Bottle Inn to Open in Riviera Village

Editor's note: This article has been updated with comments from Bottle Inn owner Silvio Petoletti rebutting a post on the Redondo Wine Bistro Facebook page that claimed the two restaurants were merging.

Forty years after it opened its landmark restaurant in Hermosa Beach, Bottle Inn will open its second location in Redondo Beach's Riviera Village this month.

A post on the Facebook page for the Redondo Wine Bistro, which previously occupied the space in which Bottle Inn Riviera Italian Restorante will open, claimed in mid-December that the two restaurants would merge—information that Silvio Petoletti, one of the owners of the Bottle Inn, called "tragically wrong" in an email to Patch.

"The (Redondo) Wine Bistro is GONE, as are their previous owners," Petoletti wrote in an email to Patch. "We have nothing to do with them."

The original Bottle Inn is an Italian restaurant that offers breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as weekend brunches. Its claim to fame, however, is its wine list, which has received Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence "for having one of the most outstanding wine lists in the world," according to the restaurant's website.

The restaurant will replace Redondo Wine Bistro, which had closed more than a month previously "for renovations," according to signs in the window at the time. Those renovations never materialized, and soon after, new signs announcing the opening of Bottle Inn Redondo Beach were posted.

In the last three years, the space has held as many restaurants—Avenue Italy, which never opened; Grillish, which went through two very different incarnations; and Redondo Wine Bistro.

Bottle Inn is scheduled to open in January, according to the fliers posted in the windows. It will be located at 1700 S. Catalina Avenue, though the entrance is on Avenue I.