Meet David Wynn of Kensho Hollywood in Hollywood

Today we’d like to introduce you to David Wynn.

Thanks for sharing your story with us David. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’m originally from Los Angeles, born downtown at what’s now called Dignity Health.

I’m a quarter Korean, quarter Japanese and my father is more or less Irish American who grew up in Texas before moving to LA.

I traveled throughout different parts of Asia, attending international schools and jumping around many different countries with my family between ages 2-12. I returned to LA for middle/high school & college & have been here since.

I was a typical California skateboarder/snowboarder, exploring the city, beach, mountains, making short documentary films and capturing the world with my camera.

I studied business & marketing, worked at various cafe/restaurants before i began working at a mortgage company called lending tree in Irvine straight out of college.

I hated the limited creative prospects of working inside a cubicle so I made a 180 turn and jumped into event design, marketing & production for about 5-6 years on the westside.

I eventually got tired of constantly moving from venue to venue to set-up events & having become a huge coffee snob, decided to create a small neighborhood cafe of my own in echo park called Triniti.

One day, the owner & architects who operate Yamashiro walked into Triniti, basically asked if we’d like to take control of a small cottage house on their property and turn it into something like Triniti.

The structure triggered a memory of the traditional house I grew up as a child. We had a beautiful garden & a koi pond similar to Yamashiro. I remembered my Japanese/Korean grandmothers constantly creating in the kitchen, cooking rice, fermenting/storing various vegetables in large adobe pots planted into the earth that would age throughout the seasons and become a pantry.

Basically, I decided I wanted to create an LA version of my memories living in Asia combined with the western palette I’ve developed living in the states.

Fast forward one year, Kensho is now open and have become something that embodies everything I love about Los Angeles. Diversity, escape from the hustle below, serene, fun, creative, delicious,

Has it been a smooth road?
Opening, designing, building & running and working in a restaurant is a multi-dimensional challenge.

Your mind and heart is always working hard to stay focused & balanced of all its needs.

Especially as an independent restaurant with a boot-strapped operation, everyone’s decision and actions ripple across the entire business. I believe it’s a good feeling to be connected to everything and everyone, but it can be stressful as well since the success of our voyage is completely interdependent.

You’re always trying to keep the team happy & healthy by learning everyone’s tendencies, nurturing and shaping the business framework so that everyone gets to stay creative while growing & expanding sustainably.

People come and go, but you learn to have fun and enjoy the ride by pushing through with those that continue to support you during the highs & lows, It’s essentially a family of friends, running a business together, including our guests. Ultimately without continually pushing to meet & exceed our own + guests expectations, we wouldn’t be able to keep creating. I think it’s about feeling appreciated to stay motivated.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Kensho Hollywood – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
It’s definitely not a Japanese restaurant, although we do have Japanese inspired dishes.

Our team is very diverse, from all different parts of the world, with a mixture of cultures. We pull inspiration from street food & Michelin restaurants. We pull from Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Chinese, Mexican, French & Italian ingredients.

We’re ultimately an LA restaurant with wine/sake bar & coffee. Our ethos is carried out with the natural wine/sake makers we support, the experimental coffee’s we serve sourced/roasted by our friends and our version of LA/Japanese inspired foods. It’s personal, fun, family-like, entrepreneurial, unconventional, and creative.

We have a really talented team that isn’t afraid to be different and attract similar minded people to our restaurant which makes the work & service more enjoyable.

My good friends Brian & Chantal run a Natural Wine consulting company called “Adult Wine” who curate and oversee our entire wine program. We’ve been told countless times that it is one of the most well-curated, precise and inspiring wine lists in the city.

My friend Chris Gomez who works at Shibumi helps curate our sake list. It’s a short list since were a tiny restaurant, but we’ve selected some amazing sake’s in unconventional, less common categories.

I especially love the organic rice, nama/Kimoto/yamahai/genshu sake’s on the menu. They’re flavorful, rich and bold. It’s unpasteurized, undiluted, and un (charcoal) filtered and is sometimes completely hand made. Even the old gravity pressed method sake (arabashiri) is uniquely delicious.

Our dinner chef Nathan Mullen is somewhat of a prodigy having worked mostly at Michelin star restaurants starting from a very early age.

Separately, our brunch menu is helmed by chef Joshua Robledo, who has worked with some of most institutional cafe & restaurants in town like Dinette & Nomad Hotel.

We’re a small team and our growing kitchen/front of house team is beginning to set the new standard of casual/professional service.

Kensho is essentially a house party, but everyone is tended to as if we’re in a Michelin restaurant. I think our aim is not to become a ‘standardized perfection’ but carry a sense of family & care done professionally. A wabi-sabi approach that feels like a Parisian neo-bistro or Tokyo izakaya, but luxurious. I think that authentic, friendly vibe is what we aim for.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
Los Angeles feels like it’s entering a new era, defining & leading every category, not just entertainment. We see industries such as fashion, food, technology, music, art and design all starting to move from NY/SF to LA as home-base. There’s a sense of entrepreneurial support and collaboration that is happening seamlessly across disciplines.

I do wish it develops a better public transportation system and a more seamless connection between different areas of the city so that we don’t have to further isolate ourselves in cars.