Ben Lovett Opens Mitsi Cocktail & Sushi Bar in Chinatown

Ben Lovett, the Grammy Award-winning member of Mumford & Sons, has opened Mitsi, a cocktail and sushi bar in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, directly adjacent to his new music venue Pacific Electric.

Lovett launched his hospitality company in 2016 with a stated goal of building what he describes as cultural gathering spaces. The portfolio already includes Omeara in London’s Bankside neighborhood, the Orion Amphitheater in Huntsville, Alabama, and Saturn in Birmingham, Alabama, a venue that wraps a bar and coffee shop into the live music experience. Mitsi and Pacific Electric mark his first serious entries into the LA market. Neither one looks like a guy hedging his bets.

The dining room seats 110 beneath high ceilings with lime-washed walls. Plush burnt orange banquettes line one wall. Metal bookshelves section off a cozy corner stacked with couches. Bar seats face a clean, focused counter, and out back, a patio with additional seating looks directly onto the Metrolink tracks. It’s not trying to be grand. It’s trying to be the kind of place you don’t want to leave.

The cocktail menu leans into that same confidence. A Negroni comes built with palo santo smoked gin and prickly pear amaro. The Old Fashioned uses amontillado sherry and miso honey, a combination that could easily read as a gimmick but apparently doesn’t. There’s a paloma with tequila, Aperol, watermelon radish, and passionfruit. For non-drinkers, the St. Agrestic Phony Negroni heads a dedicated zero-proof list. The wine program skews biodynamic and organic.

For the sushi counter, Lovett brought in chef Jon Kim, and he’s clearly glad that decision was made before anyone could suggest otherwise. “Doing sushi in LA is pretty high risk for a British guy,” he said. “But I’m not doing it, thankfully, if anyone’s worried about me being the guy cutting the fish.” Kim’s menu doesn’t sprawl. Sashimi and nigiri options include bluefin tuna, sea bream, halibut, and yellowtail. Temaki runs to bluefin tuna, amberjack and shiso, and fatty tuna with caviar. That’s it. Focused. The beer list pulls from Three Weavers IPA, Ugly Half guava gose, and Arts District Brewing wit. Sake rounds out the back bar.

Chinatown wasn’t chosen for its foot traffic numbers. Lovett has spoken about the neighborhood’s actual history, the Christmas trees sold off passing trains, the Insomniac warehouse events next door, the sense that the area produces culture rather than just consumes it. “Things actually happen here,” Lovett said. He means it as a compliment and a reason.

His hospitality company, which he founded in 2016, has consistently planted itself in neighborhoods where something real is already going on. Omeara put down roots in Bankside when that stretch of London still had edges. Orion landed in Huntsville and Saturn in Birmingham, two Alabama cities that don’t show up on most venue developers’ shortlists. The approach isn’t accidental.

“The intention here is to give more of a sense of pride and ownership to the people who live in the neighborhood,” he said, describing what he wants both Mitsi and Pacific Electric to mean for Chinatown specifically, “so that they feel like there’s somewhere to go, places to hang, and cool things are happening.”

That framing separates him from the standard hospitality playbook, where neighborhoods get developed at rather than built for. Whether Mitsi can hold that line as it gains traction is the real question, but the opening posture at least points in the right direction.

Pacific Electric and Mitsi sit side by side on the same block, which means on a good night you’re moving between a live show and a sashimi counter without losing the mood. That’s the design. It’s also why Chinatown, with its warehouse bones and Metrolink proximity, made sense as the landing spot for Lovett’s LA debut.

Lovett didn’t come here to manage risk. He came to build something. Mitsi is open now.