Electric Bleu Review: Chef Craig Hopson runs a Michelin recognized modern French Bistro in Mar Vista, California.
There is a line on the Electric Bleu website that does more work than most mission statements manage. California-kissed French bistro fare, it says, for special nights and for every night.
That second half is the hard part. Plenty of kitchens in Los Angeles can cook. Far fewer are built so you could reasonably turn up on a Tuesday without an occasion. Electric Bleu is both, from a corner on Centinela in Mar Vista, and we spent an afternoon in the room with chef owner Craig Hopson and owner/creative director Mai Sakai while the kitchen cooked through a series of dishes.
Here is what that looked like.
The People in the Room
Craig Hopson grew up in Perth, chasing waves with a focus on turning pro. A restaurant job was supposed to fund his surfing addiction. He could work nights and paddle out in the morning. It did not take long for the arrangement to invert, and the kitchen won.
He went to Europe and trained under Michel Troisgros, Alain Senderens and Guy Savoy, which is about as direct a line into classical French technique as a cook can draw. Then he spent years in Manhattan running kitchens with real weight behind them, Picholine and Le Cirque among them. That résumé could have landed anywhere. It landed on a neighborhood corner in Mar Vista, which tells you something about what he wanted this to be.
Michelin noticed. Electric Bleu was added to the Michelin Guide California on May 20, 2026, one of eleven Los Angeles restaurants to join that week. A California-meets-French bistro in Mar Vista that draws a crowd for its likeable plates. The guide files it under French Contemporary and Californian.
Mai Sakai is an Emmy nominated art director and longtime event producer, born in Kobe to a family of food lovers, and she shapes the creative direction here. The room and the plating both read like someone with an artistic eye that is making aesthetic decisions.
Benjamin Phan runs the floor as general manager, a French hospitality professional with a decade across Paris, Cannes, Los Angeles and Miami, plus a background in music and events. The service follows French form without the stiffness.
What We Ate
Seven dishes, and they were delicious. A note before we start: several of these are summer cooking, and the menu has since turned over. More on that below and trust me we will be coming back to Electric Bleu for more.
Gazpacho, Avocado Sorbet
The opener, and a smart piece of misdirection. Gazpacho is a dish most American restaurants treat as an afterthought, a cold soup to fill a slot. Here it arrived with a quenelle of avocado sorbet sitting in it, and the sorbet does two jobs at once. It is cold enough to keep the soup cold as you work through it, and the fat in the avocado rounds off the acid in the tomato. Savory sorbet is a technique that can easily go wrong. This one earned its place.
Heirloom Tomato Salad, Munak Farms Tomatoes, Ginger Miso Vinaigrette
This is the dish where the California-kissed part of the premise stops being marketing copy. A French bistro salad would dress tomatoes in vinaigrette and leave it there. Hopson dressed Munak Farms heirlooms in ginger and miso instead, which pulls the plate sideways into something with more savory depth and a low hum of heat behind the fruit. Naming the farm is not a decoration either. Tomatoes at this level are a sourcing decision before they are a cooking one. Chef Hopson, We salute you!!
Gruyère Gnocchi, Escargot, Snail Butter, Pickled Fennel, Capers
The one we are still thinking about. This was our favorite dish and its a MUST that you order this for the table or if your feeling the vibe, for yourself. Gnocchi Parisienne are made from pâte à choux rather than potato, which gives you a dumpling that puffs and browns instead of sitting heavy, and folding gruyère into them adds salt and a little funk.
They came in a green pool of snail butter, the classic garlic and parsley compound, with escargot throughout. The pickled fennel and capers are the part that makes it work. Snail butter is rich on rich, and without something sharp cutting through it the dish would normally be tiring by the fourth bite. The acid resets the palate every time. It is a very French plate assembled with a very Californian sense of balance. I hope they NEVER take this off the menu.
Quail, Fennel Sausage, Summer Beans, Mustard Vinaigrette
Quail is a bird that punishes inattention. There is not much meat and not much margin. This one came with fennel sausage, which is a logical partner, since quail needs fat alongside it and fennel helps define the richness it brings. Summer beans and a mustard vinaigrette kept the plate from settling into a heavy cold-weather register. Mustard with game is bistro orthodoxy. The beans are what made it read as August. We could eat 10 of these!
Signature Roasted Chicken, Roasted Potatoes
Every serious French kitchen eventually has to answer for its roast chicken, because there is nowhere to hide in it. Hopson calls this one the signature, which is a confident thing to put on a menu next to a steak au poivre and a whole section of well composed plates.
Chicken and roasted potatoes. That is the entire description, and that is the point. A dish like this is a technique argument, not a concept, and it is the single best test of whether a kitchen is actually good. It is the dish we would send a skeptic to order. This dish was well executed...
Steak au Poivre, Green and Black Peppercorns, Cognac, Veal Jus
The most classical plate of the night and the one with the least room for interpretation. Steak au poivre is a dish with a canon, and the version here follows it: a crust of green and black peppercorns, cognac in the pan, veal jus underneath. Mouthwatering!
The two peppercorns matter. Black brings the heat and the sharp edge. Green is softer, brighter, almost fruity, and it keeps the sauce from flattening into one note. Building a proper veal jus is a multi-day commitment that most restaurants at this size quietly skip. Hopson did not skip it, and the sauce is where you taste the Troisgros and Savoy years. Oui Chef!!!
Yellow Peach, Raspberry Sorbet, Brandy Ice Cream, Meringue
Dessert, and a study in temperature and texture. Yellow peach underneath, raspberry sorbet and brandy ice cream alongside, meringue torched to order on top.
Three cold elements and one warm one, each with a different kind of sweetness. The raspberry is sharp, the brandy ice cream is boozy and round, the peach is floral, and the torched meringue brings that faint bitterness that scorched sugar gives you. It is a dessert that resolves rather than simply ending the meal. Mind Blowing!!
What Is Actually on the Menu Right Now
Worth saying plainly, because we would rather you not arrive hunting a peach in November.
Electric Bleu rotates its menu with the season, and the kitchen has turned over since our visit. The current menu has moved into autumn: persimmon and roasted carrot salad with chicories, butternut squash soup with a cheese and apple cake salé, chanterelles with eggplant flan and anise hyssop, duck breast with poached pear and gorgonzola, wild striped bass with savoy cabbage and a lime broth.
Three dishes from our evening survived the turn, and they are the three we would point you to anyway:
Gnocchi Parisienne, escargot, snail butter. $24.
Steak au poivre, green peppercorn cognac sauce. $44.
Signature roasted chicken. $41.
There is also a five course tasting menu at $79 per person, with a suggested wine pairing at $61. The tasting changes weekly, which is an unusually fast rotation for a restaurant this size and suggests a kitchen that wants to keep moving.
The Shape of the Place
Electric Bleu sits at 3523 South Centinela Avenue in Mar Vista, and the geography is the thesis. This is not a destination block. It is a neighborhood, and the restaurant is built to be used like one, with a bar, high tops and a counter looking into the open kitchen for anyone who would rather watch than talk.
That is the harder half of the mission statement again. A chef with Picholine and Le Cirque behind him opening a room where the roast chicken is the signature, on a corner in Mar Vista, is making a specific argument about what a restaurant is for. We loved it!!
If You Go
Electric Bleu, 3523 S Centinela Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90066, Mar Vista
Hours: 5 to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday, closed Monday
Reservations: through Resy
Phone: (424) 316-9416
Menu: posted as a PDF and updated through the season
Corkage: $45 per bottle, with one fee waived for each bottle bought from the list
Worth knowing: a 4 percent surcharge is added to help provide employee benefits.
Other inquiries: salut@electricbleu.com
For more LA restaurant news and where we are eating around the city, see our running guide to the best food in Los Angeles.
Please go to Electric Bleu and let me know what you ordered!
I hope your hungry!!
Matthew Tropp | FJM
Sourcing
Food Journal Magazine was hosted by Electric Bleu and the dishes described above were served to us by the kitchen. The restaurant did not review this article before publication. Dish compositions are as the kitchen described them. Biographical details for Craig Hopson, Mai Sakai and Benjamin Phan, the corkage policy and the restaurant's description of itself come from electricbleu.com. Current dishes, prices, the tasting menu cost and the employee benefits surcharge come from the menu dated November 3, 2026, posted on the restaurant's site. The address and hours were confirmed against both the restaurant's own site and its Google Business Profile, which agree. The Michelin Guide listing, the inspectors' description and the cuisine classification come from the guide's own page for Electric Bleu. The May 20, 2026 addition date comes from Michelin's May 2026 California update and Los Angeles Magazine's May 21 report on the eleven restaurants added that week. Checked November 6, 2026.
Comments