Black Market opened in Studio City in 2011 with a simple idea: that a bar could take its food as seriously as its drinks, and a restaurant could take its cocktails as seriously as its food.

Chef Antonia Lofaso and our bar team have been proving that ever since.

More than a decade later, Black Market Liquor Bar has become one of Studio City’s most beloved restaurants. It’s become a fixture on Ventura Boulevard that locals return to and visitors from across Los Angeles make the drive for. Whether you’re looking for the best restaurants near Universal Studios, a great date night spot in the San Fernando Valley, or simply the kind of place that feels like it was made for exactly the evening you had in mind, Black Market has been that room since the day it opened.

The kitchen belongs to Chef Antonia Lofaso, a Top Chef veteran, Tournament of Champions winner, and one of Los Angeles’ most recognized culinary figures. Her menu is global in its instincts and personal in its execution. Small plates designed for sharing, built from the kind of cooking that wins competitions and keeps regulars coming back on a Tuesday. The Tagliatelle bolognese. The Korean wings. The corn ravioli that returns every spring and sells out every night it’s on.

The bar hosts a craft cocktail program that has defined what drinking in Studio City looks like for over a decade. Classic in its foundation, creative in its execution, and serious in a way that never takes itself too seriously.

The arched brick ceiling sets the stage for a dining room that has absorbed fourteen years of good conversation, from A-list celebrities and network executives negotiating the terms of a deal, to friends reuniting after years apart.

Between the leather booths and marble high-top tables, it’s the kind of place where strangers have first dates and return years later for wedding anniversaries. Closing dinners and last toasts. Celebrations that needed the right room and found it.

Black Market creates the nights that make out-of-towners say they miss Los Angeles.

It sits on Ventura Boulevard close to Universal Studios, minutes from Sherman Oaks, Toluca Lake, Encino, and Burbank, and a world away from anywhere that feels like everywhere else.

Black Market is not a chain. Not a concept. Not a pop-up.

It is a neighborhood bar with a Michelin-worthy kitchen, a world-class cocktail program, and fourteen years of nights that people still talk about the next morning.

This is Studio City dining at its best. Come find out what the regulars already know.