Inside Chef Neal Fraser's L.A. Restaurant Redbird

I am in the very, very, very hot kitchen of. air conditioned kitchen. I'm in the air-conditioned/really, really, really hot kitchen of famed LA chef Neil Fraser. Thank you for having us in your kitchen. I should say the kitchen of Redbird, your baby. Yes. That's coming. Now, you're an LA native. Isn't that amazing to kind of work your way up in the city that kind of created you?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean I always kind of wore it as a badge on my sleeve because everybody really hated Los Angeles for many reasons, especially culinary. It's so hot. I'm sweating up. You can sit over here. Sit over there. You know, LA's kind of getting a bad rap and it has for a long time and I've been kind of here to help defend it and you know, the longer I try the less I have to defend it. People are moving to Los Angeles to open restaurants and there's people flying to LA to eat in restaurants and there's lots of very interesting places and uh I don't have to defend it anymore.

Tell me about this space. It's gorgeous.

We're in the sacristy of the original Catholic cathedral built in 1876. And we have converted into a restaurant.

Well, let's go check out get behind at Redbird. Let's do it. All right. Okay. Follow me. So this is our event space. Wow. This is stunning.

So this was the original Catholic cathedral built in 1876.

It's stunning.

Thanks. It's off, it's very frosty. It's very white and simple and feels for most very non-denominational. We've done Jewish, Muslim, same-sex, Bar Mitzvahs, Bat Mitzvahs, stuff for the city. People feel really comfortable in here. It doesn't feel dogmatic in any way. There's no you know giant statues of Jesus.

What about a cardinal? There's no cardinals. Get it? Cardinal, I just

Yeah, I get it. Funny. Haha. Not funny weird, but funny. Haha. And then we go out this way and this is the restaurant. Come full circle. This is our outside dining room with a retractable roof. We have a wood-burning rotisserie that we do our chickens for lunch and we do grilled dinners off of it. And then the indoor dining room. Wine cellar. And that's it. That's the royal tour.

Well, let's carve that oven now. Yeah. Let's get in there. Done.