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Eat Shop Play business owners come from every corner of Los Angeles. Here’s what they have to say.
Broxton Plaza in Westwood lined with palm trees.

Looking Back While Moving Forward: Inside Westwood Village

A single antique streetlight on a Westwood sidewalk — cast iron, blue-and-gold UCLA tile at the base — sums up everything this neighborhood is about: old and new, layered instead of replaced. There’s a tennis shop that once sold hunting gear (Arthur Ashe used to dust the moose head over the register), a tailor who’s altered the same families’ clothes for 35 years, and an Art Deco movie palace reopening in 2027. Westwood Village has kept its character even as the D Line’s final stretch prepares to change how people reach it.

Farm Table Coffee House and Los Hermanos owner smiling in front of a brick wall.

Los Tres Hermanos Bar and Grill

Magdalano Gutierrez named his restaurant after his three sons — Jose, Orlando, and Omar — when he opened it in 1988, and all three grew up chopping onions and waiting tables in his kitchen. Omar, the youngest, now owns two restaurants a few doors apart on Van Nuys Boulevard: Los Tres Hermanos, open since 1997, and Farm Table Coffeehouse next door. Between Sherman Way and Burbank Boulevard, his is the only sit-down restaurant open for dinner, let alone the only one with live music every Friday night. “Northridge has restaurants, Encino has nightlife,” Omar says. “Here in Van Nuys, we’re stuck in the middle.

Owners of Buna Ethiopian Restaurant & Market standing is a food storage area.

Buna Ethiopian Restaurant & Market

Buna’s six tables make eating here feel like being welcomed into someone’s home, which is exactly what Eyob Tadesse intended when he and his wife Helena opened the restaurant in 2011, continuing a family business that traces back to his grandmother’s restaurant in Ethiopia. The narrow aisle leading to the dining room doubles as a market — frankincense, berbere, Yirgacheffe coffee beans — and the meal always ends with a full coffee ceremony, beans roasted and brewed tableside in a traditional jebena. “The coffee here doesn’t jolt you awake,” Eyob says. “It’s all very natural.”