Drive past 10700 Tabor Street on a Wednesday night and you will see a line. Most people walking past assume the same thing: that hot little pizza place from Pico-Robertson finally outgrew its old spot and moved to Palms. That is not what happened, and the difference says a lot about this corner of Palms.
Pizzeria Sei opened its second location at that address, on the corner of Overland Avenue, on June 24, 2026. Chef William Joo and his wife and business partner Jennifer So did not close the original Pico-Robertson restaurant they opened in 2022. They kept it running and renamed it Sei Pizza Bar, a takeout-only counter still serving the same dough at 8781 W. Pico Boulevard. Palms did not inherit a restaurant that left somewhere else behind. It got a second, standalone identity for a place that had already earned a national reputation, ranked No. 2 in the country for the second year running by the 50 Top Pizza USA guide, just behind New York's Una Pizza Napoletana.
That distinction, quietly buried in most of the opening coverage, is the more interesting story. Sei did not need Palms. It chose Palms, and it chose the exact block where the neighborhood is changing fastest.
The Block Underneath the Pizza
Tabor and Overland is not a quiet corner. It sits inside what is probably the most active stretch of construction in Palms right now. Directly across Tabor Street from the new dining room, the same developer behind several recent Overland Avenue projects, Helio, already completed a 119-unit apartment building. A few blocks up, Helio's six-story "Kaia" development at 3555 Overland wrapped construction in August 2026 with 64 studio and one-bedroom units over ground-floor retail. And this spring, Helio filed two more applications on the same corridor: a 141-unit building at 3738 S. Overland and a 258-unit building at 3602 S. Overland, filed in April and March of 2026, respectively. Combined, those two proposals alone would add close to 400 new apartments to a stretch of Overland Avenue that is only a few blocks long.
Palms has always been dense. Urbanize LA describes it as the most densely populated neighborhood on the Westside, bisected by commercial zoning along Overland and Motor Avenues. What is different now is the pace. A corridor that used to add a project every few years is adding several at once, and Sei's new dining room landed in the middle of it, not on the edge.
That timing cuts against a pattern that has been showing up elsewhere on the same street. Coverage of the Overland corridor has pointed out that some of the newer mixed-use buildings, including ones called Ayra and Venue, opened with their ground-floor retail spaces sitting empty. Apartments do not automatically bring foot traffic to the businesses meant to serve them. A full sit-down restaurant choosing to open into that same stretch, with a working kitchen, a wine program, and enough demand to fill a room most nights, is the opposite bet. It is a business wagering that people are already walking these blocks, not waiting for a critical mass that has not arrived yet.
What the Bigger Kitchen Actually Changed
The Pico-Robertson original was tiny, built around a handful of Neapolitan pies executed with what Joo calls a hybrid approach: Japanese precision layered onto Italian tradition, long fermentation, hand-selected flours, a crimping technique that produces a crust that is soft in the middle and charred at the edges. The Palms space kept that foundation and used its larger kitchen to add two styles that would not have fit in the old building: a fried montanara pizza that puffs up like a soufflé, and a thin, crackling Roman-style scrocchiarella. New appetizers, new desserts, and a longer wine list came with the extra square footage.
Joo has described his approach to the menu directly:
"Those are really canvases and the topping is the expression of what a chef would do on the plate."
The dining room itself is understated, with minimalist decor that leaves the pizza as the main event. The restaurant is open Wednesday through Sunday, 4 to 10 p.m., taking both reservations and walk-ins.
Everything Else Worth Walking To
Sei did not land in a food desert. Within a few blocks of Tabor and Overland, Palms has quietly built one of the more varied strips of independent restaurants on the Westside, and most of it does not get the same attention.
- Simpang Asia serves Indonesian street food in a small, colorful space, with prices that stay reasonable even as the portions do not shrink.
- Momo Souls focuses on Nepali dumplings, a spread of momos served with a rotating set of dipping sauces.
- Daniel's Bagels is a plain, unfussy neighborhood shop turning out chewy bagels with spreads that go past the standard lox and cream cheese.
- Tacos Por Vida, run by the team behind Kogi, keeps a straightforward street taco menu that holds up against pricier options nearby.
- Madre does Oaxacan cooking with enough depth that it draws people from outside Palms specifically for it.
- Kotoya pours a tonkotsu broth that ranks among the better ramen bowls on the Westside.
- Lokal built its menu around banh mi, with a handful of sandwich variations beyond the classic.
- Versailles Cuban Restaurant has been a fixture for roast garlic chicken long enough that it barely needs an introduction to anyone who has lived here more than a year.
- Al's Hot Chicken brings a Nashville-style heat level that stays true to the original rather than softening it for a coastal crowd.
That is Indonesian, Nepali, a New York bagel format, Kogi-affiliated tacos, Oaxacan, Japanese ramen, Vietnamese, Cuban, and Nashville hot chicken, all within a short walk or bike ride of each other. Palms is also more bikeable than most of its neighbors. Both Venice Boulevard and Motor Avenue carry dedicated bike lanes, and the Expo Bike Path running alongside the Metro E Line tracks connects directly to the Palms station, which makes a multi-stop food night genuinely walkable or rideable rather than a driving errand between parking spots.
What This Corner Is Actually Telling You
None of this reads as a coincidence once you put the pieces next to each other. A national pizza ranking chose to expand into the two blocks of Palms currently absorbing the largest wave of new apartment construction, on a street where a competing developer trend has been vacant storefronts under finished buildings. Sei's bet was that the existing neighborhood, the one that already supports Simpang Asia and Madre and Versailles, was reason enough to open here, independent of whatever comes next on the empty lots nearby.
The corner did not need the density to justify the pizza. The pizza is proof the corner already had enough going on.
If you already live in Palms, that is the version of the neighborhood worth knowing: not a place waiting to become something, but one where a nationally ranked kitchen looked at Tabor and Overland exactly as it is and decided that was sufficient.
If you're curious what else is shifting block by block in Palms, or anywhere else on the Westside, Zack Grakal keeps a close eye on it.
