Hinoki & The Bird

Walk into Hinoki & The Bird and the wine list immediately signals that someone here takes this seriously. Four to five hundred selections, a dedicated sommelier in Cristina Candido, and a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence earned in 2024 — this is not a restaurant that phoned it in on the beverage program. The indoor-outdoor Century City setting gives the whole experience a polished-but-not-stiff energy that matches the list's ambition.

The list leans hard into France and Italy, which is exactly where it should lean — Burgundy anchors everything, with names like Domaine Leflaive Puligny-Montrachet and Leroy Bourgogne sitting alongside the kind of Bordeaux heavyweights (Château Lynch-Bages, Château Pichon Baron) that make collectors lean forward in their chairs. California holds its own with Kistler Chardonnay and Screaming Eagle representing the prestige end of the state's output. The Italian contingent — Gaja Barbaresco and Giacomo Conterno Barolo — is short but surgical, hitting the producers that actually matter. If there's a gap, it's that the Asian-inflected cuisine could use more support from Alsace, Germany, or even some well-chosen Austrian whites, regions that read the menu better than a Napa Cab does.

Roughly 20 to 30 pours by the glass is a generous program, with entry points starting around $14–$18 — reasonable for Century City, where a parking validation costs more than a cocktail at lesser restaurants. We'd want to know more about how often the glass list rotates, but the depth of the bottle list suggests Candido has good raw material to work with. Ask what's open; the answer will tell you everything about how seriously the staff treats the program on any given night.