Hinoki & The Bird

A $40–$65 Lunch or Dinner That Earns Its Place on Century Drive

Hinoki & The Bird sits in the $$ tier for cuisine; meaning a typical two-course meal runs $40–$65 before drinks and tip. For Century City, that is a fair price of entry for Japanese-Californian cooking with a wine list serious enough to carry a $45 corkage fee and 2,500 selections. If you are coming for a quick weekday lunch between meetings at the nearby offices, or planning a more deliberate dinner with a bottle from the $100+ range, the room can serve both purposes; but understanding which version of the visit you want will determine whether this is the right call for you.

What to Expect

Hinoki & The Bird blends Japanese technique with Californian produce under chef Brandon Kida. The cuisine type, Asian and Californian, signals a kitchen that is not committing to a single tradition, which works in your favour if you want something lighter and more ingredient-forward than the richer French-Asian cooking at Camphor, or the full-commitment omakase format at Hayato. The atmosphere skews corporate-adjacent given the Century City location, but the room carries a calmer energy at lunch than dinner, if ambient noise matters to you, a midweek lunch is the better session. Dinner on weekends trends louder.

The wine program, overseen by sommelier Cristina Candido, is a genuine asset. A 9,500-bottle inventory with particular depth in France (Burgundy, Bordeaux), Italy, California puts this in a different category from most mid-price neighbourhood restaurants. Wine pricing is in the $$$ range, meaning many bottles clear $100, but the breadth of the list gives you options across price points. Corkage at $45 is reasonable if you have something you want to bring. For a food-and-wine-focused visit, this is one of the more compelling pairings in the Century City corridor, it separates the experience from the purely casual dining tier the price point might otherwise imply.

Opinionated About Dining ranked Hinoki & The Bird #442 in Casual North America for 2025, after ranking it #188 in the same category in 2024 and #191 in Gourmet Casual in 2023. That slide in rank is worth noting: it does not disqualify the restaurant, but it suggests the competitive set around it has strengthened. General manager Beverly Wu and owners Walter and Dilson Schild have maintained a consistent operation across several years, which in a city with high turnover is its own form of credibility.

Lunch and Weekend Timing

Hinoki & The Bird serves both lunch and dinner, which gives it an advantage if you are building an LA itinerary and want a quality meal without committing to a dinner reservation. The lunch service is the better choice for solo diners or those who want the full food-and-wine experience in a quieter setting. Weekend lunch, if available, is the closest the venue gets to a brunch-style format: unhurried, lower noise level, the wine list is fully accessible. The dinner service is the right move for a group with a wine agenda, where the depth of Cristina Candido's list becomes the centrepiece of the meal rather than background colour.

For a food or wine enthusiast visiting Los Angeles, this is a sensible stop in a part of the city, Century City, West LA, that does not have many independent restaurants with this level of wine infrastructure. Compare it with the more Tokyo-influenced Japanese dining you will find at Bar Sawa or n/naka, and Hinoki & The Bird sits in a more relaxed, accessible register, less ceremony, more flexibility, but still with enough seriousness in the kitchen and the cellar to reward attention.

Practical Details

Reservations: Easy to book, walk-in availability is plausible, but reserving in advance removes any uncertainty. Budget: $40–$65 per head for two courses; wine adds significantly given the $$$ list pricing. Corkage: $45. Service: Lunch and dinner. Address: 10 W Century Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90067.

How It Compares

See the full comparison below. For Los Angeles Japanese and Asian-influenced dining, also consider IMA and 715 for different registers of the same broad cuisine territory. If you are planning a broader LA itinerary, our full Los Angeles restaurants guide covers the complete range, from high-end Japanese at Hayato to the New Taiwanese precision of Kato. For hotels and bars near Century City, see our Los Angeles hotels guide and Los Angeles bars guide. Enthusiasts planning a wider Pacific Rim dining trip can also reference Myojaku and Azabu Kadowaki in Tokyo for context on where the Japanese-Californian style draws its influence. And if wine-focused dining in other US cities is on your list, Single Thread Farm in Healdsburg and The French Laundry in Napa represent the Northern California high end of the spectrum.