Inside Skywalker Grill, the Cherry Wood Dining Room on Top of the Lucas Museum
Skywalker Grill opened on September 22, 2026, the same day as the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles' Exposition Park. It is the museum's signature full-service restaurant, set on the building's fifth floor. Rockwell Group's Los Angeles office designed it, and Rhubarb Events & Hospitality Collection, part of Oak View Group, runs it. The restaurant is open to the public as well as to museum visitors, serves lunch, dinner and weekend brunch, and stays open after the galleries close.
The name and the brief both come from Skywalker Ranch, George Lucas' filmmaking retreat and workplace near Nicasio in Marin County, a property of more than 4,700 acres. The restaurant takes its cue from the ranch's hospitality, and its cherry wood is a nod to the wood used there. Tracey Bates, the museum's chief executive, has framed the restaurant as both a natural extension of a museum visit and a destination in its own right for Angelenos from across the city.
A room without right angles
The museum building, designed by Ma Yansong of MAD with Stantec, is a 300,000-square-foot structure of sweeping curves, and the restaurant team says its interior answers that architecture with no 90-degree angles at all. Guests arrive by elevator into a corridor lined on one side with cherry panelling that folds up and over the ceiling.
Inside, individually crafted cherry panels wrap the curved walls and the ceiling, and the team says no two are alike. Cherry columns finished in tambour rise at slight angles and branch like tree trunks where they meet the ceiling, which opens at the centre onto a plaster surface washed with cove lighting. Swooping partitions rise and fall in height to shape booths into pockets for conversation, and a green crushed velvet banquette rings a central island, surrounded by round tables and soft grey chairs.
David Rockwell, the firm's founder and president, has described the design as a way to make the restaurant part of the museum's storytelling, pairing the building's craftsmanship with moments of intimacy, warmth and surprise, from the glowing Corian to the handcrafted cherry.
The bar and the terrace
At the centre of the room sits a sculptural bar. Its snaking, glossy white counter is fronted by fluted tiles finished in crystal silver leaf, and the back bar is formed in softly illuminated white onyx Corian.
Beyond the main room, a private dining room has switch-glass walls that turn from clear to frosted. A large ovoid window with operable glass panels opens onto a landscaped outdoor terrace, where more tables look out over the University of Southern California campus toward Downtown Los Angeles.
The menu
The kitchen serves classic American cooking built on California-grown ingredients. Shareable starters include Dungeness crab cakes and lobster corn dogs, and the signature entrées include crispy chicken Milanese, honey miso glazed salmon and the Skywalker Ranch Wagyu Burger. House-made pastas and seasonal salads fill out the list, the restaurant also serves Magic Pan crêpes, and there is a dedicated kids' menu.
The museum itself was co-founded by George Lucas and Mellody Hobson and is devoted to storytelling through images, from cave paintings to screen art. Its 11-acre campus includes a park designed by Mia Lehrer of Studio-MLA.
Visit
Skywalker Grill is on the fifth floor of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, One Lucas Plaza, 3800 S Vermont Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90037. Reservations are available through Resy.
