{"id":496269,"date":"2026-10-14T22:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T22:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/496269\/"},"modified":"2026-10-14T22:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T22:34:08","slug":"maree-continues-to-make-the-case-for-the-california-french-bistro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/496269\/","title":{"rendered":"Mar\u00e9e Continues to Make the Case for the California-French Bistro"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the year of the California-French bistro<\/a>, chef Marcus Jernmark\u2019s Mar\u00e9e<\/a> has emerged as a top contender, hovering over sister tasting menu restaurant Lielle, which earned a Michelin star mere months after first opening in February. Mar\u00e9e strives to be more casual (the final bill may beg to differ, however), with an approachable wine list \u2014 no cocktails here \u2014 and polished French dishes like mussels \u201cgratin,\u201d grilled Caledonian prawn cocktail, and grilled pork chop dressed in herbaceous Cafe de Paris sauce. The fairly spartan room, which used to be beloved Peruvian restaurant Picca and then the fancy Michelin-starred Manzke, has soaring ceilings that contribute to an increasingly rowdy scene as the evening progresses. Warmth comes from the weathered hand-drawn menus on the wall mirrors, as well as the open kitchen that churns out grilled hamburgers au poivre \u2014 about 25 per night, to create just the right amount of fervor around them. Mar\u00e9e may be the freshest bistro in Los Angeles, but it already feels lived in.<\/p>\n

The hamburger au poivre is listed as an addendum on the menu and can be ordered earlier in the night. The $42 price tag is eye-watering, but remember that the kitchen makes every element from scratch, including the bun. High-end beef from top ranches goes into the patty, which is encrusted with coarse black pepper, then reinforced by a thin pool of au poivre sauce on the bottom of the plate. Inside, crisp maitake mushrooms and onion rings take the texture to the max. Fries don\u2019t come with that price, which means including their $16 price, the after-tax-and-tip price for a burger and fries runs $70-plus. If you want something truly special, you gotta pay sometimes, and I would argue it\u2019s worth it.<\/p>\n

People who think L.A. doesn\u2019t have good French food and need to be convinced that this might be better than a lot of bistros in Paris; burger fiends who need to try the latest and greatest; fans of Bicyclette, Walter and Margarita Manzke\u2019s bistro, which used to be downstairs in the Lielle space.<\/p>\n

Meant to be a casual complement to the more ceremonious Lielle, Mar\u00e9e evokes a classic Parisian bistro with fine dining touches, a varied sauce game worthy of Escoffier\u2019s best, and a standout burger that should silence doubters. At the end of the day, after wine, tax, and tip, you\u2019ll end up spending around the same as Lielle, which doesn\u2019t really make it a weekly meal for most budgets. But sometimes the splurge is more about choosing your adventure than surrendering to the chef, which is the wonderful game you get from Mar\u00e9e.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the year of the California-French bistro, chef Marcus Jernmark\u2019s Mar\u00e9e has emerged as a top contender, hovering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,28829],"class_list":["post-496269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-dining-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}