On an unseasonably balmy Friday evening in October, the crowd at Stir Crazy spills onto the street. Conversations in the cozy Los Angeles space carry from table to table. “You’re talking to your neighbors, you meet people, you flirt with people, you share stories,” Mackenzie Hoffman, the restaurant’s co-owner and operator, tells me.
Hoffman and her two business partners, Macklin Casnoff and Harley Wertheimer, opened Stir Crazy in May 2023 on a stretch of Melrose Avenue lined with galleries and design studios. The space had previously been a coffee shop, and the owners kept the original name. It fits. The three were eager to build something together when COVID-19 was still on everyone’s mind. “We were obviously all stir crazy,” Hoffman says.
Inside Stir Crazy
Credit: Photo by Jeni Afuso for Stir Crazy
Inside the restaurant, which draws inspiration from Viennese café culture, warm wood and a rotating array of artwork adorn the walls. The trio wanted their business to fit into the Melrose neighborhood, rather than build it around a particular cuisine or a target diner. “I very intentionally call us a neighborhood wine restaurant,” Hoffman says. When it first opened, the place felt more like a cafe.
The tiny open kitchen shaped Stir Crazy’s vibe and forced the team to get creative. There is no gas range, open flame, fryer, or hood. The team prepares dishes on induction burners or in a combi oven. “I always joke we’re a sauce restaurant,” Hoffman notes. That’s because flavor comes from sauces, stocks, fermentation, pickling, and preserving.
The food is seasonal and locally sourced, and the team tries to use domestic products whenever possible, which includes meats, cheeses, olive oil, and salt. The menu lists purveyors in the footnotes, currently with more than 25 farms and producers.
Co-owner Mackenzie Hoffman
Credit: Photo by Summer Staeb for Stir Crazy
Red wine and white fish amid a spread
Credit: Photo by Shelby Moore for Stir Crazy
I savor tomatoes from two California Central Coast farms, Munak Ranch in Paso Robles and Rocky Canyon in Atascadero, in a pale-green melon broth, with black garlic salsa macha for a touch of heat. A leek toast comes topped with Blakesville Creamery chèvre and kombu oil, the cheese’s sharpness contrasting with crisp bread. A delicate black cod arrives in a rich and tangy beurre monté.
The menu items seem familiar, but the specific ingredients, combinations, and techniques used to create the dishes are not common. Hoffman calls it being “democratically delicious,” with the meticulousness of a high-end restaurant while welcoming all kinds of diners. That goes for the basics, too. Even the ice cream sandwich is imaginative, made with cookies from the restaurant’s leftover sourdough bread, milled down and given a second life.
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Hoffman primarily works with the same farmers year-round and follows Los Angeles’s varied micro seasons. A wine list includes around 350 selections, many from Old World producers. Meanwhile, a by-the-glass program focuses on domestic vineyards, beers, and nonalcoholic beverages. Through a house-wine project, Stir Crazy partners with California winemakers on its own white, orange, and red. (A rosé is in the works.)
Hoffman calls these producer relationships “microeconomic loops,” which help make a small business less vulnerable to rising costs. “When things are fractured or unstable, I actually can rewrite the supply chain,” she adds. But guests don’t need to know any of that to enjoy dinner. “I just want people to walk in, kind of exhale, feel good, feel taken care of,” Hoffman says.
Stir Crazy sits nearly smack dab in the center of Los Angeles, making it a useful meeting spot for friends coming from either the Eastside or the Westside of the city. The night I visit, regulars share the room with people like my friend and me, who are here for the first time before a show at the Hollywood Bowl.
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It might surprise you that Hoffman’s business is open only Monday through Friday, and that’s absolutely by design. She says the weekday schedule makes the work more sustainable for a small team and helps her retain staff. “We cannot be like hammering on all cylinders every single day.” For diners, that means being more intentional about when to come in.
Looking ahead, Hoffman is already talking with winemakers about the 2028 and 2029 vintages. And she’s just as focused on her team, saying: “I want to be working alongside them. I want to be growing with them.”
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