Exclusive Beverly Hills private members club centers the experience around exceptional food, outstanding service and an air of sophistication at every turn.

When restaurateur Seth Glassman set out to open a new concept in Beverly Hills, he wanted to go big or go home. Literally. The result was Gravitas, a unique, members-only restaurant and event space at the corner of South Santa Monica Boulevard and Camden Drive in the “Golden Triangle,” the city’s high-end commercial district. The facility spans 28,000 square feet and features a full-service restaurant, multiple bars, private rooms with private entrances, and a spacious second-floor event space.

“My business partner and I were seeing the members-only sector surge in cities like London and New York, but Los Angeles not nearly as much and really nothing in Beverly Hills,” Glassman says. “That’s what caught me. There was a void here. I thought if we built the right type of members-only restaurant, the residents and people of Beverly Hills and LA would respond well to it.”

Still, Glassman knew he had some due diligence to do, having clocked many years in the restaurant, hospitality and nightlife sectors, but not in members-only venues. “I studied all the clubs — what they offer, what they charge, how they go about their business — and asked myself, what’s going to be different about Gravitas besides the location?”

Garden Bar

The expansive property offered an answer. Built out of a former flagship location for a national bank and now outfitted with a casino-style front door, the space allows for large-scale events and multiple simultaneous operations. “Most clubs of this nature, if you have a party of 150 or 200, it takes over the whole club. Here, we did a 200-person rehearsal dinner, and it had no impact on the member experience,” Glassman says.

Programming quickly became central to the concept. “It’s all about showing members value. We didn’t want to create something that only a certain type of person could use,” Glassman notes. “People expect us to be pretentious, but we’re honestly the opposite. We know our members, where they like to sit, what they like to drink, what’s in their wine lockers. I think the biggest thing — aside from all the amenities — is convenience. It’s about making the members’ lives easier.”

Initiation fees start at $2,500 for members over the age of 30, followed by a $5,500 membership fee per year. Those under 30 pay the same initiation fee but $4,000 annually. Married couples receive individual memberships packaged at $7,500 for two.

Since the Gravitas opening, three years after the initial pen-to-paper drawings were complete in 2021, the tailored approach has paid off. The club now has a strong and growing group of members, including local residents and an elite tier including some celebrities Glassman wouldn’t name to protect their privacy.

The main dining room’s cocktail bar, the Gallery Bar, projects an ambience best described as old Hollywood meets New York.

Architecture Built for Programming

To bring the vision to life, Glassman turned to longtime collaborator George Kelly of Kelly Architects. “We wanted to give Beverly Hills what the people wanted: a high-end restaurant and event space they could call their own,” Kelly says.

The project expanded dramatically during development. “We had already pulled a permit, and there was another 15,000 square feet [the client] wanted to add. We doubled the size of the project during construction,” Glassman explains. “I had one team working on building the first two rooms and another team working on the new design. From an engineering perspective, it was really crazy, but we got it done.”

The 18,220-square-foot first floor functions as Gravitas’ operational and social core, anchored by a centrally located production kitchen that feeds the Gallery Bar and Dining, the indoor-outdoor Garden Bar and Dining, The Vault and parties held in The Loft upstairs. The centralized layout allows staff to manage high-volume a la carte dining and bar service without fragmenting production across multiple kitchens.

The Garden Bar and Dining is an indoor-outdoor space for cocktails and casual plates, featuring a 26-seat, circular bar and full retractable roof. The area includes 85 seats for dining.“I don’t like propane heaters being pushed around and clicking, so we installed overhead heaters and radiant floor heating,” Kelly says. “Because it was outside, it had to be built like a coliseum. It had to be built Army strong to hold wind and rain and water and fluctuating temperatures.”

The Gallery and Gallery Bar form the club’s primary fine-dining restaurant with 38 seats for dining and an intimate, 8-seat bar, offering an ambience that projects old Hollywood meets New York. The Gallery area is often booked for private gatherings and small events when it’s not used for dinner service.

Just off the Gallery is The Vault, a 32-seat private space featuring 420 wine lockers accessible via smartphone technology. Curtains connecting to the stone wall offer an option for extra privacy for dinners, cocktail receptions or dance parties. The space includes DJ and screen capabilities, as well as a side patio with one-way glass and drapery.

Upstairs, Kelly designed a 9,780-square-foot flexible entertainment loft with a full bar, lounge, stage (with 40 seats) and LED screens measuring 9 feet by 30 feet. “The Loft is packed on comedy nights and during Laker games and football weekends,” he says. “Rather than fixed theater seating, the whole loft space is modular. There’s a stage and a massive LED wall — it works for sports, business events, TED-style talks, comedy, live music.”

Additional second-floor spaces include the 8-seat Emerald and Ruby private rooms with card tables and wet bars, and the Pearl Room, a 16-seat corporate conference room with full AV capabilities. “That level has its own private door too,” Kelly says. “A lot of people tell me that’s one of their favorite ‘secret’ places to go to without anyone seeing them come through the front door,” Kelly says.

The second floor also houses the Onyx Studio podcast space. “If you go to Melrose, studios are $150 an hour. Members can just use it here [as it is included with their membership],” Glassman says.

Kelly likens the overall layout to a luxury hotel without guest rooms, allowing multiple events to occur simultaneously while food production remains centralized on the main floor. High-end but durable finishes were also critical. “We knew they were going to have parties for 500 people and immediately the next day it has to look brand new, just like a hotel,” Kelly says.

The entrance of Gravitas features neutral, gray reflective glass with 20% visible light transmission to maintain privacy while also reducing heat and glare. Inside the club, two-layer bronze glass for the stair handrails overlooking the restaurant space created a modern aesthetic, and special privacy glass was installed in the upstairs private rooms to allow users to shift between opaque and transparent for extra privacy or to see more action outside. 

Developing a project of this scale in Beverly Hills required careful coordination with city officials and landlords. “Getting the two-hour-rated ductwork up three levels and through the garage was pretty complicated,” Kelly says. “We created a whole trash room, and then the city inspector’s like, ‘I want that trash room air-conditioned and fire-rated.’”

Remote condensers presented another challenge. “The landlord wanted them enclosed, and then the city wanted special fire rating. We had to convince the landlord we wanted to poke a hole in the roof, and then we had to install landscape shrubs around the vent to satisfy the fourth-floor tenant who wanted a better view out his window,” Kelly says. “That’s the Kelly Architects part — yes, you can engineer it, but then you have to convince the landlord, the city, the tenants.”

This more intimate dining space sits within the main dining area; a variety of seating areas throughout Gravitas provides members a multitude of different options.

Designing the Gravitas’ Backbone

Following architectural schematics, Kelly Architects assembled the project team, including foodservice consultant Albert Yanez, FCSI, of CLAY Enterprises, and Avanti Restaurant Solutions, both of whom George Kelly had worked with on many previous projects.

Yanez specified equipment with the operator’s food and beverage team after the architect completed the initial footprint. CLAY Enterprises designed the main, high-capacity kitchen that supports daily restaurant service, large-scale events, the sushi bar, the first- and second-floor bars, and a satellite staging kitchen upstairs.

The main kitchen includes a combination walk-in cooler/freezer, plus a separate walk-in cooler for beer and wine, along with a dry storage room. A small baking area in the main kitchen includes mixers and dough tables for house-made breads and flatbreads. A large dishwashing room services both levels with a 44-inch, high-temp machine. 

Yanez says the client wanted all gas cooking equipment, and there were some complications with the hood system. “The [building] has very low ceilings, so we chose low ceiling-style hoods,” he says. “The hoods do all run individually so that the mainline is on when it needs to be.” The warming kitchen upstairs has its own separate fan.

Two opposing cooklines divide the main kitchen, which sits at the rear of the first floor at the opposite end of the main entrance. “That kitchen was designed to facilitate the restaurant, and then for the event space it has its own separate cookline so it does not interfere with the daily run of the restaurant,” Yanez says.

The event line supports banquet-style production. “We have convection ovens and combi steamers and kettles to do more batch cooking, and the front cookline is more traditional for steaks and chops with burners, broilers, fryers, griddles and a dedicated pizza oven at one end for pizzas and flatbreads,” Yanez says. The signature steakhouse broiler features an integrated searing griddle, anchoring this hot line.

Upstairs at Gravitas, the 9,780-square-foot flexible entertainment area features a full bar and lounge. This level also includes a stage (with 40 seats) and large LED screens.

Visually, the event line mirrors a traditional restaurant pass. “It looks almost identical to a typical restaurant hot food pickup line with pass-through shelves,” Yanez says.

A sushi prep table, integrated into a cold line, sits across from the main cookline. The table is outfitted with a glass-enclosed refrigerated merchandiser holding some of the cut raw fish as well as refrigerated drawers underneath holding additional fresh seafood flown in daily.

A shared service corridor allows servers handling restaurant guests to pick up finished plates on one side while event staff use a dedicated pickup counter on the other side to plate and pack food in insulated food carriers for functions on the second level. The culinary team prepares all food on the first-floor main kitchen. A staging kitchen/warming kitchen sits on the second floor. “Servers do have to hoof it a little,” Yanez concedes, but the setup succeeds in avoiding the cost of equipping and staffing two kitchens. 

Equipment in the staging kitchen includes hot holding cabinets, reach-in refrigeration with tray slides, a small ice machine, plating tables and drop-down heat lamps. A satellite coffee and beverage station also supports the event space on the second floor.

While the original design called for a second cocktail bar on the second floor, that idea morphed into a sushi bar by the end of the design phase. “That changed along the way,” says Yanez, noting that plans for the upper-level bar were scrapped primarily because two bars already existed on the first floor. 

The Garden Bar features four identical bartender stations with mobile draft beer systems, drainboards, dump sinks and dual glass washers. “We designed the bar so the four bartenders can work easily within their own spaces and have everything they need on hand, including glass washers on both sides because of the football-like shape,” Yanez says. “It was built as an island bar, so there are two bartenders on one side and two on the other. All the storage is equal to support both sides of the bar.”

Custom refrigerated pullout drawers integrated into the bar provide additional bottle and wine storage.

The main goal of kitchen design was to make all spaces as flexible as possible, which resulted in using casters and avoiding too many custom or welded-together pieces. “When we design projects like this that don’t have a chef on board at the time, we design more of a one-size-fits-all kitchen,” Yanez says. (More on that in a bit.) “The chef did come on board late in the design process, so there were some minor tweaks, like moving a couple pieces around, but ultimately he was happy with everything that was there.” 

Equipment Selection and Outfitting 

CLAY Enterprises worked with Avanti Restaurant Solutions to source the equipment specified. The project created “a workhorse back of the house that could put up with the throughput of the front of house,” says Stephen Nutt, project manager at Avanti Restaurant Solutions. 

One of the most complex elements was the center island bottle display, which included stone, a water feature and a refrigerated base, Nutt says. Coordination challenges led to Avanti sourcing and installing the unit. “We turn-keyed that entire unit — sourced the stone, electroplated liquor rails, white Carrara marble, and the water feature — with the refrigerated base and made it all self-contained,” Nutt says.

Another challenge was the large gas pizza oven. The original intent was to specify a wood-fired pizza oven, but ventilation constraints proved limiting. Due to the immense size of the pizza oven, that piece of equipment was brought in during the early phase of construction. “Because of its gargantuan size, we brought the pizza oven in before flooring and walls were up,” says Nutt.

Ventilation came with some constraints as well. “There was only about nine inches of clearance above the hoods,” says Nutt. “We had to get ducts, all the overhead MEP … and the fire system over them. That was a labor of love.”

The refrigeration rack also had to be relocated. “[The client] wanted it up on the roof, but we ended up finding another place for it on the third floor because of how large it was.”

Solving coordination issues during install proved both challenging and rewarding for Nutt. “This would be probably one of my top projects,” he says. “We had good partnerships going into it, and we left strengthening those partnerships. I love direct-to-owner projects — the ownership is so passionate about what they’re building.”

Executive chef Preston Madson designs and executes both the a la carte and private event menus.

Culinary Programming 

Glassman emphasized culinary quality from the start. “One of the biggest criticisms of clubs is that the food is just ‘eh.’ We put a big emphasis on culinary programming,” he says.

To do so, Glassman recruited chef Preston Madson, a New York-trained fine-dining chef with experience at Jams restaurant at 1 Hotel Central Park. He joined the Gravitas team after the kitchen design was complete. He oversees both a la carte dining and large-scale events, managing expansive menus and seasonal offerings. “It’s about having enough range, so members don’t feel like they’re making thousands of special requests,” Madson says. 

Glassman also brought in a sushi chef he had worked with in the past — Jiro Kobayashi, who runs the sushi program as well as the weekly omakase menu. “The sushi kitchen gives us a lot of flexibility for chef collaborations,” says Glassman. 

Yanez anticipated the chef onboarding after the design phase by designing the space with flexibility in mind. The modular kitchen enabled any chef to shift a few pieces to his liking. “We purposely designed the kitchen as a ‘one-size-fits-all’ to suit the chef who would come on board and the menu,” Yanez says. That approach paid off, as Madson did reposition a few equipment pieces, including the pasta maker and fryer, on the line, when he took over to fit his needs and operation. 

“I came in after the designs were done, and of course I wanted to move things around, but the way Albert and Stephen designed it made that possible,” Madson says. “Nothing was hard-soldered together. Everything was modular and on casters.”

Madson also added a 36-inch, self-contained refrigerated undercounter base to replace a plate warmer and create a true garde manger station. He also added a resting rack for meats next to the broiler. Staffing realities mean most food is still produced on the main line, with upstairs staging supporting service. “If we are able to expand our staff in the future, we can do more finishing and prep upstairs.” 

Ultimately, Gravitas succeeds because its physical design, kitchen infrastructure and culinary philosophy were conceived not as separate elements, but as a single, integrated system. From the dual-line kitchen strategy and modular equipment selections to the flexible event spaces and chef-driven programming, every decision was made to support variety without sacrificing flow. For both the restaurateur and the culinary team executing the vision, Gravitas isn’t just about scale or spectacle — it’s about building a space that adapts, evolves and delivers consistent value to its members, day after day. 

The Gravitas menu emphasizes both quality and a range of options, such as the club’s signature scallops and chicken parmesan.

Floor Plan

About the Project

• Opened: Oct. 24, 2024

• Scope of Project: Two-level, members-only club featuring a main restaurant, private dining options and event spaces, and multiple full-service bars. One main kitchen supports all foodservice venues.

• Website: gravitasclub.com

• Size: 28,000 square feet 
• First floor concepts and seating:
  • Garden Bar and Dining: Casual, all-day menu with a 360-degree bar that seats 26 and indoor-outdoor dining area that seats 85
  • Gallery Bar and Dining: Fine-dining and private event service with an 8-seat bar and 38-seat dining area
  • The Vault: Private dining with wine storage lockers; seats 32
  • Second floor concepts and seating:
  • The Loft: flexible entertainment space; seats 40
  • The Loft Patio: outdoor bar; seats 10
  • Upstairs bar: full-service bar; seats 19
  • Emerald Room: private room with wet bar; seats 8
  • Pearl Room: corporate conference room; seats 16
  • Ruby Room: private room with wet bar; seats 8
• Service hours for dining concepts:
• Monday through Thursday: 9:30 a.m. until midnight
• Friday: 9:30 a.m. until 2 a.m.
• Saturday: Noon until 2 a.m.
• Sunday: 11 a.m. until 11 p.m.
• Kitchen staff: 30 

Key Players

• Owner: Seth Glassman
• Executive chef: Preston Madson
• Architect: Kelly Architects, Los Angeles: George Kelly
• Foodservice design consultant: CLAY Enterprises, Santa Ana, Calif: Albert Yanez, FCSI
• Equipment dealer: Avanti Restaurant Solutions, Costa Mesa, Calif.: Stephen Nutt, project manager
• Gravitas operations team: Isadora Calella, director of strategic partnerships and marketing; Raquel Gay, director of membership; Dana Caprio, membership manager; Sophie Chace, events manager