Finally! I finally went and tried one of the DineLA menus, the day before the end of the 2 week stint! Ridiculous. Basically, heaps of restaurants set up a set menu at a reasonable price across LA. It’s a concept that really works for me- despite my crap utilization of it (I’ll be better next year).
It’s a huge space on the pedestrianised part of 3rd in Santa Monica, the inside looks good but I love sitting out on the patio so that’s what we did.
The DineLA menu at 1212 Santa Monica is priced at $39 for 3 courses. The appetizers were little flights of flavor from the standard menu- I really good way to taste lots. I went for the land trio: fried chicken bites, filet wrapped asparagus and an arancini. Of the 3 the aramcini was the best.
Al got the seafood trio and this was definitely the winner, as you can tell by his happy little face. Grilled prawns with goats cheese, sealed albacore with crispy onion (favourite) and tuna poke (2nd fav).
That happy face was then made even happier when his lamb chop main course arrived. 4 chops! That’s a lot. I’m not a chop fan so it’s not for me, but Al says they were cooked beautifully. And even though he ‘just likes the taste of meat’ he conceded that the glaze was good 😁
I went for the seafood diablo spaghetti. The sauce was good – not too much heat but lots of flavour. There was also stacks of seafood in it, the prawns were great. I’d have liked more mussels but I think that because I actually just wanted a bowl of mussels.
Now there was no chance that I was fitting in dessert but it came with the meal and Al was happy enough to have a little extra. It was a molten chocolate cake with icecream and a berry coulis. I am not a fan of chocolate cake (unless it’s my mum’s buche de noel at Christmas) so even if I wasn’t full I’d probably have passed. Al loved it though- it ticked all his boxes: chocolate cake with molten chocolate.
It’s a good little spot with a decent happy hour, which would be handy after a good shopping trip. Next time, I’m getting the mussel bowl though.
Jilltopia 