Crudo e Nudo

Fish handled for the coastline

The fish work begins before the pass, with Brian Bornemann, chef at Crudo e Nudo in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, choosing a raw preparation only after the catch has set the terms. He runs the restaurant as owner and head chef, a Santa Monica native cooking close to the water that formed his appetite and his irritation with how often Los Angeles looked elsewhere for fish. The point here is not a grand seafood house. It is a narrow, practical argument made plate by plate: California and Baja waters can carry the menu when the hands know how to receive them.

Crudo e Nudo began as a pop-up in 2020 and moved into a permanent Ocean Park storefront on Main Street in May 2021. Bornemann had worked in modern, ingredient-led kitchens before building this counter-service room around West Coast seafood, sustainable sourcing, and restraint. The lineage he claims most clearly is local, not institutional: the Pacific Coast Highway, the fishermen, the underused species, the decision to make crudo feel native to this part of the city rather than imported as a style.

Sukibiki at a small raw bar

The kitchen’s ease depends on fish discipline. Ikejime and in-house dry-aging sit inside the handling program, and the team trains in sukibiki, the scale-removal method that asks for a steady knife and clean pressure along the skin. Those details matter because the plates leave little room for concealment. Halibut crudo can take white sesame, green onion, and shiro shoyu; striped bass can meet za’atar and Picual olive oil; spiny lobster, when the season allows, can carry fennel, saffron, citrus, and toast.

Bornemann’s menu works through small plates and daily availability rather than fixed ceremony. A crudo trio gives the pass a way to follow the catch, while tuna tartare toast, abalone crudo, garlic tahini noodles with box crab, steamed clams, and a vegan Caesar keep the room from becoming a single-note raw bar. The wine program stays in the same register, with natural, organic, and biodynamic bottles chosen to sit beside oil, citrus, brine, and lean flesh.

The counter and the parklet

The storefront is 600 square feet, and the scale shows. Most of the room’s life spills into the built-out parklet, where plates move through a casual counter-service rhythm and the noise stays conversational. It is a coastal room without resort manners: close tables, quick handoffs, chilled seafood, wine poured for food rather than theater. The bench and the counter feel connected because there is not much distance between them.

That intimacy suits the cooking. A piece of halibut does not travel far before it reaches the table, and the guest can read the method in the cut, the gloss of oil, the restraint of the garnish. If Crudo e Nudo keeps shaping its argument, it will be through the same materials Bornemann has already chosen: local fish, dry-aged flesh, sukibiki, shiro shoyu, and the Main Street counter.