Café Sierra, the long-running seafood buffet inside Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City, is preparing for a significant identity change. The restaurant will become MERiNE on Oct. 1, with management describing the new concept as more than a simple rename.
In its transition announcement, the restaurant says MERiNE will bring a refreshed design, an updated culinary approach and a broader rethinking of the dining experience. Just as importantly for anyone whose relationship with Café Sierra begins somewhere between the crab legs and the lobster, the company is also promising continuity: abundant seafood, warm hospitality and many of the traditions regulars already know are expected to remain.
Café Sierra’s existing bottomless seafood buffet continues during the transition. The current schedule includes weekend brunch on Saturday and Sunday and seafood dinner on Friday and Saturday.
What Café Sierra Looks Like Right Now
The existing brunch is priced at $95 and features snow crab legs, lobster claws, shrimp, oysters, scallops, mussels, sushi, lobster Thermidor, steak and other mains. Dinner is $139 and moves farther into premium-seafood territory with whole lobster and king crab alongside snow crab, oysters, sushi, sashimi, short ribs, steak and other selections.
The restaurant adds a mandatory 15% facility fee, which it says is not gratuity. As Café Sierra counts down to the changeover, it is also offering $30 off dinner through Oct. 1.
Those details are useful because they establish exactly what is being transformed. Café Sierra is not a modest hotel breakfast buffet receiving a cosmetic update; it is a high-priced, seafood-heavy abundance concept whose identity has been built around the spectacle of a very full line.
What MERiNE Has Not Yet Said
The biggest unanswered question is also the most important one for Buffet Authority readers: MERiNE has not yet published a post-Oct. 1 menu, price schedule or service format clearly stating that the current buffet will continue unchanged.
The company’s language strongly signals continuity in the seafood experience, but it also says some traditions will evolve while other elements make way for new ideas. Until MERiNE publishes its own operating details, it would be premature to assume that the current $95 brunch, $139 dinner, days of service or exact all-you-can-eat mechanics simply carry across under a new sign.
For now, Café Sierra is giving regulars a fairly clear message: the seafood is not being abandoned, but the restaurant around it is being reconsidered. On Oct. 1, we should find out just how much of the old buffet survives into the next chapter.
