The Penthouse @ The Huntley Hotel

Prior to last week, I had never even heard of The Huntley Hotel in Santa Monica, but I'm not sure how that happened. The interior of the hotel is what I'd call regal-beachy hip. There's lots of white and wood and the Penthouse restaurant on the top floor isn't that different (except that it's pretty much all white). You step off the elevator to be greeted by the hostess. I think the idea of the solid white atomsphere is to give the appearance that you've taken a lift to heaven. There's a round glass-top bar centrally located and booths and tables throughout most of the restaurant. Since it was a Tuesday afternoon when we were there, the place was pretty dead and we were able to take one of the giant booth/cabanas overlooking Santa Monica beach. It turns out that Citysearch rates The Penthouse as the top bar in LA to find a sugar daddy over 40, but I digress. As an opener, we tried the calamari. It was a heaping portion and served in an elegant white dish with a dollop of Jalapeno aioli. It was really great, but I have to say not as good as the calamari from the Greek festival we went to a few weeks ago. For the main course, I shared 2 dishes with a friend. One was the petite filet served with green beans and mac & cheese, the second was a parpadelle pasta with short rib. The filet wasn't that great and was kind of dry for a medium steak, but the mac & cheese and the pasta was really great. The mac & cheese was really thick and rich and baked to brown on top. The pasta was really filling, but delicious and the short rib was really tender. A lot of things on the menu looked really great, particularly from the appetizer portion of the menu. Crab cakes and oysters especially caught my eye. There are probably about 6 or 7 salads and the potato and artichoke soup sounds great but really heavy. There are a few breakfast dishes that they serve at least through lunch as well (mostly egg entrees). A few flatbread pizzas and burgers are also spotted on the menu. Unfortunately we were so full from the calamari and entrees that we didn't have any dessert. A tip is to go into the last bathroom for the best view of the beach in the entire restaurant.

http://www.thehuntleyhotel.com/pdf/menu.pdf