Jeff Strauss Didn’t Want to Open a Restaurant. Then He Had To.

10 Minute read

09 Jul 2025

Journalist

The Hollywood writer resisted the restaurant world for years. But in his 50s, he gave in to the thing that made him feel most alive—cooking. OyBar is the result: soulful, funny, and unmistakably his.

He was six when he cracked his first egg. Not because he wanted to cook, but because his mother told him to make his own dinner if he didn’t like what she was serving. So he did. Standing on tiptoe at the stove, little more than a boy with a spatula, Jeff Strauss felt it—power, joy, defiance, control. The egg wasn’t perfect. But it was his. And that was everything.

Decades later, after a long career writing punchlines for shows like Dream On and Friends, Strauss found himself drifting from the Hollywood machine. His kids were grown. His wife was still working. And he was growing restless—pitching scripts he didn’t believe in, chasing projects that no longer excited him. One day, his wife sat him down and said, “If you’re going to do something in food, you should do it while you can still stand up.” Strauss didn’t miss a beat: “It was unclear to me whether I could stand up.”

Before he ever opened a restaurant, Strauss lived two lives. By day, he was a television writer and producer, working on a string of sitcoms over three decades. By night—often in the middle of writing blocks or emotional spirals—he cooked. Not casually. Not occasionally. Obsessively.

“Cooking is the thing that I'll do when I'm stressed. It's the thing that I'll do when I'm happy. I will do it collectively. I will do it alone,” he said.

Cooking became the creative fugue state that writing never quite could be. He could spend a whole day at the stove, worn out but elated. But after a day of writing, even a successful one, he never came home to write more. He came home to cook. That imbalance, he admitted, only became clear in hindsight.

“I didn’t want to run a restaurant,” he said. “I always thought I was too smart for that.” But the joke, he admits, was on him. As Hollywood began to ignore him a little more each year, the idea he’d spent decades resisting finally took hold. He started staging at Ink and Miminashi in his mid-50s, forcing his body—aching joints, fading eyesight and all—into the brutal rhythms of kitchen work. He came home each night feeling like he’d been hit by a bus. Then he went back the next day.

Because unlike the writer’s room, this was his. No networks. No development hell. Just sharp knives, hot pans, and food that made people feel something.

How Jeff’s Table Evolved Into OyBar, Studio City’s Cult Favorite

Strauss resists calling OyBar anything as simple as “Jewish” or “fusion.” But ask him to define the menu, and he’ll grin: “It’s Jewish-Japanese—if the Japanese guy was a Mexican cook and the Jewish guy was from India.”

There’s a pastrami quesadilla with jalapeño-Gruyère crust and housemade sauerkraut. A yaki onigiri stuffed with cured salmon and topped with crème fraîche, red onion, dill, miso butter, and everything spice—Jeff’s version of a bagel, lox, and cream cheese. A matzo ball ramen might appear as a special, nestled in a deep, soul-soothing broth. One night, you’ll get shiso-pickled onions on a burger; the next, a smoked trout tostada laced with chaat masala and papadam crunch. And there’s always something spicy, something fermented, something that tastes like childhood and travel colliding at high heat.

A cook once joked that Strauss should call it “Jeff-anese.” Another friend suggested “Jeff-ish.” He posted the options on Instagram, wondering aloud if any of them were offensive. None felt exactly right. All of them kind of did.

Because OyBar isn’t a brand. It’s a brain on a plate.

Strauss pulls inspiration from everywhere—childhood Chinese takeout in DC, camping trips with cast-iron cornbread, sukiyaki on an electric skillet in the ‘70s, backyard Super Bowl feasts, and years of eating across Los Angeles. “The incredible thing about this city,” he said, “is the number of people who bring home to their food. There’s a freedom here. A fearlessness.”

OyBar, like Strauss, refuses to conform. It celebrates culinary wanderlust with emotional precision. It’s a dive bar with fine-dining instincts, a place where wagyu brisket gets loaded onto crispy potatoes with gravy and cheese curds and is called—of course—Joutine.

“When it makes me smile,” he added, “that’s when it goes on the menu.” It doesn’t need to be his idea. It just needs to mean something.

At OyBar, the Real Reward Isn’t Recognition. It’s Presence.

Strauss thought the payoff would be in the food—in the layering of flavors, the balance of acid and fat, the satisfaction of watching someone bite into something and whisper What the hell is that? That still thrills him. But it’s not what moves him most.

What he didn’t expect was the feeling of people choosing OyBar as the backdrop to their lives.

“They come to have their birthday,” he said. “They come to have date night. They’ve dumped their kid with a babysitter or a parent and they come here.” His voice caught for a moment, the weight of that reality settling in. “I had no idea that was going to be there.”

That’s the drug.

Not acclaim. Not recognition. Not even control—something he admits he’s still learning to relinquish. It’s the way a matzo ball, or a smoky crisped halibut, or a perfectly miso-dressed lettuce leaf becomes the vehicle for joy, for memory, for ritual. “I get to have that,” he said. “That’s really special. And when I stop doing this, when I stop having a restaurant, that will be something I deeply miss.”

The words landed gently, without self-pity—just the quiet clarity of someone who knows how rare it is to be part of a stranger’s joy.

Now in his 60s, Strauss is still chasing balance—still trying to show up for the people who miss him when he’s lost in the kitchen, still trying to stay on his feet, literally and figuratively. But professionally? Emotionally? He’s never felt more fulfilled.

“This is me out there,” he said. “And I get to guide that.”

09 Jul 2025