(Matteo Berton / For The Times)
The best L.A. spots to sip a classic martini in style
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A martini is a martini, and a martini is more than a martini.
No cocktail commands greater cultural status. Blinking on neon signs outside corner bars and perching in the hands of a century’s worth of Hollywood characters, its image lives in our heads. The martini is a badge of power and world-weariness, in real life and fiction, the stuff of American life. In the new millennium’s drinking renaissance, the name and stemware have been co-opted as conduits for restless, relentless reinvention. Who among us guzzles espresso Manhattans with the same fervor?
I’m a martini purist (London dry gin and vermouth, stirred, twist or olives depending on the day’s disposition) but not an ideologue. I’m more interested in a conversation about details — I also favor two dashes of orange bitters, an addition with historical precedent — than I am in an argument about absolutes.
What’s the perfect martini? It might not exist — but it’s the reach for perfection that gives the classic cocktail its lasting mystique.
When the thirst for a proper martini arises, the setting matters. Cities like New York and London nurture establishments that emphasize the ritual: carts, tableside stagecraft, solemnity and wit in equal servings. In Los Angeles, though, the finest places for martini drinking tend to center atmosphere, the seats of glamour that come in many guises: old, new, shiny, noir.
Plenty of my favorite restaurants serve wonderful martinis — Camélia, Greekman’s, Camphor and Si! Mon are four that come to mind — and the pros at serious bars like Thunderbolt and Death & Co. understand that a great martini usually begins with a conversation between customer and bartender. The following 13 places, though, exude martini-ness. The moods they conjure, as much or more than the menus or hospitality, make sipping the clear, searing elixir from a frosty glass feel somehow predetermined.
Showing Places
(Musso and Frank)
Musso & Frank Grill
Hollywood American Steakhouse $$$
The oak paneling, the patina’d murals, the booth favored by Charlie Chaplin, the still-relevant Hollywood crowd (a few famous faces but mostly the creatives and executives who make Tinseltown tick): Musso & Frank, approaching its 106th year in business, remains one of America’s archetypal settings for the imbibing of martinis. Be it at a cloistered table, the mirrored bar in the “new room” or along the endless counter on the restaurant’s opposite side, servers in candy-red tuxedo jackets deliver your drink in a 2 ½-ounce glass. It arrives accompanied by an iconic sidecar nestled in crushed ice in a hammered metal carafe. I knew, after my first Musso’s martini years ago, that its taste was a Platonic ideal: searing, intense, pure. What I didn’t yet grasp was the recipe: straight gin (Gilbey’s, a now lesser-seen brand, has long been the well), stirred, garnished with Spanish olives brined in the kitchen. No vermouth. I tried not long ago to impose my personal martini preferences on the bartender; something strange appeared, an aberration. Lesson learned: Don’t mess with the Musso’s intangibles.
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(Andrea D’Agosto / For The Times)
The Georgian Room
Santa Monica American $$$
On a recent Friday, Dylan Meek was playing the Steinway & Sons piano in the Georgian Room, singing a silky cover of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy.” My friends and I occupied the three seats nearest him at the curving bar anchoring the room — a subterranean den of swank restored as part of the overall renovation of the Georgian Hotel, an Art Deco landmark originally opened in 1933. Black leather booths line the opposite ruby-red wall, hung with rectangular mirrors and vintage posters. The menu leans Italian steakhouse; I’m happiest with fried olives and chunks of balsamic-drizzled Parmesan as snacks and starters like grilled prawns and oysters Rockefeller, all of which happen to pair nicely with martinis.
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(Alex Justice / For The Times)
The Tower Bar at Sunset Tower Hotel
West Hollywood Cocktails
What a welcome sight to see the ebullient whirlwind of Dimitri Dimitrov — Tower Bar’s maître d’, who left for six years to help Sunset Tower Hotel owner Jeff Klein run members-only San Vicente Bungalows — returned to his rightful kingdom as of last September. Shiny new hot spots come and go, but Klein has helped Tower Bar retain its position as a Hollywood seat of power since he purchased the building in 2005. During awards season, tables in the dining room, many strategically positioned behind discrete partitions, can be especially hot currency. “Ah, no,” said Dimitrov to me with friendly gravity when I had the nerve to show up without a reservation recently. The short, unreserved bar has its own pleasures, though. It’s a fine roost amid the center of action to nurse a potent martini alongside a shrimp cocktail, a chopped salad or the abiding hors d’oeuvres of entertainment industry hangouts, pigs in a blanket.
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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Here's Looking at You
Koreatown New American $$
A favorite L.A. martini memory: Early last year, at the end of a draining workweek, a colleague and I met up for a meal at a restaurant that didn’t quite meet its mark that night. We had an idea: Let’s regroup at Here’s Looking at You, where the restaurant serves a late happy hour menu from 8:30 to 10 p.m., during which the kitchen cranks out thick, dry-aged cheeseburgers embellished with peppery mayo and the sweet sting of fried onions. That night, Damián Diaz, who co-founded the nonprofit No Us Without You L.A. during the pandemic, was behind the bar. That night he stirred one of the most perfectly textured martinis I’ve had; those ingredients were emulsified. The care in his craft lightened our worries for a calming hour or so. Diaz moved on, but bar director Danny Rubenstein has long overseen one of the city’s freest-thinking, stick-the-landing cocktail programs — while always respecting an elemental martini order.
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(Alex Justice / For The Times)
Dante
Beverly Hills Italian $$$
Under new owners, Caffe Dante — originally opened in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village in 1915, and so ingrained in the neighborhood it’s a registered New York City landmark — dropped to a single name and expanded westward two years ago to the top floor of the Maybourne Beverly Hills. Dante’s bartenders back east regularly teach classes in the art of the perfect martini; the craft is taken seriously on both coasts. The restaurant’s signature martini mixes gin and vodka with a duet of vermouths, lemon bitters and a garnish of three olives, each different colors, plunged directly into the glass. If it’s a two-martini night for me, amid a Cal-Ital meal of arancini and spaghetti alla chitarra or lemony branzino, I’ll start with that house creation and then ask for a steelier drink (hold the vodka), which the bar staff skillfully accommodates. Dirty martini lovers will appreciate the piercingly briny rendition smoothed with an olive oil float.
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(Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times)
Dear John's
Culver City Steakhouse $$$
Fans know the story now by heart: In 2019, two years before the scheduled demolition of a Culver City restaurant opened in 1962 by a pal of Frank Sinatra, power couple Hans and Patti Röckenwagner toured the space and felt called to resuscitate its swinging past. With partner Josiah Citrin, they landed on a hit: a 50-seat, time-capsule romp featuring tuxedoed servers preparing tableside Caesars; walls of portraits, abstracts and landscapes painted in the 1950s and ’60s; and Continental steakhouse classics that are far better than they need to be. On any given night I watch customers sipping martinis out of large coupe glasses on every other table. For tasteful variation, the cocktail menu lists a Vesper made with impeccable balance. In 2023, after landlord negotiations appeared to stall, the trio’s lease on the space was extended for five years: We have Dear John’s until 2028. Another round to celebrate, please.
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(Alex Justice / For The Times)
Spago
Beverly Hills Californian $$$$
The front bar at Wolfgang Puck’s Beverly Hills flagship is the restaurant’s most underrated nook. Most diners only breeze past the bar’s dark walls and over its handsomely scruffy hardwoods on their way to the comfortably modernist dining rooms. But treat the space as a destination in its own right and its enveloping charms reveal themselves: leather-padded stools, buttery lighting, an engaging corps of cocktail pros. The cocktail menu revisits popular drinks through Spago’s four-plus decades: a 1980s-era Harvey Wallbanger dressed up with a splash of sherry, a Paper Plane tweaked with Japanese whisky for the 2010s. A selection of current trends includes a Tiny-’Tini Trio with busy interpretations like a nonalcoholic version that combines Earl Grey tea, juniper, rosemary, oyster leaf, yuzu, cinnamon, kombu and brine. Ask any bartender instead for a classic dry martini and they oblige, bringing some very good blue cheese-studded olives to try on the side.
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(Andrea D’Agosto / For The Times)
The Benjamin
Fairfax American $$
An ode to cinematic Hollywood poshness and the first restaurant by the Hundreds streetwear co-founder Ben Shenassafar, the Benjamin takes a broad view of the martini with nearly a dozen variations. There’s a riff with tequila and a nod to the martini’s sweeter first cousin, the Martinez, fashioned here with Plymouth gin, Torino vermouth, Luxardo Maraschino and an orange twist. Circling back to a truer iteration, Ben’s Martini comprises Monkey 47, Noilly Prat Dry Vermouth and a spritz of lemon oil, served with stacked waffle chips as Shenassafar favors. Bar director Nathan Oliver stirs an even drier martini if you ask nicely. The booths, in tufted sage-colored mohair fabric, have obvious allure, though I’m drawn to sip my drink at the bar, demolishing a wedge salad and chef Johnny Cirelle’s precision-engineered cheeseburger.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Bar Sinizki
Atwater Village Eastern European $$
Atwater Village restaurant veterans Scott Zwiezen and Anne O’Malley, who own long-running Dune, opened Bar Sinizki with Alexander Mirecki Tavitian, who previously ran Kaldi Coffee in the same space. It operates as a coffeehouse, cocktail haven and restaurant daily from 7 a.m. to midnight, some ambitiously long hours. Yet after less than a year in operation, Sinizki feels like an entrenched and useful part of the community. The Euro-chic cafe — checkered floors, marble counters, glinting tiled ceiling — sits only 16 inside, so evenings at the curving bar have an intimate aura, even if servers are rushing past from the kitchen, balancing plates on their arms. Plump, crisp-edged pierogi filled with mashed potato, cheese and caramelized onions; tartines overlaid with salami with good butter and mustard or trout rillettes; and a burger of mid-thickness with griddled onions and a lacquer of American cheese all complement a martini. A splash of sour-tart-sweet Leopold Bros. lime cordial gives an otherwise classic Vesper (vodka, gin, Lillet blanc) a respectful twist.
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(Alex Justice / For The Times)
The Rendition Room
Studio City Italian $$
Scott Warren is a character among characters. He blurs through his small dominion, a speakeasy with a hidden entrance in the back of Vitello’s, a Studio City institution since 1964. Warren speeds from bar to table, delivering cocktails and food (delivered to him from a window connected to the kitchen), shouting conversations with regulars across the room, addressing the men as “brother.” He has a list of two dozen smart, intricate cocktails that he mixes in a fury. Mention “martini” and he may start pulling bottles of artisanal gin he recommends, though he’ll ultimately defer to your tastes with graciousness. Vitello’s also has an upstairs lounge called the Velvet Martini, but I prefer the namesake cocktail in Warren’s company, tempered with a straightforward Caesar and a plate of lasagna big enough to feed two.
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(Anne Fishbein )
Jar
Beverly Grove New American Steakhouse $$$
Suzanne Tracht opened her Beverly Grove restaurant in 2002, but it was built to feel timeless. No surprise that its ever-stunning dining room — a set piece of chic wood paneling, flying-saucer-shaped lighting fixtures and other Midcentury Modern adornments — has been a filming location for numerous television shows, including, yes, “Mad Men.” I thirst for a stinglingly cold martini upon entering, and I am never disappointed. The longtime star of her menu, which broadly follows a steakhouse format, is the pot roast, which transcends any clichés with its nuanced textures and faint sherry perfume. That said, it is also deeply comforting, as are crabmeat-laced deviled eggs, char siu-style pork chop and the silken chocolate pudding for dessert.
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(Alex Justice / For The Times)
The Arthur J
Manhattan Beach Steakhouse $$$
Steakhouses tend to flourish as high-end chains, as de facto corporate boardrooms and as slick dens of vice. I favor another model: the steakhouse as swank supper club. The Arthur J delivers Midcentury Modern plushness in Manhattan Beach — tongue-and-groove ceilings, horseshoe-shaped booths and curvy Eames-style chairs, geometrically patterned wooden room dividers — when there’s no time to get away to Palm Springs. Chef and partner David LeFevre updates the chophouse blueprint with tweaks that give the classics renewed life. This is the place to savor shrimp cocktail, fresh and bouncy rather than rubbery; dry-aged, bone-in Kansas City strip steak; creamed corn sparked with Aleppo pepper; and thick fries cooked in beef fat, with malt vinegar and Dijon aioli. The foods favor a martini, as does the chophouse-style burger (combining cuts of ground chuck, brisket and short rib,, grilled over oak and crowned with Nueske’s applewood-smoked bacon, shredded Emmental and caramelized onions), served only in the front lounge. The service is appropriately debonair, particularly when distinguished L.A. food writer Patric Kuh, who charms guests these days as the restaurant’s assistant manager, circulates among tables.
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(Hotel Bel-Air)
Bar & Lounge at the Hotel Bel-Air
Bel-Air Cocktails
In the name of research, I sidled up to several of L.A.’s tonier hotel bars in the last couple of months. None match the opulence of the Bel-Air, singular in its surroundings of lush grounds and its unmistakable air of celebrity. In the bar, everyone jockeys for seats in the front space, or a table in the larger back room where musicians play jazz nightly. There’s also a far quieter area across the walkway billed as the Living Room, where one can order the “coldest martini in town” for $30, served tableside. I’m more drawn to the proper bar, for the energy of the crowd and most compellingly for Norman Seeff’s photographs of icons that fill the walls. The images of Cher, Steve Jobs and Ray Charles are rightly famous … but I’ll be over in the corner with my martini studying the 1990-era portrait of Whitney Houston, shown glancing over her shoulder playfully, looking like she’s about to break into bouts of laughter.
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