Travel Tips & Adventures

Continuing our Los Angeles dining options, we are going to look at a couple of establishments where we had dinner. Both of the following restaurants serve lunch also, with one open for breakfast.

Dinner

Parker’s Lighthouse – Long Beach, CA

If you are looking for a seafood restaurant with a view, you could do a lot worse than Parker’s Lighthouse in Long Beach. Located in the Shoreline Village shopping and dining enclave, the restaurant looks out onto San Pedro Bay, and, even more strikingly, the Queen Mary.

This is a free-standing building with, you guessed it, a lighthouse jutting out from the top. The red roof and white exterior is reminiscent of the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego.

 

Much of the large main dining room has huge windows on three sides that afford excellent views of both the water, marina and the city of Long Beach. There is also a Galley Bar on the third floor that seats 120. If you enjoy outside dining, there is room for 144 guests.

Unlike the Crab Cooker, Parker’s menu is extensive including beef, chops, chicken and pasta for dinner and sandwiches for lunch. There is even a separate and extensive Sushi and Saki menu.

Although I had just had shrimp for lunch, I decided to try it fried, not broiled ($19.95). The panko coating was crispy and the cole slaw had a different, but similar flavor to what I had at lunch.

The white tablecloth service has white craft paper covering it and a somewhat fancier dress code, although not everyone was dressed up.

Parking: An enclosed lot that fills up quickly outside of the Shoreline Village shops charges by the hour, but you can get your ticket validated at the restaurant saving you the charge for up to two hours.

Open Lunch and Dinner Seven Days

435 Shoreline Village Dr.
Long Beach, CA 90802
11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
(562) 432-6500

http://www.parkerslighthouse.com

Café Montana – Santa Monica, CA

It’s trendy, it’s fashionable, it’s the neighborhood. Montana Avenue is one of those eclectic neighborhoods not far from downtown Santa Monica. Lined with upscale shops and restaurants, it’s much quieter than the beachfront property just a few miles away.

Truly a neighborhood restaurant, the Café Montana serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even a brunch on the weekends.

I decided to jump out of the sea and back on land by ordering Pumpkin Ravioli in a sage and shallot butter sauce ($11.95 – 4 ravioli/$15.95 – 8 ravioli). The ravioli were great – I licked the plate – as discreetly as possible.

The desserts that are seen in the case as you walk into the restaurant are prepared by their sister restaurant daily. Although we didn’t see any celebrities during our visit, the restaurant has been frequented by the likes of Steven Spielberg and his wife, Kate Capshaw. Arnold Schwarzenegger has also stopped by as this place is known for its large array of desserts.

I was highly impressed by the apple-rhubarb pie.

My one complaint was not with the food, but rather the interior of the restaurant itself. There are large floor-to-ceiling windows facing the side street with two-top tables lining them. As you near the back of the restaurant the ventilation system that is just above the open kitchen blows cold air towards those windows.

In what I would call the Lake Effect (Chicagoeeze for cold wind blowing off of Lake Michigan in the winter), the window reflects that cold air back onto you. It creates the bizarre effect of being cold on the side that faces the window and warm on the other. This is probably great in the winter, not so much in the summer. Suggestion: bring a jacket. My wife who was wearing a sleeveless top was COLD.

Anyway, if that’s my biggest complaint, I’ll just ask for another table when I return.

Breakfast: 8am-11:30am (Daily)
Lunch: 11:30am-3pm (Mon-Fri)
Dinner: 5:30pm- 9:30pm (Mon-Thur)
5:30pm-10pm (Fri & Sat)
5pm-9pm (Sun)

1534 Montana Avenue
Santa Monica, CA
310-829-3990
www.cafemontana.info

Parking: Very small lot directly behind the restaurant. Otherwise, find a place along one of the residential streets, either next to, or nearby, the restaurant. FREE!!! (if you don’t park in a No Parking zone!)

Tomorrow: Experience the LA Farmer’s Market – an LA tradition for 75 years

Tags: Food, Los Angeles, Travel, US Domestic Travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Food, Restaurant, Scenery, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.