Nobody comes to Northeast Los Angeles to taste wine at a vineyard, because there are none. What Highland Park has instead is more useful for an ordinary evening: a natural wine shop that pours, a restaurant next door with an all-organic list, and a couple of rooms off the main strip where wine is the point rather than the accompaniment. The cluster is small enough to do on foot, which in this city is the rarer thing.
The good wine here is concentrated on one short stretch and one street off it, and the shop, the restaurant and the counter keep different hours. Tell Karpo when you are going and it will tell you which door is open.
The Figueroa half-addresses
Highland Park Wine at 5918½ North Figueroa Street is the anchor: a wine shop with a natural and low-intervention selection, and the sort of place where the recommendation you get across the counter is worth more than any list. The half in the address is not a typo — it sits alongside its neighbours in a subdivided frontage.
Hippo at 5916½ North Figueroa Street is directly next door, an Italian-influenced American restaurant with high ceilings and graphic floral wall designs, doing crudos, pasta and large meat plates, with a wine list that is exclusively organic and naturally produced. It books through Resy. Triple Beam Pizza sits at 5918 North Figueroa Street, running Sunday to Thursday 11am to 9pm and Friday and Saturday 11am to 11pm.
Three businesses, one stretch of frontage, and between them they cover a bottle to take away, a proper sit-down dinner with a serious list, and a slice. That is an unusually complete evening inside about twenty metres, and it is the single best reason to start here rather than on York.
The room off the strip
Sam's Place at 5530 Monte Vista Street is the neighbourhood's wine bar in the proper sense — wood-panelled, low-lit, with what is fairly described as a 1970s man-cave character, and you order at the bar rather than being waited on. The food is built to go with drinking: a salami plate with cornichon butter, spicy sweet potatoes, a bavette steak.
Being on Monte Vista rather than on York or Figueroa is the whole appeal. It is a street off the strip, which means it does not collect the crowd that the main boulevards do on a Friday, and the room stays a neighbourhood room rather than becoming a destination.
The York alternative
Block Party at 5052 York Boulevard covers the other side of the neighbourhood, and Belle's Delicatessen at 5022 York Boulevard is nearby if the evening needs to start with food — it does a pickle martini alongside the pastrami, which is a drink with a fairly clear point of view. York is the walkable browsing strip; Figueroa holds the larger spaces. Choosing which street you are on before you leave the house is the standard Highland Park planning decision and it applies to drinking as much as to eating.
How to actually do it
The version that works: start at Highland Park Wine, buy something and get the recommendation, eat next door at Hippo or grab a slice at Triple Beam, then finish at Sam's Place on Monte Vista where the room is quieter and you order at the bar. That sequence moves from shop to table to bar, which is the correct direction — doing it in reverse means arriving at a wine shop at closing time with nothing to carry it home for.
Practical notes
Addresses: Highland Park Wine 5918½ N Figueroa St; Hippo 5916½ N Figueroa St; Triple Beam Pizza 5918 N Figueroa St; Sam's Place 5530 Monte Vista St; Block Party 5052 York Blvd; Belle's Delicatessen 5022 York Blvd. Triple Beam runs 11am–9pm Sunday to Thursday and 11am–11pm Friday and Saturday. Hippo takes Resy bookings. Sam's Place is order-at-the-bar rather than table service. Parking is metered street on Figueroa and tighter on York; Monte Vista is residential and quieter. The Metro A Line stops at Highland Park station within walking distance of the Figueroa cluster, which makes this one of the few wine evenings in Los Angeles that does not require a designated driver.
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Ask Karpo first
The wine shop, the restaurant and the pizza counter on that stretch of Figueroa keep three different sets of hours, and the best room is on a side street most people never turn down. Ask Karpo what is open now, which of them is pouring by the glass tonight, and whether it is a Figueroa evening or a York one.
