LOS ANGELES | CALIFORNIA

Where to Eat in West Hollywood: From Somni’s Tasting Menu to Cacio e Pepe Pizza

By Eric Barton | Nov. 26, 2025

Ardor

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

WeHo is where Los Angeles goes to dress up, turn the volume up, and wear that splurge in the closet that’s been waiting for something special. The valet lines are full of SUVs that cost more than most people’s homes, the dining rooms are full of people pretending not to spot celebrities, and somewhere behind all the neon and filler lighting there is some of the best food in the country.

Spend a few nights eating through this Los Angeles metro city and you start to notice the extremes. On one end there is a rare three-Michelin-star bastion of Spanish modernism. On the other, there is a perfect panini eaten at a sun-struck sidewalk table.

What you’ll find below is the short list of places where dinner in West Hollywood feels like the main event, not just an opening act for whatever happens after.

Ardor

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Ardor is the restaurant you book when you need to prove that Los Angeles can do “vegetable-forward” without making anyone miss a steak. Chef Patricia LaLu leans into California produce with dishes like the now-famous tandoor carrots with hummus, eggplant croutons, pine nuts, and paprika vinaigrette, and still finds room on the wood-fired grill for an 8-ounce prime skirt steak with mole salt or a tomahawk big enough to cause an argument. The room, inside The West Hollywood EDITION, looks like a spa decided to open a dining room: curved ivory booths, enough plants to qualify as a small conservatory, and cocktails that match the mood.

Best for: Big-night splurges where someone at the table definitely orders the onion rings

Cavatina

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Cavatina is the open-air restaurant that feels like record deals are being signed at the next table—because they probably are. Downstairs in the basement of the Sunset Marquis is a recording studio responsible for 200-plus Grammys, and upstairs at the restaurant, chef Luis Morales builds a quietly ambitious menu around polished Mediterranean comfort food. There’s spicy paccheri alla vodka with fennel sausage, scottish salmon with pearl onions, and tagliatelle with a walnut and mushroom bolognese. Overlooking a garden with a flowing stream, this one of the few places in West Hollywood where you can hear the person across the table without shouting over a DJ.

Best for: Grown-up dinners with agents, bandmates, or both

Cecconi’s

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Run by Soho House in locations from Mumbai to London, Cecconi’s is the kind of restaurant for power lunches and late-night dates. The menu is greatest-hits Northern Italian brasserie: cicchetti, handmade pastas, wood-fired pizzas, and a crudo or two. It’s all executed with enough consistency that you do not need to overthink the ordering. You sit under striped awnings or chandeliers, call for another Americano (the coffee or cocktail version), and remember that sometimes a simple plate of spaghetti pomodoro is exactly what you wanted from West Hollywood all along.

Best for: Dinners where everyone wants something familiar and good

Connie & Ted’s

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Connie & Ted’s is a New England clam shack that somehow washed up on Santa Monica Boulevard and decided to stay. Inspired by classic raw bars and fish houses, it turns out pristine oysters, clams, chowder, lobster rolls, and whatever else the day’s catch makes possible, backed by California craft beer on tap. The room is loud in the right way—piles of shells, big platters of chilled seafood, and the kind of easy service that makes it feel like a neighborhood spot, not a themed import.

Best for: Homesick East Coasters who miss real chowder and a proper lobster roll

Darling

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Darling is Sean Brock’s West Hollywood experiment in what happens when a live-fire grill house and a hi-fi listening lounge share one brain. The front room feels like a Japanese vinyl bar: custom speakers, a wall lined with records from Brock’s obsessively curated 45 collection, and cocktails that take the music as seriously as the booze. The main dining room is full of booths and tables spaced apart, something unheard of in L.A., and is a case study in design, full of walls that look like sails or whale’ ribs or maybe both. The kitchen curates a tightly edited menu built around California produce and smoke. One month that might mean Shigoku oysters in melon juice and oak-grilled strip steak; another it might be Wolfe Ranch quail with huckleberries or a venison tartare that arrives looking like it wandered out of an art gallery. And the already famous dry-aged burger? It’s only available in small quantities, so ask about it as they’re leading you to your table.

Best for: Nights when you care as much about the playlist as the plate

Ladyhawk

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Head through the moody Kimpton La Peer Hotel lobby to find Ladyhawk, where chef Charbel Hayek turns Eastern Mediterranean cooking into something that feels right at home in the Design District. The Top Chef Middle East winner builds dishes around bright herbs, spices, and California produce in a room that reads as warm and polished rather than clubby. It is the sort of place where, if you’re like me, you’ll immediately consider ordering a second of every plate: one more dip of smoky eggplant, another wood-grilled shrimp skewer, and suddenly you are negotiating over the last bite like it is a legal matter.

Best for: Group dinners with friends who have learned how to share

Mamie

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Mamie is the rare West Hollywood restaurant that does not care if you are there in designer anything, as long as you respect the bread. This daytime Italian café runs on Tuscan panini, Italian sodas, and proper coffee, built on house-made creams, roasted vegetables, and cured meats that sound like they came straight from a Bologna deli case. Regulars swear by combinations like the Viale, with a fig note that sneaks in just enough sweetness, and panini like the Riccione or Capriccio Vegetariano, which prove that a sandwich, taken seriously, can count as a destination.

Best for: A “quick” lunch that turns into an hour of panini worship

Night + Market

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Chef Kris Yenbamroong’s West Hollywood outpost feels like a house party: neon, natural-leaning wine, tables full of people eating food that is a little too spicy and loud to be background. The menu reads like a mixtape of Thai drinking food, with Nam Khao Tod crispy rice salad, larb gai, khao soi, a “world famous” fried chicken sandwich, party wings, and all the chile heat your night can handle.

Best for: Bold flavors, natural wine, and a vibe that’s a nonstop party

Ospero

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Ospero is Wolfgang Puck’s argument that breakfast in West Hollywood deserves as much attention as dinner. Sitting on the Sunset Strip level of the Sun Rose hotel, it works as an all-day European-style café, but the morning menu is where it really shines: a flaky pop tart, a burrito loaded with avocado, roasted fingerling potatoes, and scrambled eggs, and what might be the most perfect bagel and lox (three things that I ate recently in a two-day span). It is casual enough for laptop mornings and polished enough that a pastry and coffee somehow feels like an occasion.

Best for: When post-night-out recovery requires a chefy breakfast

Pizzana

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If you care deeply about pizza, Pizzana is probably already on your map. Master pizzaiolo Daniele Uditi does a neo-Neapolitan style here—48-hour-fermented “slow dough,” San Marzano tomatoes, and toppings that skew just left of traditional. The cacio e pepe pizza, pictured in all its glory ablove, with provoloncino d’agerola, fior di latte, parmigiana crema, and cracked black pepper, has justifiably become the signature, but the Neo Margherita and seasonal pies prove this is not a one-hit wonder.

Best for: If you’ve been chasing your next favorite pizza

The Roof

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The Roof is the part of The West Hollywood EDITION with skyline views in every direction, a pool glittering below, and tropical-leaning cocktails built on a serious mezcal and tequila list. The menu reads like Asian street food filtered through a rooftop party, with crab-topped nachos, 12-hour-braised short ribs in a quesadilla, hamachi tiradito with an aji amarillo jus, and carne asada tacos spiked with prime skirt steak. By day it’s sun hats and spritzes; by night it turns into a softly lit perch above Sunset where another round of margaritas feels less like a decision and more like the house style.

Best for: Golden-hour drinks that turn into “might as well stay for dinner”

Somni

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Somni is the kind of restaurant that changes how you talk about dinner. Chef Aitor Zabala has turned his reborn tasting-menu spot on Nemo Street into a 14-seat laboratory of Spanish modernism, with diners seated around curved counters watching a brigade assemble 20-plus courses like they are building a ship in a bottle. One moment you are eating something that looks like a sculpture, the next you are realizing that some humble Spanish flavor from childhood has been rebuilt with California ingredients and a small army of tweezers. It is expensive, theatrical, and sometimes surreal, which is exactly why people cross the country for it.

Best for: The three-Michelin-star meal you might talk about for years

Uchi

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The WeHo outpost of Uchi feels less like a traditional sushi bar and more like a sprawling, modern Japanese restaurant, which is exactly what it is. The menu from chef Tyson Cole’s team runs the gamut from precise nigiri flights and sashimi to composed hot and cool tastings, and signature dishes like the hama chili—yellowtail with ponzu, Thai chile, and orange—are the reason people start planning their next visit before dessert. Between the Kinoko nabe, intricate makimono, and a sake list built for exploring, it is one of those spots where you could order blindly and know every dish kills it.

Best for: Sushi nights where half the table wants omakase and the other half wants to graze and drink