About
Botanica
Botanica is a home for seasonal, Southern California cooking, with a focus on the products of regenerative agriculture, sustainable seafood and responsible animal husbandry. We believe that cooking should be vibrant, exciting and produce-centric; that wine should be natural; and that hospitality should be nourishing.
Our Mission
AFter careers as food writers and editors, we (Emily Fiffer & Heather Sperling) opened Botanica in 2017 as a destination for “nourishing hospitality” — a culinary and business philosophy that permeates every aspect of Botanica’s existence, from our obsessively farmers market-centric menu and sustainable practices to our dedication to respect, equality and healthfulness as core operating tenets.
Our goal in the kitchen is to use beautiful local produce and thoughtfully sourced products to create food that is vibrant, exciting and nourishing — food that makes you feel good!
Our goal for our restaurant is to care for our community by creating a business that aims to respect, support, delight and nourish all those it impacts.
Want to say hello? Drop us a line at hello@botanicarestaurant.com
Our Core Values
Botanica operates based the following core values, which guide our daily work and define our business:
*Nourishment: We serve thoughtful, nourishing food, and strive to create an environment where staff feels engaged, supported and safe.
*Hospitality: At its most elemental, this means taking care of each other. Being kind, thoughtful, attentive and generous.
*Respect: RespectING the diversity of our team and the perspectives and experiences that each person brings to the table.
*Equality / Equity: Everyone is treated fairly and equally, without discrimination of any kind.
*Sustainability: From our locally sourced produce and products, to our compostable packaging, to MINIMIZING FOOD WASTE, to maintaining healthy work hours and fair wages, to providing education and opportunities for growth.
*Positivity: A good attitude makes all the difference. Toxicity and negativity don’t have a home here.
*Professionalism: We aim to create work and a workplace that all can take pride in.
Natural Wine Program
Botanica is on a mission to democratize wine. Since opening in early 2017, our program has been comprised of exclusively natural wine, which we define on our wine list as: “Wine made by passionate producers, from grapes grown without pesticides, vinified without intervention or additives (beyond an occasional touch of sulfur for stability), with little-to-no manipulation. Wines that are vibrant, distinctive, alive. Wines we think are very special and that you should feel really, really good about drinking!”
Our list is sourced from a diverse, global group of independent winemakers whom we trust and respect, with an emphasis on women winemakers and sustainable agricultural processes.
We believe that beautiful, thoughtfully-made wine should be approachable and accessible, and so we sell every bottle in a market at the front of our space, as well as in our dining room. Our goal is to enable you to drink beautiful, special wines in a casual, unfussy way — and to connect you to the process and the people behind what you’re drinking!
Press
“You could probably spend hours people-watching at the aspirational all-day restaurant and marketplace that Heather Sperling and Emily Fiffer opened in a remodeled Silver Lake liquor store, but better to focus on the vibrant, produce-driven artistry happening in the kitchen. Like that stylish party-throwing friend who also happens to be an amazing cook, the two food-writing veterans excel at creating dishes that are both effortless and craveable.”
– Los Angeles Magazine, 10 Best New Restaurants of 2017
“With its debut in 2017, Botanica helped lift Silver Lake out of the dark ages. A naturally bright, sunny spot where locally grown goods took center stage alongside whole foods and natural wines, it was an ideal agent of change that pushed this maturing hipster mecca beyond its overdependence on dusky woods, small-batch bourbon, and exposed lightbulbs.”
– Hadley Tomicki, Resy Dish by Dish
“There are a lot of restaurants that feel particularly L.A., but Botanica hits that nail squarely on the head. The women-led kitchen knows how to turn out beautiful food for beautiful people in a perfectly breezy space.”
– Lesley Balla, The New Classic Dishes of Los Angeles
“Everything about the dish was refreshing — in a cooling sense but also in how the composition brought compatible elements together with new spark. The current nighttime menu at Botanica…is full of these kinds of subtle flashpoints.”
– Bill Addison, LA Times
Team
HEATHER SPERLING
CO-OWNER
Prior to creating Botanica, Heather spent a lifetime cooking and a decade as a restaurant-focused editor for culinary publications — and, on the side, a consultant for chefs, markets and culinary brands. Her love for vegetable-centric cookery is innate, informed by her Lebanese heritage and time living in India as a child. She’s a co-founder of Regarding Her (a national non-profit fueling the growth of women leaders in food and beverage), a mother of two, and is in the kitchen today because of her grandma Mary.
EMILY FIFFER
CO-OWNER
Emily spent years writing about food and travel for DailyCandy, among other publications, and consulting on restaurant projects, all while obsessively cooking vegetables in her home kitchen. After talking her way into apprenticeships in London at Yotam Ottolenghi’s Nopi and Sam & Sam Clark’s Moro, she took her love of healthful, vegetable-centric cooking to Los Angeles. She believes a life without tahini, honeycrisp apples and a collection of well-worn cookbooks is a life unlived.
pierluc dallaire
director of operations
Pierluc spent a decade at Joe Beef in Montreal, mastering multiple stations (from line cook to manager) before heading to Los Angeles to help open Botanica. Next, PL went onto open Bar Restaurant in Silver Lake, which he ran with panache! Now we’re lucky enough to have him back, helming our natural wine program, solving 500 problems per minute, and leading our teams with style and grace. In his spare time, PL enjoys dancing of all kinds and cooking delicious meals.
ALEX BARKLEY
CHEF
from Seattle, Washington, I enjoy perfectly cooked legumes, cold seafood, classic cooking techniques, beautifully handled produce, and services that are just a little bit too busy. I worked for Renee Erickson at Walrus and the Carpenter and The Whale Wins, and Jeremy Fox at Birdie G’s.” We add: Alex has basically worked at every delicious restaurant in Seattle. He was head chef at Manolin from 2014-2019, sous chef at the Whale Wins, and executive sous chef at LA’s Birdie G’s.
