Another dineLA week(s) has come and gone with 6 meals over the course of 2 weeks. At the end of all that eating, I found some new restaurants that were all really good and worth revisiting.
My first stop was M Street Kitchen on Main Street in Santa Monica. I haven't been to Main St. in ages, mostly because parking is a pain. (BTW, if you've seen the 'S**t people in LA say' video, all of that car/parking stuff is absolutely true!) This is a casual comfort food restaurant with warm friendly service. The food was very tasty and my small group sat at our table for quite awhile talking without feeling rushed (it helped that we were there on a rainy Monday). There is an attached pizza restaurant and bar.
My second stop was Picca, a new Peruvian small plates restaurant. The dineLA menu was not typical of their everyday menu but the food was incredibly tasty and the place has a great noisy vibe. Peru gave the world the potato but there wasn't a lot of it on the dineLA menu. I had a delicious rice and mushroom dish called tacu tacu. One of my friends had a quinoa quiche which was also really good. I definitely want to come back here and try the regular menu. This would be a place to come with a big crowd.
My third stop was Enoteca Drago. I was in Beverly Hills with some friends and found this on the dineLA website. Celestino Drago has two other restaurants, one in Santa Monica and one downtown, and always has dependably excellent Italian food with great service. The Enoteca is a little more casual than the other locations. We got a nice table on the sidewalk on a warm night and enjoyed top notch Italian food. My friends had their wine pairing which was a great value. The streets of BH are quiet at night, but you still need to two hands to count the Italian luxury sports cars driving by, your fellow diners are might be kind of interesting, and there may be a strolling trio of musicians across the street looking for some tips in exchange for a song.
The fourth stop was dictated by its proximity to the Santa Monica pier, as I was going to see the latest Cirque du Soleil show, Ovo. We chose Il Fornaio which is a dependable Italian chain. The Santa Monica restaurant has a nice outdoor seating area right across from the pier. The service was a little spotty but picked up once we made our presence felt.
The fifth restaurant was Cleo, which I'd been to for a previous dineLA. I loved it the last time I was here and they did not disappoint this time. This was the restaurant that showed me that brussels sprouts could be edible and delicious. The dineLA menu consists of a selection mezze and we chose the hummus, baba ganouj and cucumber/yogurt dip plus the spicy cigars. These come with a fresh baked laffa bread. I could just eat dips and bread all evening. My main course kebabs were delicious as was the side of rice. Their signature dessert is the sticky toffee pudding which is rich, thick, sweet and will make you want to lick the plate. This was the winner out of all my dineLA meals.
The final meal was at AOC which I've been wanting to go to for a long time. The chef Suzanne Goin made her name here. This is another small plates restaurant, so again their dineLA menu is not totally typical. The food was really good, but a little disappointing in that while the ingredients were all incredibly high quality and fresh, there was nothing particularly exceptional about them. The service was certainly nothing special for a restaurant of this calibre, I found the server a little brusque. The timing was off as one of our party had to wait quite awhile for her entree while the rest of us sat with our dishes getting cold. I imagine timing is not something that is typically a consideration for a small plates restaurant, but I would've thought some special instructions would've applied to dineLA meals. Unlike the main part of the meal, the desserts were exceptional, so the meal ended on a high note.
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