La Monique

The Best Dishes Eater Editors Ate This Week: November 10 | Eater LA

"The new Southern French restaurant nestled into the Oceana hotel in Santa Monica is the kind of place to flex a billionaire’s budget without too much fanfare. Inside the tiny but gorgeously appointed dining room, designed by Martin Brudnizki to feel plucked out of a Midtown Manhattan members’ only club, chef David Fricaud compiles a hotel restaurant menu with probably a few too many options. There’s handmade pasta and inventive apps like escargot poppers (skip the salads as they offer minimal dressing and just a few green wisps in the bowl) preceding larger mains like grilled steak, roast chicken, and whole fish. The ingredient quality is fine dining level, and most preparations are worthy of their provenance, like the dry-aged Flannery rib-eye, seared over a gas grill but still exuding good complexity. Tender and slightly rakish with a deep essence, this is a very solid cut of meat. But the part that really got me was its peppercorn sauce, which Fricaud makes with fresh green peppercorns and velvety veal demi-glace. Without any butter or cream, the peppercorns become exceedingly fragrant, almost spicy in the way that other pepper sauces can’t attain, and it cuts through the fatty beef really well. I also liked the crisp fries dusted with herbs and the whole roasted cherry tomatoes as another acidic side to temper the richness of the steak. It’s kind of a quintessentially Californian approach to steak frites, which I quite appreciate." - Eater Staff