jordan Kahn is meant to engage more than just its diners' taste buds.
"It felt like there was a complete show and a complete experience," Reynoso said.
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Throughout the dinner, guests move through several different floors of the building as they work through the 21-course tasting menu, eventually ending with drinks in a zen garden. Reynoso said her favorites from the menu were a dish made from fish skin, beet and plum and the duck liver with chocolate.
But what was really special about the experience, Reynoso said, was that diners were asked to put away their cell phones, forcing them to disconnect and giving them the feeling of being transported someplace out of this world.
"The experience at Vespertine is about self-discovery," Kahn wrote in an email. "Each person should walk away with a different account and emotion of what they experienced."
