Pasjoli Los Angeles

Pasjoli sits on Main Street in Santa Monica, a fifteen-minute walk from the Third Street Promenade. The kitchen serves contemporary French cuisine, and the room runs smart and elegant. The restaurant holds a Michelin star and currently holds the no. 17 spot on the L.A. Times 101 Best Restaurants list.

While most of the Santa Monica dining scene caters to the transient beach crowd with casual, surf-adjacent menus, Pasjoli ignores that coastal informality entirely. It is a more demanding room than its neighbors, prioritizing traditional French technique over the area's usual obsession with breezy outdoor dining. You come here not to watch the sunset, but to eat the sort of classic preparation that is increasingly difficult to find this close to the pier. It is the antithesis of the surrounding beach bar culture, and that resistance to the neighborhood's typical rhythm is its greatest strength.