Melody, the Virgil Village bungalow that constantly thrummed with diners who settled into its open-air living room and patio to try burgeoning food pop-ups, swill natural wine and jam to owner Eric Tucker’s genre-spanning DJ sets, is set to close permanently on July 12. Open for nearly a decade, Tucker wants Melody to be remembered not for its status as a trendy bar, but for its inclusive environment that thrived on the curiosity of its diners.
“We were that cultural [and] gender safe space where you could be whoever you wanted to be,” Tucker said, “exposing people to foods that they maybe never had before and giving chefs those chances to shine.”
According to Tucker, Melody began to see a decline in business during the Hollywood strikes in 2023. Combined with the compounding effects of the January wildfires, a tense political climate and L.A.’s high cost of living, the bar-restaurant “just couldn’t do it anymore.”
“I don’t see how places survive anymore,” Tucker said. “I’ve never done this before, closing a business. But I think one of the most special things for me is, how do I get out of this thing without losing it all?”
Prior to Melody, Tucker ran an Italian restaurant and bar in New York City. He opened Melody with his ex-wife Paloma Rabinov in 2017, and at first, the wine bar followed a typical dinner service format with a California- and French-inspired menu. But less than a year later, Melody’s financial struggles prompted him and Rabinov to shift to a rotating pop-up format. They began hosting different chefs for days and weeks at a time — Mexican-Jewish pop-up Malli even earned a two-year residency — with a short house menu offering cheese, charcuterie and other bar snacks.
Within the first few years of opening, Tucker began growing Melody’s wine list, which consists entirely of natural, low-intervention wines sourced from all over the world, with bottles available for retail purchase and many priced under $80. Tucker described that time as Melody’s “golden years.” Customers drank bottles of wine in the parking lot while waiting for hours to get in, where it was a “party every night.” The goal was to offer diners something new, and to give rising chefs, many of whom had yet to open their own restaurants, a space to experiment — all complemented, of course, by great wine.
“We weren’t a restaurant. We weren’t a bar,“ read Melody’s Instagram post announcing the closure. “Thanks to each of you who entered our little bungalow … a unique experience-experiment that was always a best kept secret.”
Tucker hopes to preserve Melody’s carefree, communal spirit when he temporarily reopens the space on July 16 while awaiting a buyer for the bungalow.
“Each night is essentially a ‘rent party,’” a Monday Instagram post from Melody read. “Very few rules with cheap prices may encourage you to stick with me 6 nights a week.”
Along with “maybe only one” other employee, Tucker will be the sole staff at Melody when it reopens. He will be making and serving pizzas as his pop-up alter ego Ugly Pie, which has made previous appearances at Melody — though some customers weren’t aware that the pop-up was run by Tucker himself. He said that he is prepared to operate the restaurant this way — making the food himself with few to no other employees — “if I have to,” whether it lasts for two weeks or two years.
“Melody was a really formative place for me to get my feet wet in terms of tasting a bunch of different wines, “ said Princie Kim, a longtime Melody customer who also works in the local wine industry. “There’s no air of pretension in there … Most nights of the week, I want to feel taken care of, but in a very relaxed and very human, raw way — and Melody gives me that in all ways.”
For its final days of regular service, Melody will serve Ugly Pie on Wednesday and Thursday, followed by burgers and fried chicken pop-up Little Piggy on Friday and Hancock Park butcher shop Standing’s Butchery on Saturday. While Tucker is unsure how long Melody’s temporary reopening will last, he plans to leave Los Angeles afterwards and possibly return to New York.
“It was always really rewarding to look across the room and just see all different types of people in here together,” Tucker said. “We weren’t perfect, but it wasn’t supposed to be.”
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