Met Her at a Bar Opens Its Sixth Restaurant on Santa Monica's Main Street

The all-day flagship at 2651 Main Street runs 8 AM to 10 PM with a hidden garden patio for 60, and the wall inside reads Met Her on Main.

Met Her at a Bar is open at 2651 Main Street in Santa Monica, serving 8 AM to 10 PM Sunday through Thursday and until 11 PM on Friday and Saturday. It is the first Santa Monica restaurant for Mindy and Vinny Kinne, the husband and wife behind the group, and the sixth restaurant they have opened since 2017.

A note on the name, because both are real. The neon on the building reads Met Her at a Bar. The letters on the wall inside read Met Her on Main, and that is the name on the ordering page and the address for the Santa Monica inbox. Treat Met Her on Main as what this room calls itself and Met Her at a Bar as the sign over the door.

Everything the Kinnes built until now sat within a few blocks of each other near La Cienega Boulevard and Eighth Street, five separate concepts in a walkable cluster: Met Her at a Bar for all-day brunch, Met Him at a Bar for handmade pasta and Neapolitan pizza from a Naples-certified pizzaiolo, Her Thai for Thai street food, The Night We Met for Pan-Asian, and Her Little Bar for cocktails.

Main Street is the version where those live under one roof. Mornings run on La Colombe coffee, the homemade Belgian waffles the original built its name on, and the Thai chicken and waffles. Later the same kitchen turns to Italian pasta, Neapolitan pizza and select Pan-Asian dishes, with a full cocktail program behind it. The Santa Monica Daily Press called it one restaurant with multiple personalities, which is about right.

The couple's history is the reason it holds together. Vinny grew up in his family's Russo's Bar & Grill in upstate New York, a room they ran for more than a century. Mindy spent nine years as a food scientist before any of this. They met on the Sunset Strip, where his opening line was three sheets to the wind, and he did not get her number that night.

The part worth walking through the dining room for is behind it. A hidden patio the restaurant calls its secret garden holds roughly 50 to 60 people around lush greenery, a fireplace and a water feature, and it was booking private events before the doors even opened.

The Santa Monica location is expected to create about 100 jobs, and the kitchen is sourcing seasonal produce from local farmers markets where it can. Main Street has been working to bring independent operators back to the corridor, which is the context the Kinnes stepped into.

The original is still running at 759 South La Brea Avenue in Mid Wilshire, weekdays 8 AM to 3 PM and weekends until 4 PM. Nothing closed to make this happen.

Go for the patio, not the dining room. The secret garden is the whole reason this room is different from the La Brea original, and it holds 60, so a weekday afternoon gets you a fireplace seat without a wait. And know what you came for before you sit down: this kitchen runs brunch early and turns to pasta and pizza later, so the waffles and the Neapolitan are not the same visit.