Larchmont Boulevard has had a loud year. Phil Rosenthal opened a diner named for his parents. A James Beard-winning chef built out a sports bar in a restored 1930s pawn shop. A two-story Spanish-tile building on the corner of Larchmont and Beverly sold for $9.6 million in March, the first time it had changed hands since the Fenady family bought it in 1968. Every few weeks brought another item for the neighborhood group chat.
None of that has anything to do with Monday night.
On September 14, HopeNet holds its 34th annual Taste of Larchmont, a food-pantry fundraiser that takes over the City Parking Lot at 209 N Larchmont Blvd from 6 to 9 p.m. Passports are $50. Raffle tickets are $5 each or five for $20. Both numbers, along with a good chunk of the restaurant list, have barely budged since 2019.
The roster that doesn't turn over
Compare this year's confirmed lineup to the one from seven years ago and the overlap is the story. El Cholo, Kiku Sushi, Larchmont Village Wine and Cheese, Le Pain Quotidien, Louise's Trattoria, and Sweetfin all showed up at the 2019 Taste of Larchmont, and all six are on the list HopeNet released for 2026. That's six restaurants that have donated food and staff time to the same fundraiser for at least seven consecutive years, on a boulevard that just spent a summer reorganizing itself around new leases. La Bettola Di Terroni joined the roster later and has now shown up at three straight Tastes in a row, its own smaller streak.
Some of the smaller shifts tell their own story. Muraya, a sushi spot that participated for years, had become Pho La Vache by the time the Larchmont Chronicle ran its 2024 recap, which used a photo of volunteer Jane Kwak staffing the sushi table in 2023 and noted the booth was "now Pho La Vache." Good Goose Cafe, which participated in 2019, is gone from recent rosters entirely. Its old space in that same $9.6 million building is now waiting on two new food tenants who haven't been named publicly yet.
So the picture isn't frozen. It's just slower than the headlines suggest. The boulevard's flashiest turnover, celebrity diners, chef-driven sports bars, a corner building trading hands for the first time in over fifty years, sits on top of a food-service core that has been showing up to the same folding tables in the same parking lot for the better part of a decade.
What fifty dollars still buys
HopeNet's Taste of Larchmont Passport has been priced at $50 since at least 2019. In a city where restaurant tabs and everything else keep climbing, a flat ticket price for seven straight years is its own small data point. Raffle tickets have held at $5 apiece, or five for $20, over the same stretch.
What that money supports has grown. HopeNet started in 1988, when four Los Angeles congregations pooled resources to fight hunger and opened a single pantry site in Koreatown. Today the organization runs a network of a dozen pantries stretching more than 20 miles across Metro LA, sourcing most of its food through the LA Regional Food Bank and distributing it free to anyone who needs it, no paperwork required. In 2025 alone, HopeNet moved more than 3.5 million pounds of food and served over 261,000 unduplicated people. Every dollar spent on a Taste passport works out to roughly four meals for someone in the network, according to the event's own materials.
Roya Milder, HopeNet's executive director, has run the event for years and still describes it in modest terms. In 2024, marking the 32nd annual Taste, she called it "a mainstay on the annual calendar" and thanked the restaurants and sponsors who make it possible year after year. This year, with the event days away, she told the Larchmont Buzz simply that HopeNet is "still welcoming sponsors and donors," a reminder that the fundraiser runs closer to the bone than the turnout numbers might suggest. Nearly 300 people bought passports last year, a solid crowd for a single parking lot on a Monday night, but not one that leaves much margin.
This year's lineup
Based on what HopeNet has confirmed so far, expect to find these eateries participating, several of them set up inside the Pavilion built over the farmers market lot:
- Bacio di Latte
- Cookbook Market (Pavilion)
- Descanso Restaurant (Pavilion)
- El Cholo, in its usual spot at the corner of Beverly and Larchmont
- Esco's Pizza, adjacent to the Pavilion
- Go Greek Yogurt (Pavilion)
- Great White
- Kiku Sushi
- La Bettola Di Terroni
- Larchmont Village Wine and Cheese
- Le Pain Quotidien
- Levain Bakery (Pavilion)
- Louise's Trattoria
- Starbucks (Pavilion)
- Sweetfin Poke
- Sweet Lady Jane
If you've followed the news about that Beverly and Larchmont corner building selling for the first time since Nixon was in office, it's worth knowing El Cholo sets up its booth right in front of it every year, in what past write-ups have called its "familiar spot" outside the old Coldwell Banker storefront. The tenant may be moving. The taco stand out front isn't going anywhere.
Working the boulevard on Monday night
Passports historically sell out before the night starts, so buying in advance through HopeNet's site is the safer bet over showing up and hoping. Cash, credit card, Venmo, and PayPal have all worked at the door in past years for anyone who forgets. The raffle and silent auction set up in the parking lot near the Rotary clock have in previous years included things like gift cards from neighborhood shops, a haircut from a local stylist, and once, a walking tour of the neighborhood led by longtime Larchmont Chronicle publisher Jane Gilman. None of that is confirmed for this year, but it gives a sense of what usually turns up.
Come hungry. Past attendees have mentioned Great White serving burrata with seasonal peaches as one of the better bites of a given year, and with more than a dozen eateries participating, pacing yourself across three hours matters more than it sounds like it should.
The bigger point is simpler than any of the logistics. Larchmont changes plenty from year to year, sometimes from month to month. But every September, for 34 years running now, largely the same set of restaurants closes down a piece of their evening to stand behind folding tables and feed the neighborhood for a cause that has nothing to do with foot traffic or press coverage. That's a different kind of continuity than a new lease or a sold building, and it's worth noticing on a Monday night when the receipts for both are sitting one block apart.
If you're the kind of neighbor who tracks Larchmont's small shifts as closely as its big ones, ON Real Estate has been doing the same for years across Hancock Park and Windsor Square. Reach out anytime for a free home valuation and consultation, no Taste passport required.
