Los Angeles, United States

Kodo Hotel

Price per night from$193.80

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (inclusive of taxes and fees) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (USD193.80), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Kodo Hotel Photos

Style

Wabi-sabi scorcher

Setting

Arterial Arts District

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Splicing minimal wabi-sabi design with artistic flourishes, Kodo Hotel exudes urban LA cool — minus the static and thrum of downtown. This tranquil Arts District haven has just eight bedrooms, each with outsize custom concrete furnishings that contrast pillowy futon-style beds — its setting in a century-old former firehouse sprinkling a little period charm into the mix too. The Japanese restaurant downstairs is also hot property, drawing clued-up Angelenos for artful sushi, ceviche and sake cocktails.

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A round of cocktails and appetizers at Kodo restaurant

Facilities

Photos Kodo Hotel facilities

Need to know

Rooms

Eight.

Check–Out

11am. Check-in is at 4pm. You can book early check-in from 1pm and late check-out until 2pm via the online check-in page; each costs $60.

More details

No full breakfast option, but morning pastries and hot drinks are free for guests at the Kodo Hotel café (open from 9am daily).

Also

Unfortunately, Kodo Hotel has no elevators, so is not recommended for guests with mobility issues.

At the hotel

Free WiFi throughout. In rooms: smart TV, Bluetooth speaker, free bottled water, bathrobes, slippers and Molton Brown bath products. Deluxe and Superior rooms also include tea- and coffee-making kits and free minibars.

Our favourite rooms

The hotel’s eight ryokan-style rooms each draw inspiration from nature, incorporating earthy palettes and tactile textures of wood and stone. Rooms are named according to the subtle individual design elements found within – Izumi (water), Koke (moss), Tsuki (moon), and so on – so that you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve been dropped in a Japanese zen garden, rather than into the beating (he)art of DTLA. We love the Izumi (a Superior King Plus) for its spa-style serenity and space to sprawl.

Packing tips

An eye for design and a curiosity to explore your arty neighborhood.

Also

Kodo Hotel served as a working LAFD engine house from 1927 until 1980, and retains many of its original features, including exposed red-brick walls and rafters and an imposing firehouse façade bearing the legend ‘Engine Co. No. 17’.

Children

Little Smiths up to 16 years old are charged as children. There’s an option for connecting a Superior King to a Superior King Plus room, but the hotel’s minimalist style and Arts District location is likely to wow grown-ups more than kids.

Sustainability efforts

Kodo is a magnet for ultra-durable raw materials — none more so than the Brobdingnagian boulders that grace the hotel’s public areas alongside Japanese gravel gardens and organic tatami mats. The ethos elsewhere has sustainability in mind, too: produce is sourced from local suppliers, there’s energy-efficient lighting throughout guest areas, and single-use plastics have been shown the door.

Food and Drink

Photos Kodo Hotel food and drink

Top Table

The great wedge of charcoal-colored pine that forms the centerpiece for private-dining parties in Kodo’s industrial-style greenhouse space is a scene-stealer.

Dress Code

There’s no formal dress code at Kodo, but Arts District locals lean towards statement-casual: opt for colors that pop against the hotel’s minimalist backdrop and go big on accessories.

Hotel restaurant

Kodo is a magnet for in-the-know Angelenos, serving up Japanese-style wagyu steak and seafood cooked over binchotan charcoal in a sleek dining room of cool concrete banquettes, exposed red brick and artistically draped textiles. There’s plenty of outdoor seating, including a greenhouse-style space that seats 20 around a titanic pine table for private dining. Order from the grill or sushi counter, or go all in on the chef’s 12-course omakase experience.

As a hotel guest, you get a free morning pastry and hot drink at the hotel’s intimate café, set in the airy lobby area with its monolithic ornamental boulders, leafy plants, tatami benches and soaring windows (previously the firehouse doors) that overlook the street and Warner Music Group building opposite.

Hotel bar

The bar shares space (and a menu) with Kodo’s restaurant, promising a broad range of Japanese liquors, craft sakes and artisan cocktails — try a juicy lychee martini or smoky hinoki old fashioned.

Last orders

The restaurant is open Wednesday to Sunday, from 5.30pm until 11pm. The café opens at 9am, seven days a week.

Room service

You can order imaginative Japanese dishes to your room during restaurant opening hours.

Location

Photos Kodo Hotel location
Address
Kodo Hotel
710 South Santa Fe Avenue
Los Angeles
90021
United States

Kodo Hotel is a Japanese-inspired wabi-sabi wonder concealed within a former firehouse in LA’s diverse Arts District, two miles from Little Tokyo and downtown.

Planes

It’s around 30 minutes by cab from LAX, or a little longer during rush hours; a one-way ride to the hotel will cost you somewhere in the region of $60.

Trains

Union Station is a 10-minute drive downtown, and connects LA to major hubs including San Diego, Seattle and New Orleans.

Automobiles

You’ll find all the usual car-rental suspects at the airport. Kodo has its own parking lot behind the hotel; rates are set at $50 a day and you can book a space via your online check-in link.

Worth getting out of bed for

If Kodo Hotel’s wabi-sabi aesthetic and wild decorative pieces (looking at you, lobby boulders) have whet your appetite for further visual vivification, well, you’ve come to the right place. LA’s Arts District is an aesthete’s arcadia, and the hotel puts you within casual strolling distance of several neighborhood galleries. Hit up Hauser & Wirth on East 3rd Street for bleeding-edge art exhibitions and installations inside a former industrial flour mill; entry is free and there are guided tours Tuesday to Thursday. Elsewhere, the Cirrus Gallery has been showcasing groundbreaking Californian art for over half a century, counting John Baldessari and Barbara T Smith among past exhibitors, and the nearby ICA LA (also free) focuses on emerging talents on the contemporary art scene.

Local restaurants

You don’t have to wander far from Kodo Hotel to reach Bestia, a former warehouse turned buzzy Italian dining room. Inside, it’s all exposed brick and tables busy with octopus carpaccio, squid-ink spaghetti and pistachio tiramisu, beneath gleaming industrial pipework and stately steel girders. There’s a daily-changing list of European and Californian wines and a selection of imaginatively named cocktails including the tequila-and-lime hit of Cheap Sunglasses and a mezcal-heavy Personality Crisis.

Damian, right across the street from Bestia, is just as handy. Expect a modern twist on Mexican classics in this — yep, you guessed it — industrial-chic former warehouse. The smart money here is on the duck carnitas, flat iron steak and sweet mango soft-serve. 

Local cafés

On the corner next door to Kodo, the Bread Lounge rises to the occasion with a vast range of freshly baked breads, bagels and pastries to take away. The café is open all day, serving granola, avocado toast, sandwiches, shakshuka and more, plus a strong coffee game. For something a little more substantial in the morning, mosey over to Guerilla Cafecito for syrupy coffee and a steak breakfast burrito. They’re open daily between 8am and noon.

Local bars

Wander north through the Arts District to the moody underground cocktail bar that is Death & Co, where demise by dessert seems a distinct possibility: the banana liqueur-drenched drunken cookies are deliciously lethal. The Praying Mantis (vodka, cilantro, lime) and rum-laced Kingston Negroni cocktails are sure to revive you.

Angel City Brewery is a colorful art deco-inspired spot (inside a former warehouse) for sampling local brews, from refreshing pilsners to Japanese rice beer and a Czech pilsner that’s brewed with Thai lime leaves for the (presumably) sole purpose of naming a beer ‘To Live and Thai in LA’. 

Reviews

Photos Kodo Hotel reviews

Anonymous review

By Mr & Mrs Smith

Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this wabi-sabi design hotel in the Los Angeles Art District and carefully unpacked their eye-popping swag from the galleries there, a full account of their SoCal sojourn will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Kodo Hotel in LA…

Kodo Hotel’s high-concept artistic design is writ large (quite literally) through the hotel: you’ll find it in those great granite blocks that ornament the lobby, and in minimal rooms where fluffy futon-style beds juxtapose with statement mirrors and showpiece sinks cast in concrete. The hotel leans heavily into Japanese concepts of wabi-sabi (the flawed beauty of those boulders), and omotenashi (the overlap of a Venn diagram that includes hospitality, mindfulness and, ideally, tea). The whole effect is much like that of a Zen garden, right down to the gravel borders, delicate Japanese foliage and reverential hush in public spaces. And, if all that sounds a million miles from the thrills and spills of downtown LA, well, it isn’t. The hotel’s prime Arts District location puts cutting-edge galleries and upscale restaurants on your doorstep, and Kodo’s own modern take on Japanese dining draws in hungry locals from across the city, bringing upbeat energy to summer evenings on the outdoor terrace.

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Price per night from $193.80

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