Dinner inside a former church. A burger on a museum rooftop. Italian pasta with Korean ingredients. Across Los Angeles and Pasadena, these eight restaurants offer different ways to step outside your usual dinner routine.
Some call for a reservation and an evening devoted to a tasting menu. Others leave room for a walk-in meal or a seafood plate shared across the table. Their appeal lies in those distinctions, not simply the novelty of another restaurant address.
This fall’s selection brings together restaurants featured in recent dining coverage. It is not a claim that all eight opened this season. Menus and service arrangements can change, so check the latest information before visiting.
Sous Sous, Silver Lake
Sous Sous occupies Hotel Lucile, a restored church and rectory dating to 1931 on Griffith Park Boulevard. Stained glass and vaulted ceilings connect the dining setting to the building’s earlier life.
The restaurant describes its cooking as French-American, drawing inspiration from southern coastal cities including Marseille, Nice, Charleston and New Orleans. Seafood, vegetables, herbs and spice form part of that cross-coastal approach.
Wallpaper*’s Los Angeles restaurant guide highlights Parisian gnocchi with corn and a toasted-coconut Sazerac. Together, they suggest how the kitchen and bar interpret familiar preparations within the restaurant’s broader theme.
Skywalker Grill, Exposition Park
Skywalker Grill takes the evening upward, to the roof of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. October dining coverage includes the restaurant following its announced September debut.
The menu outlined in the museum’s restaurant announcement includes Dungeness crab cakes, lobster corn dogs, crispy chicken Milanese and a Skywalker Ranch wagyu burger.
Rockwell Group designed the interior with cherry wood panels and a central sculptural bar. The restaurant welcomes the public and operates beyond gallery hours. That makes the rooftop a dining destination in its own right, rather than an option restricted to museum visitors.
Related: 6 Tiny Restaurant Touches That Are Quietly Winning Over Diners and Making Every Visit Feel Personal
Jacaranda, Hollywood
Chef Daniel Patterson and Sarah Lewitinn’s Jacaranda brings tasting-menu dining to Melrose Avenue. It offers six-course and 12-course options, giving diners a choice of meal length.
Resy’s October coverage describes a roughly 30-seat dining room and a kitchen that gives vegetables considerable attention. Reported dishes include artichokes prepared several ways and soft tofu custard with caviar.
The tasting-menu format is the central planning detail. The evening is organized around a progression of dishes, rather than a single main course with the rest left open.
San Damian, Venice
San Damian centers Mexican coastal cooking on Abbot Kinney Boulevard. Chef-founder Enrique Olvera’s restaurant describes seafood, seasonality, and California produce as guiding influences.
The menu includes poached-shrimp aguachile, rockfish ceviche with sea urchin, and a tlayuda topped with fish chorizo and sea snail. Larger offerings include prawns al ajillo and grilled fish.
The selection gives a table room to move from smaller seafood dishes toward a shared main. Cocktails extend the restaurant’s ingredient combinations, including a margarita with yuzu and a paloma incorporating guava tepache.
Lielle, Beverlywood
Lielle offers a four-course experience on West Pico Boulevard. Wallpaper* describes chef Marcus Jernmark’s restaurant as a below-street-level space with wine-colored leather banquettes and cork-lined vaulted ceilings.
The seasonal menu draws on relationships with local producers. Listed dishes include dry-aged Japanese snapper with fermented plum and California squab with yuzu pepper.
Its California-focused wine selection adds another regional connection. For diners comparing tasting-menu options, the four-course structure provides a useful distinction from a longer sequence.
Chez Mar, Mar Vista
Chez Mar offers a different approach to planning: it takes no reservations. The Southern California bistro and raw bar sits on Venice Boulevard and changes its menu weekly.
Resy’s Los Angeles dining guide identifies it as chef Wesley Barden’s first solo venture. Reported offerings include oysters, crudos, an oyster po’ boy with cabbage slaw, and Parisian gnocchi in sage butter.
The menu moves between raw-bar dishes and French-influenced preparations. Check the current selection before visiting, especially if a particular dish is the reason for your trip.
Lapaba, Koreatown
Lapaba brings Italian cooking and Korean ingredients together on South Western Avenue.
Wallpaper* reports dishes including supplì filled with kimchi, Spam and Fontina, alongside corn agnolotti and black-truffle soft serve. The combinations give the concept a concrete identity without asking diners to infer it from the restaurant’s description alone.
A long Carrara marble counter and views toward the kitchen and pasta-making room connect the dining space to the preparation. For an evening centered on pasta, Lapaba offers a different direction from a conventional Italian menu.
The Daily Catch, Pasadena
The Daily Catch brings an established Boston restaurant family’s Sicilian-style seafood cooking to Colorado Boulevard.
Resy reports that the Pasadena restaurant receives seafood from New England several times a week and serves pasta in pans. Its coverage highlights squid-ink pasta and lobster fra diavolo.
Here, the connection is between a longstanding restaurant tradition and a new setting. It gives the Pasadena stop a different starting point from the tasting menus, raw bars, and cross-cultural pasta dishes elsewhere on this list.
Choose the Evening, Not Just the Address
These restaurants invite different kinds of outings: a carefully paced tasting menu, a rooftop meal, a walk-in raw-bar visit or pasta served in a pan. Choosing among them starts with the experience you want, then the current menu and practical details.
Which would draw you furthest from your usual dinner routine, and what would you be most curious to discover at the table?
