Rustic Canyon

Confession: I’m a regular here and have been for the last couple of years. I’m seriously delinquent in reviewing my favorite restaurant. Anywhere.
Fox’s eating room is a space that neither NY not LA otherwise offers: cheerful, busy, spacious, relaxed and elegant all at once. Come in shorts (but dressy please), come in a suit, come hungry. The menu balances staples like the roast chicken with fava beans braised with garden tomatoes and lifted atop crescenza toast coated with a soft cheese.
Seasonal items rotate through the menu if they have a couple of weeks in the spotlight: the english peas with mint and red wine vinegar is to be mourned all summer. And Fall. And winter.
Even more ephemeral: weekly specials like the Copper River ahi style salmon. Dusted with hard boiled egg, tarragon, dill and pickled ramps and sweetened with olive oil.
Many restaurants have strong selections of French and Californian wines. Or Italian. Rarely both like Rustic Canyon. The desire to present a long list of amazing wines can lead to confusion and spoiled bottles that have been open too long. Not here. I’ve never had a bad glass.
I can’t tell you about dessert but the cheese plates are creative, mixing strong cow blues and mellow sheep based wedges, accompanied by buckwheat honey.
Finally, given the quality, RC is actually a bargain.

I just went recently, and am writing this to tell people this is rather the best restaurant in Santa Monica. I ordered the flatiron steak, which was absolutely amazing. Unlike any steak I have ever ordered. The prices are completely worth it. They actually aren’t too bad. If you are a vegetarian, I would recommend the ricotta cheese dumplings. If otherwise, get the flatiron steak. I would most definitely go back, and I advise people to do so as well. I know the nephew of the owner, but that’s not why I’m giving this place 5 stars.

This place blew me away. I went with a group of 4, so we ordered 4 – 5 starters and 3 entrees paired with a bottle of Pinot Noir, and topped off with 1 dessert (yes, we were *stuffed* afterward, but we had to try as many dishes as possible!). The bar area was hopping when we arrived and our party waited in that area for a couple minutes while our table was prepared in time for our reservation.
Literally every dish delivered an explosion of unique flavors onto my tongue. Some of the flavor highlights were the starter dishes with beets, starter dumplings, and fish /​chicken entrees. Compliments to the chef for mixing such genius combinations of ingredients that created flavors I had never before imagined or experienced. Even the bowl of snack olives, and the butter+oil for the bread were ‘mmmmm’ delicious!
The staff were also very friendly, attentive, and good humored. We could have used a bit more help in our wine selection, however. When we mentioned we were still trying to figure out what to get (massive list & tons of Pinot Noir that’s hard to narrow down), the server basically said «oh yea, good luck» and ran off. I suppose you can’t go too wrong with any choice because all the options we’ve selected have been great so far.

Had high hopes, but what a let down…
For the love of baby jesus, do not get the $ 38 flat iron steak or the $ 154 rib-​eye

I finally made reservations here last night after living down the street for 7 years. I was not disappointed at all. The service was great, the recommendations were phenomenal and the food was spot on. I loved the mussel soup dish, the flat iron steak and the polenta. The cilantro in the soup was quite a pleasant surprise. The chefs creativity and play on ingredients was outstanding. The steak was cooked perfectly at medium rare and the flavorful outer layer made my mouth water. I couldn’t say anything bad about the food. I’d give this place a 4.8 as it represented itself exactly how it should. I can’t think of anything bad to say. If they had gluten free indicators on the menu that would be amazing but they don’t advertise as a gluten free restaurant so you can’t make it a negative. I look forward to coming back many times in the future.

With all of the hype coming out of Santa Monica about the Rustic Canyon restaurant, I had a Dirty Harry moment last night meaning, «I gottsta know».
Well, in one swooping exclamation, I found out — ALL TRUE!
Rustic Canyon is just as good as the hype says it is. Four of us had eight dishes (family style) and all eight were excellent. I mean 100% excellent:
Beef Tartar — Five Stars. How can beef tartar have textures (yes plural). This one did and it was amazing.
Asparagus drenched in deviled egg salad — Five Stars. This dish was so unique and so worked so well it was ridiculous.
Ricotta Dumplings — Five Stars. This was as good (or better) than an 80 year old Italian grandmother’s concoction made in her kitchen in Verona, Italy.
Rice Congee with duck confit — Yes another Five Stars. This wasn’t getting boring this was getting my attention. So good.
Polenta — yep you got it, Five Estralas. Creamy and ever so flavorful this dish just knocked it out of the ballpark.
Roast Chicken — As good of a roast chicken as I’ve ever had ever. I would come back here for this alone.
Caramelized Brioche with strawberry’s — I mean at this point I’m full to the point of having the Itis** but couldn’t stop shoveling this one down my gullet, itis**

Malted Milk Honeycombed ice cream — our grand finale and Grand it was.
This was a perfect meal rivaling any Five Star restaurant anywhere… Period.
The service was respectfully attentive. The noise level was a hair loud but this didn’t seem to matter and it was casual restaurant with a casual dress code.
Well, back to an «I gottsta know» note; I really loved this place and will definitely be back, Im sure many times.
**refer to Dave Chappelle’s Itis skit on YouTube

This place is really delicious. I have difficulty remembering and pronouncing some of the dishes and ingredients, but this is the gist of what we had and it was really good:
Focaccia bread with burrata
Asparagus with an egg thing on top
Mussel soup
They have a good wine and cocktail menu too. There’s valet parking and street parking. The meters there are free after 6pm. It wasn’t too crowded on a Thursday night. My friend and I arrived at 7pm and were seated right away at the lounge.

This is a winner! The menu changes daily and it’s all small, shareable plates. For four people, we bought 2 small, 2 apps, and one large plate and that was more than enough. Service was excellent and the ambiance was wonderfully relaxing. Best item was the ricotta dumplings.

Ok where do I start. I will keep it simple
*Terrible service, Unattentive and very short and defensive when something is asked.
*Food was good, the trout I wouldn’t order again my least favorite thing that we got (just toooo much sauce) the raspberry quinoa was probably my favorite and the white yams.
If it wasn’t for the bad service and some the heavy items on the menu. I would consider coming back. But to be honestly way too many amazing places to try in Santa Monica. PASS
*2 stars ans not 1, because of their food wasnt tragic.

Let me cut to the chase. Same owners of rose creamery. So same ice cream on their dessert menu… but get this, they don’t have the machine that churns it so its hand churned. Creamier than gelato. And, dare I say, better?! The honeycomb flavor ice cream is reason enough to occupy a spot at this farm to table restaurant.
Alright, back to the beginning to get out the rest of this review.
Atmosphere is cute. It’s fine. Dark and rustic with a few booths lining the walls and the rest closely placed four top tables.
Staff is passionate and knowledgable. Everyone we encountered gave us their full attention and offered excellent recommendations.
Ok, Food.
Lavender Almonds: too sweet but had a nice flavor and crunch
Marinated olives: lovely sweet and garlicky flavor
Beet salad: The avocado honestly melted in my mouth. I don’t know what kind of crunchy magic they sprinkled into the quinoa, but dear God is this salad perfect.
Pazole Verde: the only thing on the menu that is always on the menu. And I completely understand why. The best way I can describe it is a salty Mexican tortilla soup with mussels. Which doesn’t make it sound nearly as delightful as it is. This is a small bowl of brothy soup that packs so much flavor into each bite.
Cacio e Pepe ricotta dumplings: underwhelming and not worth the calories. The dish was a half dozen or so pillows of ricotta and yeast with a light pepper and maybe butter sauce and a few beans.
Brioche salted caramel bread pudding with strawberries: what do you think? Obviously delicious. The brioche was grilled to perfection and the flavor was sinfully delicious.

Came here on a Friday night with reservations. We were late by 20+ minutes so I was really grateful they took us in.
The restaurant is dimly lit — seemed like a great date spot. This was definitely apparent when I saw a good amount of couples enjoying a date night.
In regards to the menu, my boyfriend and I chose:
— focaccia and burrata
— three kinds of pork
— half roasted chicken
The focaccia was out of this world. My boyfriend and I agreed that it was the best bread we’ve had. The grapes seemed to be such an odd addition but honestly it made this bread even more memorable. The pork was okay. I personally am not a pork person so I would say I’m bias. The chicken was tender and juicy. Overall I would still say the bread stood out the most.

I’ve been wanting to check out this place for a while so when my girlfriend came up to visit me on the Westside, I got my chance. It was a Saturday night and we went in and sat in the bar area. The first thing I noticed is we had to sit for a very long time to get any service. In fact, we asked the hostess if we were supposed to order at the bar because there was no server in sight. No menu, no water, just two hungry girls. We finally got our server and ordered a bottle of sparkling wine to start. We ordered the ricotta dumplings (so amazing, light and fluffy and full of ricotta cheese). We also ordered the roasted chicken which was okay (it was borderline too salty, but it was moist and had a nice crispy skin to it). For dessert we ordered the honeycomb ice cream and it was so good.
I think this restaurant has the potential to be a really great place and I feel I came on an off night with the service and overly salted food. The food is not cheap either nor is it the most filling.

We had an amazing dinner here after discovering it on Jonathan Gold’s 101 list. I was surprised how easily we got a reservation, and even more surprised after we tried it for ourselves. We got the marinated olives, cheese plate, steak tartare, burrata with focaccia, beets with blackberries/​quinoa/​avocado, and ricotta dumplings in parmesan broth. It was a lot of food, but it was outstanding, and we ended up killing it all. The standouts for me were the burrata and steak tartare.
The burrata was fairly standard, just done extremely well, while the tartare was really unique — it was mixed with egg yolk, which gave it a really different flavor than you’re used to. My wife said it was the best steak tartare she’s ever had, and while it would be on a short list for me, it’s also a little bit hard to compare, since it was just so different.
Overall, we had a really great experience, and I would highly recommend for dinner in LA.

Ate here with my fiancée to treat ourselves. Outstanding food and drinks! I love it that it’s seasonal because there menus change frequently. Loved all that we ordered: focaccia with burrata, beef tartar with uni and egg yolk, beets and quinoa salad, Pozole verde with clams, beef tongue, and pork shoulder with polenta. Flavored all harmonious. Textures all compliment each other. The tartar was skinny but they had this crispy topping to compliment the skinny silky texture. The device hear is excellent and friendly. For dessert we had the berries with meringue and marscopone and berries and bee friendly honey comb ice cream (it’s actually a special toffee that tastes like honey comb. I very recommend foodies to try this place. Will so come back in a different season!
They have seasonal cocktails that are refreshing and delicious I had the sage advice which is a great starter to me. Not sure how long they will have that cocktail.
Love our waitress Courtney. She describes all the food so personal and delicious that we could not resist to try!

Rustic Canyon is such a gem in Santa Monica! We thought it was going to be casual dining before a SMC show but it ended up being a fancy experience with exquisite food! They change the menu every night and everything I’ve had tasted amazing.
I highly recommend their chicken, risotto dumplings, and Hocus Pocus wine! Service was fast and the waitress kept checking in and was very knowledgable on the menu.
They have valet parking or there’s street parking on Wilshire (if you find a spot).
Definitely coming back! A perfect place to take a date or clients.

Date & Time of Visit: December 22, 2015, Dinnertime approx 6:40 — 9:15
PRICE: Like Jar, the price-​identification of this place is misstated at $$$. It is more expensive than that. It’s actually $$$$.
DRINKS (3 Stars)
Chardonnay: My cousin and I each ordered a glass of Chardonnay. It was good but they cost $ 18 each. That’s too much. However, the soda’s price wasn’t bad at $ 3.50.
NOTE
My taste buds and my companions’ taste buds don’t care for sweet food like Asian Fusion foods. So since we couldn’t understand the menu (they were all in lowercase), we informed the waiter of our preference (no sweet food) and he made some suggestions. So we ended up ordering the following:
BREAD (1 Stars)
No free bread here but they had a bread which they called Ciabatta Butter & Oil and they charged $ 6 for it. It didn’t taste good – almost like cardboard. I had bread at a friend’s house in Chino Hills, a few days before, and that was really good. She got it from Ralph’s – freshly baked. Rustic Canyon should just have bought that Ralph’s bread and put it on their menu and saved themselves time and, us, money. So back to Rustic Canyon’s no-​good bread, we ended up ordering it twice because the main course we ordered (a huge steak) took long to cook. Also, we were not aware that the bread was not free. Had we known that, we would have tried something else.
SALAD (5 Stars)
Kale Salad: Excellent! Rustic Canyon is one other place that I know of that makes great dressing (the other one being Forage in Silver Lake). Back to Rustic’s Kale Salad it came with dates, parmesan, fat-​uncle almonds & lemon (description is from their menu because, obviously, I don’t have a clue as to what a fat-​uncle almond is).
CHICKEN (4 Stars)
Roasted Chicken: This was also very delicious but expensive (serving was small and they charged us $ 30).
YAMS (4 Stars)
Since the steak we ordered took longer than estimated to cook, they gave us this dish at no charge. It was delicious (menu description: white yams, celery, green garlic butter, hazelnut dukkah & aioli).
STEAK (5 Stars)
And now for the main course. We ordered a 36-​oz Dry-​Aged Cote Boeuf. It was aged for 45 days. It came with bone marrow, kale and potatoes. This was very delicious. If you want this, I suggest you call beforehand so that they can start cooking it. It takes one hour to cook this. For the price, the menu stated market price but good thing the waiter was forthcoming with the price because I was treating so I could not ask for the price. And by the way, it was $ 162.
SERVICE (5 Stars)
Very, very good. And by the way, a 3% charge will appear on your bill for the employees’ healthcare. But I still commend their service.
LADIES RESTROOM (1 Star)
Very messy and the toilet seat was very loose. Someone could have fallen in. The restaurant although not big was packed. However, it only has one toilet. And when I went there around 9 pm, it was untidy. In addition to the loose toilet seat, there was a lot of paper towels on the floor and they ran out of seat covers. My niece who went earlier said it was not in that condition. So I suggest they assign someone to check and clean the restrooms every 15 minutes after 8 pm or something like that.
DESSERT — We did not have time to order dessert because of the steak that took overly long to cook.
NOISE LEVEL (1 Star) — Very loud
PARKING (4 Stars)
Valet. The staff were nice. About the fee, the sign stated $ 7.50 plus tip. That’s the first time I’ve seen «plus tip».

Great service, nice ambiance…
We ordered:
— steak tartare, shallots, pea shotos, egg yolk and mushroom chips ($ 18) — my favorite dish. The flavor was very unique and I’ve never had steak tartare prepared this way. Loved the crunchy texture of the chips in it.
–malfatti, butterbean & sorrel cacao e pepe, egg yolk bottarga ($ 18) — did not like this dish. The malfatti was overcooked and the flavor was too peppery for my taste. Made my eyes water.
–roast chicken, curry, escaraol ($ 30) — very juicy and delicious! Will definitely order this again.
–beets salad ($ 16) — fresh ingredients but nothing out of the ordinary. Could make at home.
— beef tongue dish — don’t remember the name for this but it was very good.
Will definitely come back again!

We had a booking of table of 7 and was split up into tables of 4 and 3 which is fine but then we were put at opposite ends of the dinning room. Some cockamamie excuse that the kitchen is small and they can’t cope with a table of 4 and 3 being next to each other. Then how do they cope with the entire restaurant being full? This is an expensive restaurant with a bad snooty attitude and I was ready to leave and go elsewhere as this was not the only place in town nor is it anywhere worth its cost. Alas other members of the group feel differently and we stayed.
The food turned out to be so, so. Not worth the money and not returning, ever! Better places to go, believe you me.

My boo and I had a wonderful Halloween night here! The service, food and drinks were all top notch and we love the location and ambience. The host was also particularly charming.
Our night started off with The Zombie, which was a three-​rum concoction that made us thankful we Lyfted it here. It was powerful and delicious. Then onto a wonderful bottle of Malbec that the hubby picked out to go perfectly with the amazing charcuterie platter they served that night. That board was loaded with deliciousness like chicken liver, duck, and pork. Just amazing. And ask for more bread cuz you’re going to need it.
We moved on to the cheese plate which had a hard Manchego-​like variety the hubby adored, and a blue cheese stinky choice that I gobbled up. Then we had this luscious bone marrow which is the hubby’s fave. We also got the squid which was so tasty.
Two desserts and dessert wine later, we stumbled out of there very grateful for Lyft, not having to deal with trick or treaters, and stretchy pants. Hands down the best way we’ve ever spent a Halloween night.

After a year of this place being high on my To-​Eat list, we decided to come here to celebrate some recent accomplishments. We live very close so we have walked past it countless times. The smells coming from the building are often intoxicating. I am sad to say that our experience was not as great as we expected it to be.
We made a reservation with no trouble — 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night. We arrived at 7 on the dot and had to wait a bit for our table to open up and them to clear it. It was no longer than 10 minutes, so not a major deal, but we were standing awkwardly in the doorway as we were not offered to sit at the bar or at one of the open tables outside.
The seating area inside is a little small and a bit cramped. It was definitely loud also so we didn’t catch our servers name when he introduced himself but our receipt said «Ferdinan.» I had heard great things about the cocktails so I ordered a whiskey sour and my boyfriend an old fashion. I read about the amazing burger, but I asked and it was no longer available. So, we started with the homemade charcuterie, I ordered the half chicken, and my boyfriend the ribeye.
Both of our cocktails were very good. We tend to like ours a little more stiff, but there was definitely a lot of care taken when making them. The charcuterie was tasty and a good amount for 2 – 3 people. My half chicken was a perfect serving size and the flavor was incredible! I would have loved to have more of the polenta because it was almost nonexistent on my plate. My boyfriends ribeye was absolutely delicious and the marrow jus was full of flavor.
Now for the reasons I knocked off 2 stars. After our server dropped off our entrees, he came right back and asked how everything was. Then he didn’t come back until we were done! For about 10 minutes we went without water or being asked if we would like other cocktails. We had to flag down a busboy to ask for a water refill. It totally ruined the meal for me. My boyfriends steak had not been trimmed and much of it was fat — for nearly $ 50 you would expect better. Overall the experience was positive, though I do not believe it was worth the steep price.