Doma Kitchen (Closed)

★★★★★

Doma Kitchen started serving eastern European food in a tiny converted house with only outdoor seating on a small, triangle-shaped lot in Redondo Beach across one street from Whole Foods and Rite-Aid and the other from a psychic reader. They closed to look for a new location – I forget whether the owner of the lot had already decided to redevelop it or if they just wanted more space – and did the occasional pop-up event in the meantime.

In 2015, the restaurant found a space in a storefront next to a movie theater at the end of Manhattan Village mall. At the time I posted this on Yelp:

It was great. The lamb stroganoff and kasha with bratwurst were both different takes from what you usually find and very good. There’s a good variety on the kids’ menu too.

The look of the place is a lot different from the old Redondo Beach location. It’s more trendy than homey, but that goes along with the bigger kitchen and menu, so it’s hard to complain. (It’s also a lot quieter when dining outside than it was when they were right next to a major street.)

It wasn’t long before the mall decided to raze the building and put in a parking structure. They moved to Marina Del Rey in 2017, opening in a strip mall connected to a grocery store. I can’t remember if I ever got around to visiting that location, though I used to visit a Japanese restaurant in the same strip mall with coworkers from time to time. Sadly, it closed permanently on the last day of 2019.