‘Little Beast’ to Serve Progressive American Comfort Food at Space Vacated by Larkin’s

Little Beast, the rustic American food restaurant that popped up for just a few nights in the summer of 2012 at Le Petit Beaujolais, is making a comeback in Eagle Rock.

Not as another pop-up but as a permanent restaurant: Little Beast will open in the space vacated last November by Larkin’s, a few blocks east of where the pop-up left its trail last time around on Colorado Boulevard, according to Deborah Schwartz, wife of Little Beast Chef Sean Lowenthal.

Schwartz, an agent to photographers who lives with her husband in South Pasadena, told Patch that they hope to launch their restaurant in about six weeks.

"We're still fleshing out the details," Bradley Tuck, Little Beast’s publicist, told Patch, adding that Lowenthal and Schwartz are currently in the midst of finalizing their lease on the property on 1496 Colorado Blvd., where the restaurant will be based. “With all the permits you have to go through, it could take two months.”

Lowenthal, who had been sous chef at the iconic Chateau Marmont in Hollywood until November, began looking for a permanent home for Little Beast along with his wife a little more than a year ago.

“We feel confident in knowing that Little Beast would fit perfectly into the neighborhood and that we will find the right space within this community," Schwartz told Patch columnist Kim Axelrod Ohanneson in July 2012.

The restaurant’s name comes from Schwartz’s term of endearment for her nine-year-old son Miles, from a previous marriage, Ohanneson wrote in her Eat/Drink/See Eagle Rock column.

Little Beast will serve “progressive American comfort food,” Tuck quoted chef Lowenthal as telling the Grub Street Los Angeles blog recently.

“While the couple's past pop-up dishes included an amuse bouche of edamame hummus, crab mango tostadas, and caprese spaghetti, among the many varied and seasonally-spiked plates, the new version of Little Beast plans on serving dishes that may include BLT greens with canided bacon, heirloom cherry tomatoes, plus shrimp and yellow grits with manchego cheese and tomato-cucumber mint salsa, and caramelized apple bruschetta with goat cheese," Grub Street Los Angeles reports.

Fair to say, then, that Patch speaks for many in Eagle Rock by extending a very warm welcome to Little Beast. And godspeed with those permits!