Opening Ceremony’s Humberto Leon to Debut His Second Restaurant: Monarch
Food has been an integral part of Humberto Leon’s life for as long as he can remember. From his grandmother and mother to his sister, his family has long operated restaurants.
“As immigrants to America, it was an easy way to enter the workforce,” said Leon, whose heritage is Chinese and Peruvian. “My family of five moved to America with $500 in our pockets.”
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So it didn’t come as too much of a surprise when the cofounder of Opening Ceremony opened Chifa in 2020 in Los Angeles. Chifa, a Chinese-Peruvian restaurant modeled after one his mother had run in Peru, quickly established itself as a must-dine location in a city with myriad choices.
Now Leon is opening a second restaurant in Arcadia, California, in the heart of the San Gabriel Valley. Called Monarch, it will offer authentic Hong Kong cuisine. It will be operated by his sister, Ricardina Leon, who will serve as chief executive officer, and the chef will be John Liu, his brother-in-law, along with his mother, Wendy “Popo” Leon.
“This is the area where I grew up from 10 to 18 years old,” Humberto Leon said. “My uncle had a restaurant in Arcadia and I worked there as a waiter. It had the best Asian food in Los Angeles. So I thought it was the perfect location to open a family restaurant.”
Monarch, which will open on Saturday, was designed by Leon along with architect Michael Loverich. The concept is “dining with deities,” in a space described as “both surreal and heavenly.”
Its palette is tonal blues intended to give the feeling of dining on a cloud. Cutlery is from designer Isabel Lam, vases are from Tim Teven Studio and Corsi by Enzo Mari, there are exclusive cocktail glasses by MAMO, custom USM shelving and a collaboration of coffee and tea sets designed by Leon for Polen Peru titled “Bamboo Jungle.”
The logo, designed by Naomi Otsu, is a butterfly with several Chinese characters embedded within and there are artworks specifically created for the restaurant by Charlie Mai that include a feng shui waterfall painting.
True to Leon’s roots, everything at Monarch is also available for sale. And like he did at Chifa, he partnered with Vistaprint, a design and marketing firm for small businesses, to create an assortment of pieces for purchase including hoodies, T-shirts, tote bags, baseball caps, stickers, phone wallets, water bottles, bumper stickers and even a cooler bag. Some of the pieces feature artwork by Otsu as well as Vanna Youngstein and Li Kuanzhen.
“I’m the king of collaborations, so I couldn’t help working with Vista on this,” Leon said.
Blending food and merchandise is nothing new for Leon. He said that during the heyday of Opening Ceremony as well as when he served as co-creative director at Kenzo, the company often partnered with other buzzy firms to serve popular food items such as Cronuts and Magnolia Bakery cupcakes to attendees.
“I’ve always been obsessed with food,” he said. “I look at it as another way of storytelling. We all eat, so it’s the most democratic expression. It’s really not that different from fashion. And this feels like Opening Ceremony in a restaurant.”
Even though Monarch has yet to open, Leon is confident that it will quickly establish a following. “If you love a restaurant or a store, you want to take something away with you,” he said. “And Vistaprint helped us imagine that. When you think merchandise for a restaurant, you think T-shirt, sweatshirt or lighter. But we created a chef tote, a lunch box and a cooler bench — we really pushed what it could be.”
Prices range from $1.50 for a sticker and $8 for a bottle opener to $58 for T-shirts, $128 for the hoodie and $118 for the cooler chair. The assortment will also be available online.
Ricky Engelberg, chief marketing officer of Vistaprint, has worked with a lot of different companies over the years including Carhartt and the Boston Celtics to “bring brands to life” through merchandise. He called the collaboration with Monarch “one of the highlights” for the company. “Our goal is to make sure people are inspired and become advocates of the brand.”
So would Leon consider opening restaurants outside of California, maybe in New York where Opening Ceremony established such a following? “I’ve been approached a bunch and New York is the stepping stone for us,” he said.
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