The 25 Best Restaurants In Santa Monica

"You’ll find more Italian restaurants in Santa Monica than in some parts of Italy, so Cassia’s Cantonese-Malaysian menu is a welcome change: tender beef rendang, crunchy crawfish toast, and giant platters of wok-fried lobster with rice noodles. The concrete-and-Edison-blub dining room swells nightly with nicely dressed dinner dates, friend catch-ups at the bar, and splurgy family meals in the circular booths. People trickle back and forth from Esters, the attached wine bar. A decade after opening, it remains one of the buzziest dining rooms in the neighborhood and the perfect antidote for when you can't look at another bowl of cacio e pepe." - arden shore, brant cox, nikko duren, sylvio martins