Hear the name the Witch’s Cottage and you might conjure a mystical vision. And inside the new North Hollywood space, here there be witches, yes. But that’s just the start of it.
In one area of the two-story cafe, restaurant and bar, constellations beckon. A guide to crystals calls forth in another. An azure booth is flanked by an abstracted mermaid sculpture, and elsewhere howling wolves are engraved into the bar tops.
Hidden wonders are everywhere. Circle the cottage’s hand-constructed tree trunks, and maybe, if you’re lucky, you’ll spy a tiny door hiding a little witch. Sit at one of the tables, and don’t be surprised to hear the sounds of birds chirping from the man-made trees. Branches spring forth from paintings and every nook is a nod to something born of a fable.
A decade-long vision of the founders, the Witch’s Cottage has transformed the old Federal Bar into a colorful, whimsical fairy-tale-like forest of a gathering spot. A place where one can come for the fantasy, and stay for the chicken etouffee and the Hex Breaker, a tiki-style, rum-heavy drink for grown-up sorcerers.
“I wanted this to feel lived in,” says Danielle Ozymandias, who dreamed up the space with business partner Celina Lee Surniak, a fellow creative who like Ozymandias very much identifies as a witch. “I wanted this to be a visual feast because I think maximalism is just so interesting. That may be the ADHD talking, but I knew I wanted a lot.”
While they certainly designed the Witch’s Cottage to be family-friendly, Surniak and Ozymandias say part of their creative intent was to bring joy to adults.
“Everybody tries to shame you,” Surniak says. “Like, ‘You can’t buy that coffee. Save your money.’ No, let them have the coffee they really love. Let them get that annual pass to Disneyland. Let them have a weekly night at the movies, even if they go alone. The world is so weird right now. What we can do is find joy in tiny things.
“Being able to give adults the opportunity to say ‘I’m a fairy,’ is the best feeling ever,” Surniak continues. “And it’s not just at Renaissance fairs. Be a fairy here.”
Or be anyone. A sign near one of the restaurant’s restrooms makes it clear it doesn’t matter which one guests use. It asks that they simply wash their hands. “You can walk in as a witch, or a dragon, or just a FedEx worker,” Ozymandias says. “There’s no judgment.”
The Witch’s Cottage had its grand opening this weekend, and the community immediately responded with lines out the door. That wasn’t entirely surprising — the project was built by a collective. More than 200 volunteers donated more than 3,000 hours to bring the space to life, and the two founders attracted more than 100 investors via an online crowd-funding campaign that raised more than $167,000.
“We’re regular people,” Surniak says. “We don’t have a lot of money. We don’t have a nest egg. We don’t own property. If we were going to do anything, we would need help.”
Surniak says within three days of creating their campaign, they found an angel investor who offered them the funds to secure the building. Other investors followed, including Ana Lovelis and her husband Kenny Enea, known in the area for the elaborate haunted houses they have hosted at their home. The two joined as creative partners and helped with construction. Lovelis says she recognized in the Witch’s Cottage a similar outlook on life as hers. She recalled once years ago dating someone who had a skeptical and practical view of the world.
“And then there was me, being like, ‘That butterfly is a sign from my grandma,’” Lovelis says. The Witch’s Cottage, she says, is reflective of viewing the world through a magical lens. At a time of much stress for many, such a place may be needed. As Lovelis says, “What’s the harm?”
Surniak still has a day job, working as a stunt and intimacy coordinator on theatrical and Hollywood productions. Ozymandias, who previously worked in the local theater world, is focusing primarily on the Witch’s Cottage at the moment, helping to devise recipes and ensure the bakery can accommodate as many dietary restrictions as possible.
Beyond new menu items, there’s more in the works, including community events like sound baths, comedy nights and classes on composting, native plants and parenting. Or even some workshops that are more lighthearted, such as a hoped-for night on how to make a broom.
Hidden behind the upstairs bar is what’s called the Tempered Flask Tavern, and it’s an elaborate tabletop role-playing game room. Here, one will find a smoke-puffing dragon, but also digital windows that game masters can use to trigger various effects. A long table sits at its center, flanked by a knight, a digital fireplace and weaponry. Not open yet, the plan is for the room to be rented out by the hour.
Though Surniak and Ozymandias say they’ve been building vision boards for more than a decade of what the spot could look like, recent cultural shifts gave them the confidence that the timing was right. They point to “Stranger Things” and how it spawned a conversation around “Dungeons & Dragons,” or the successof Disney+ series “Agatha All Along.” More locally, they watched the rise of a game-focused bar such as the Roguelike Tavern, which is relocating to Studio City, as well as the news that experiential art firm Meow Wolfwould be building an exposition in the city.
Taken as a whole, they felt bolstered that North Hollywood could support a heavily themed cafe,a home for those who have rolled a 20-sided die, once looked up the meaning of the Tower card or just enjoyed a viewing of “The Lord of the Rings.”
But one need not know the inner workings of RPGs, tarot or Middle-earth to feel at home in the Witch’s Cottage. This is a space, after all, for anyone who has ever been touched by a fairy tale, dreamed of the fantastical or wanted to believe in the power of wishing upon a star.
So spend a little time in the Witch’s Cottage, and maybe you’ll start to imagine that cocktail is a potion, and those deviled eggs did in fact hatch from a dragon. Diners may debate between the “iron forged fondue melt” (a patty melt) or the “meze heartwich” (a white bean purée on sourdough), but childlike wonder is the specialty of the house.
“Everybody is somebody’s kid,” Ozymandias says. “And I just want a safe space for people’s kids. Even if you’re 50, or 80, you’re my kid. I want you to feel loved, and to have a cup of something warm or magical. I want you to know that whatever is outside those doors, when you’re in here, I got you.”
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