Bar Fortuna Santa Monica: Main Street’s New All-Day Wine Bar From the Crudo e Nudo Team
Main Street just got the neighborhood spot it’s been quietly missing. Bar Fortuna — the new all-day wine bar from Brian Bornemann, the chef behind Santa Monica’s beloved Crudo e Nudo — has landed at 2917 Main Street, one block from its seafood-focused sibling. Espresso through a walk-up window in the morning, handmade pasta and negronis at night: this is the kind of do-everything neighborhood restaurant the Westside can never have too many of.
The Pedigree
If you’ve eaten on Main Street in the last few years, you know Crudo e Nudo — Bornemann’s sustainable seafood spot that turned a former juice bar into one of the neighborhood’s toughest tables. Bar Fortuna is the follow-up, taking over the former Vamos Vamos space with Jose Morales, Bornemann’s longtime sous chef, running the kitchen as chef de cuisine. Anyone who’s watched this team cook has been waiting to see what they’d do with pasta. Now we know.
The Concept: Espresso by Day, Negronis by Night
The all-day format is the story here. Mornings, Bar Fortuna operates a walk-up espresso window — a genuinely useful addition to a stretch of Main Street where the coffee line situation can get desperate (our Santa Monica coffee guide notwithstanding). Come lunch and dinner, the room turns into a proper wine bar: handmade pastas, vegetable-forward plates built from farmers-market hauls, and a pork chop for the table’s decision-avoider.
“Espresso through a walk-up window in the morning, handmade pasta and negronis at night.”
The Drinking Is the Point
It’s called Bar Fortuna for a reason. The wine list is curated by wine specialist J.D. Plotnick, the cocktails lean Italian, and there are — we love this detail — multiple styles of negroni on offer. A serious wine list plus aperitivo-hour cocktails a few blocks from the beach makes this an instant contender for the golden-hour drink before dinner, whether that dinner is here or elsewhere on our list of the best restaurants in Santa Monica.
Why It Fits the Neighborhood
Main Street has always been the Westside’s most walkable eating-and-drinking strip, and its best spots are the ones you can visit at three different hours for three different reasons. Bar Fortuna is built exactly for that rhythm: espresso after a morning beach walk, a farmers-market-driven lunch — fitting, since the Santa Monica Farmers Market ethos runs deep in this kitchen — and a negroni-and-pasta evening. It joins a very good year for Westside drinking, too; see our guide to the best bars in Santa Monica for the full picture.
The Westsider Take
Between Crudo e Nudo’s track record, a dedicated wine curator, and a format the neighborhood will use morning to night, Bar Fortuna arrives as one of the most promising Westside openings of the fall. Go early — the espresso window is the soft way in — and expect the dinner room to get competitive fast once the word spreads. On Main Street, it always does.
