Is it the best or the greatest happy hour on the westside? Who’s to say. 10$ cocktails of this quality, (margarita was very good but the clarified punch was great) get’em before they realize how foolish they are. Food is still pretty good I mean it is Rustic Canyon. Got there close to 630 so partial happy hour and part regular menu.
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Has anyone been there for dinner lately (not happy hour)? I pulled up the current menu and was a little surprised how limited the menu is. Menus - Rustic Canyon Wine Bar and Seasonal Kitchen And absolutely nothing looked appealing to me, although perhaps it is because I’m not a huge fan of fruit in my savory dishes and I don’t like onions/leeks/shallots which the chef seems to love and put in everything.
I’m afraid the one fish main dish – WILD LOCAL SEAFOOD VERMILLION chanterelle mushrooms, english peas – will be boring like every time I have made the mistake of ordering fish at a restaurant like Spago. I don’t tend to enjoy fish outside of a Japanese restaurant or say Providence.
Is there something on the current menu that anyone would recommend? Going to this restaurant is not my choice, so I will have to make do. Or maybe they have a lot of off menu specials that are more interesting than their menu?
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I’ve never had off-menu specials when I’ve gone in the past. They usually print an up-to-date menu with everything available. TBH sounds like the style of cuisine doesn’t appeal to you (at least by menu description), I doubt a more extensive menu would make a difference and it’s comparable in size to similar places like Dunsmoor. Hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised, a lot of folks here like the food. They are highly influenced by what is in season at the Santa Monica farmer’s market so the abundance of citrus/fruit and alliums in dishes is an accurate reflection of what’s available at market and also may change by the time you go.
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I would say their dishes eat more interesting than the descriptions read.
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Their pork chop is the best entree in my opinion. It is very good but you aren’t wrong if you think the mains are the least interesting part of the menu. Other than that get a lot of salad and vegetables dishes which is what they do best. Most of the time i make a meal of several smaller plates.
Very small wine list but excellent cocktails or at least to my taste
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I love appetizers and instead of appetizers, they seem to have bar food (almonds and pickles).
And then they have a raspberry salad (I loathe fruit in my salads, but that is just a personal peccadillo) and then they seem to have some vegetable side dishes, presumably for the table. No true appetizers in the sense I think of appetizers. They do have crudo, BUT if you are a Japanese food fanatic like I am and have been to fabulous Japanese restaurants, crudo is not really exciting and frankly feels very ‘90’s or something when crudo became a thing.
Oh well, they do have $45 corkage. That’s a steal nowadays.
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You can think of the veg dishes as apps in my opinion. They are more composed than most restaurant veg sides. I think they do seasonal fruit in salads / savory dishes as well or better than most very intentional but maybe not to your taste
I hope you find something to enjoy
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It’s actually a little longer than on my last meal there in 2024.
As I read the menu, it has two snacks, bread, ten appetizers, four mains, and six desserts. I don’t know what you mean by “true appetizers.” If you judge it as a bad Japanese restaurant you’ll be missing the point.
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doesn’t sound like a place for you
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Am I wrong that other than the four limited entrees, this is a kind of shared plates type of restaurant? Because the person who wants to go to this restaurant where they have never been loathes shared plates. I certainly don’t want to lie to get out of dinner, but if it is mostly a shared plates type of place, I do want to put that information in front of the person so they can make a completely “informed” decision about whether they really want to dine at Rustic Canyon. I myself have no objection to shared plates, but the other diner does.
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It’s most def a shared plates restaurant. I didn’t realize you meant app/entree in the sense that each individual would be getting one of each. This would not be a fun place to each order a snack, app, entree.
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It’s definitely a shared-plates kind of place.
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Is your fellow diner a 70 year old traditionalist dinosaur?
Who hates variety?
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I never really thought about it before, but I think some people just want to eat exactly what they want and to not have to navigate or worry about what other people might prefer. Or to worry about being rude by saying THEY will dictate all of the choices. I don’t mind shared plates myself, but there are the inevitable compromises where if you had your druthers you would have ordered X dish, but someone doesn’t like something in X dish, so you have to skip that one and compromise on Y for the table. And also especially with a bigger group and shared plates, I think people who don’t like shared plates might have really wanted a particular dish and then end up being dissatisfied because they only got a tiny portion of the one dish that they really wanted.
All I know is this person doesn’t like shared plates and since as I think it is obvious, I really don’t want to go to Rustic Canyon I’m hoping that works to my advantage here once I convey that I heard that Rustic Canyon is really all about the shared plates. . .
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You have been very subtle about it lol
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well glad it worked out about not going to rustic.
growing up in an Asian family the idea of your own entree was pretty odd even when we went to American restaurants our family would always try the other peoples food or side dishes etc and we would generally order a variety specifically for that reason.
If someone wants a specific appetizer or salad I think it’s perfectly reasonable for them to order their own if they want it so bad while still getting the benefits of trying many things. I dunno different strokes for different folks I guess but just the idea of “loath”ing shared plates blows my mind.
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Off topic: it totally blows my mind, too, but I have actually eaten a few times w/ people who seemed really off put or actually explicitly declined to share their food. And one of those times was when a (now former) friend took me out for my birthday!
One of partner’s friends once commented to him that he found it interesting that I helped myself to a small bite of partner’s food (partner was sitting next to me, so it’s not like I had reach across anyone). I was like, “Uh, do partners not freq share each other’s food when it looks good???”
Anyway, back on topic…
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Isn’t that just what loving couples do? Growing up my family would try not to double up on orders as much as possible then share sometimes just a bite or sometimes swapping plates. It was almost a game to see who could figure out the best item on the menu and order it first lol.
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A friend had a story about going to a Chinese restaurant with the director Sam Fuller and he made everyone order their own plate of cashew chicken.
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funny enough ppl that don’t share are no longer in my life either lol
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