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Where Ben and Jen Ate: 15 Restaurants That Witnessed the Bennifer Romance
From Parisian seafood towers to Diet Cokes in Cambridge, these are the restaurants where Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck once looked like they might actually make it.
By Brady Jonas | May 1, 2025
They’ve split up. Again.
Maybe not forever, we can hope, but the body language is fluently miserable, and the moving trucks don’t lie. Still, I can’t help it—I love them. I always have. The exhausted dad with too many iced coffees and the megawatt star who can turn a gas station photoshoot into a Vanity Fair spread. Even now, when the glances are colder and the joint outings are mostly damage control, I find myself rooting for them to get back together.
So I went back and looked at where they once seemed happy: the restaurants they visited, both together and separately while still a couple, the meals they shared, the moments that briefly, maybe accidentally, looked like love. Call it nostalgia. Or maybe just the kind of armchair anthropology that makes you believe a good plate of pasta could fix a marriage. Either way, here’s the list of the favorite restaurants of Bennifer, everybody’s favorite celebrity couple.
75 Main – Southampton
75 Main St | Website | Instagram
Lopez had girls’ night here, dining with Violet Affleck, her stepdaughter and possibly the last person in the family still returning her texts. 75 Main is a scene in summer, but when Bennifer shows up, the scene becomes a press conference. Again, Ben wasn’t there.
Arthur & Sons – Bridgehampton
203 Bridgehampton Turnpike | Website | Instagram
Jennifer celebrated her second wedding anniversary here in July 2024. Alone. The restaurant—Italian-American with sauce so red it could stain an NDA—is in Bridgehampton, where every third person has a podcast and a mortgage in arrears. No word on what she ate, but let’s hope it wasn’t the veal saltimbocca with a side of marital silence.
Bar Enza – Cambridge
1 Bennett St | Website | Instagram
Ben Affleck took J.Lo and the kids to this Italian spot inside the Charles Hotel in April 2023, possibly hoping the carbonara would distract everyone from the existential horror of parenthood. Chef Mark Ladner (ex-Del Posto, James Beard Award winner) runs the kitchen, and the pasta here is hand-rolled and unapologetically rich. A round of antipasti and pesto pasta, Diet Cokes all around, and a steak—because apparently even movie stars crave dad food.
BOA Steakhouse – W. Hollywood
9200 W Sunset Blvd | Website | Instagram
Just before the Giorgio Baldi outing, below, they showed up together at BOA, perhaps in an attempt to save things. BOA is loud, leathery, and impossible to enjoy unless you’re wearing sunglasses indoors. Think wagyu, truffle fries, and a side of please-make-this-work.
Giorgio Baldi – Santa Monica
114 W Channel Rd | Website | Instagram
Affleck was seen here solo in May 2024. If you’re going to sulk about your marriage, this is the place—dim lighting, soft polenta, and a clientele that collectively understands your pain. Giorgio Baldi has been a celebrity haunt forever. Rihanna eats here. So do divorce lawyers.
Girafe – Paris
1 Pl. du Trocadéro | Website | Instagram
This is where J.Lo celebrated her 53rd birthday in July 2022, staring out at the Eiffel Tower like she owned it. Located at the Cité de l’Architecture, Girafe is all about seafood towers and throwback glamour. It’s the kind of place where even the napkins feel judgmental. No idea what Ben ate, but probably not a good time.
Le Matignon – Paris
3 Av. Matignon | Website | Instagram
Another Paris honeymoon stop, Le Matignon is half bistro, half nightclub, all gold fixtures and attitude. They showed up looking like a Tom Ford ad and probably ordered nothing that required chewing. The couple reportedly arrived around midnight—European time zones seem to align with their marriage better than LA ever did.
Merois – West Hollywood
8430 W Sunset Blvd | Website | Instagram
Located on the roof of the Pendry, Merois is where they had that dinner in May 2021, back when Bennifer 2.0 was still a novelty. The menu floats somewhere between Tokyo and Provence—tuna tartare, duck à l’orange, and enough edible flowers to garnish a bridal shower. They were photographed looking smitten, or possibly just well-lit.
Old School Diner – Townsend, GA
1080 Jesse Grant Rd NE | Website | Instagram
Ben Affleck is such a fan of this place, stopping in regularly while visiting his Georgian estate, that chef Jerome Brown literally named a room after him. Brown told local news, “Ben will tell you, I trust my chef. Point blank. I trust my chef.” Which is exactly the kind of southern hospitality that comes with hush puppies and zero irony.
Polo Lounge – Beverly Hills
9641 W Sunset Blvd | Website | Instagram
In September 2024, they had lunch here—one of those tense, possibly mediated, possibly scripted reunions where nothing gets resolved. The Polo Lounge is old Hollywood in the Joan Crawford sense, not the Netflix biopic sense. You order the McCarthy salad and spend the whole time pretending your publicist isn’t under the table.
Sadelle’s – New York
463 W Broadway | Website | Instagram
They were seen leaving Sadelle’s in SoHo in March 2024 after a brunch that probably involved smoked salmon and absolutely no waiting in line. This is the brunch spot where you go if your sunglasses cost more than your rent. They didn’t pose for paparazzi, but Ben’s patented tired-dad grimace made an appearance.
Brady Jonas covers celebrities and their adventures for The Adventurist. He’s currently obsessed, well, actually, there are a lot of celebrities he’s obsessed with at the moment. Find many of his obsessions here.
