I was born in New York City and have lived most of my life on the East Coast. Thus I have often identified myself as an “East Coast Person”. Nevertheless, over the years my job has taken me to destinations all around the world: I’ve swam the crystal-clear waters of Timor-Leste and the sun-flecked sea near oil fields on the Persian Gulf. I’ve resolved gastrointestinal distress in a Jordanian gas station along a desert highway and within the privacy of a wood cabin in Ethiopia. I’ve stepped foot on most continents. But at 35 years old, this East Coast Person had never been to Los Angeles.
Which is why when my best friend Lauren and I were trying to figure out where to spend a girls’ weekend—a rarity now that we’re both grown-ups with kids—Los Angeles was a surprisingly satisfying answer. Sunny, near the water. Far enough to feel like a real getaway but without the heavier lift of international travel. I had been to California before but never to Los Angeles, my country’s second biggest city. The city eternally compared (rarely favorably) against New York: my first and forever love.
I figured I’d at least enjoy the weekend, particularly how we were planning to do it. We booked a luxury convertible to get around and a swanky room on the water in Santa Monica. Alright, I said to myself, even if all the New York-y stereotypes you’ve heard about LA are true (the vapidness, the traffic, the obsession with “wellness”)--who can’t enjoy a few days on the beach?
But I didn’t merely enjoy myself. I loved my weekend in LA. I spent the entire weekend turning to Lauren (also New York born), saying “I get it!”. And I do. There were many wonderful moments Lauren and I had together that I could describe in more detail here: driving the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down, drinking luxury smoothies with ludicrous ingredients, laughing so hard I peed on the Santa Monica Pier roller coaster. Visiting key filming locations from The O.C. All of that is worth doing.
But below I’ve condensed my recommendations down to just one day—one breakfast, one lunch, one dinner, one sleep. None of these are groundbreaking recommendations. None “hidden gems”. If you love to travel you may have heard of most or all of these places. But my God, are they good. Not overhyped; really, truly, deeply pleasurable—and beloved for good reason.
This is my perfect day in west LA:
You wake up under expensive sheets at Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica. Yesterday when you arrived at Shutters and made the final turn down Pico Boulevard, and were confronted with the expansive Pacific shimmering before you—something in you unhooked. Do people really live every day amongst this much natural beauty? Shutters is perched right on the Pacific Ocean, and pays careful attention to every detail. It is a luxury property in every sense of the word, with the feel of a private beach cottage. It is understated, beautiful, and perfect. Yes, you think. This was the right choice.
You’re up early since you’re still on East Coast time, which is great news because you’ll be first in line to get what’s warm at bread + butter. It’s about a 15 minute walk from your hotel, and luckily you can do most of that walk on the beach pathway. It’s December, the perfect time to visit as far as you’re concerned. It is warm and sunny, but still pleasantly chilly in the morning and evening. Great weather for a walk.
The smell greets you first as you approach bread + butter. You’re leaning sweet, so you order a chocolate croissant. Luckily you’ve goaded your friend into a ham and cheese croissant so you can have also have a bite of something savory. Lattes all around, and you take seats on the small patio outside. The chocolate croissant is still warm and impossibly buttery, with melted chocolate oozing out your bite hole. The ham and cheese is no less rich, fresh and luxurious. For all you’ve heard about Angelenos’ carb-phobia: you are pleasantly surprised by this indulgent start to the day.
You and your friend lumber back to the hotel along the sun-flecked Pacific. You leave the paved path and walk on the sand closer to the water’s edge—maybe take off your shoes and dip your toes into the seafoam. You sit for a while and catch up about things, and—depending on the friend—let your proximity to the vast ocean lead you into deeper, more personal topics. You reflect on how you feel now that you’ve lost both your parents; she opens up about struggling to conceive. You remember why it’s so important to make time for these kinds of weekends with your friends.
Before you know it, it’s lunchtime. You’d long ago nabbed a lunch reservation at Nobu Malibu up the coast, having all your life heard about it on the Kardashians, in the pages of People Magazine and in Drake lyrics. The valet at Shutters brings around your convertible and you tie a scarf around your hair for the drive as if you’re Grace Kelly. You are not Grace Kelly, and this is an old, stained yellow scarf you found in your mother’s attic. No matter. Today you are in a BMW convertible driving in the LA sunshine for lunch at Nobu Malibu, and no one can touch you.
You arrive and are struck immediately by the view. Nobu is really *on* the beach. On the back porch of the restaurant, it’s like you...and then the Pacific. Waves lapping almost right up to your table. You and your friend get a low slung table right at the edge of the patio. At first you are attentive to the potential celeb sightings. But midway through your first lychee martini you have trouble pulling your eyes away from the ocean. The ocean has always had that effect on you: any opportunity you have to be looking at it, in it, beholding it—you take.
You order a bunch of little yummy things to share, none yummier than the crispy rice with spicy tuna. Famous apparently but new to you: a spread of spicy tuna atop rich, crispy beds of rice. As with all great bites, it’s about the juxtaposition of textures, the delicate nature of the flavor combinations: bright and fatty, crunchy with smooth. Before you’re done with the first round you order another battery of spicy tuna delights.
For as fancy as you’d assume Nobu Malibu would be, given how famous it’s been for how long—you’re surprised at how laid back everyone seems. It feels like an elegant, relaxed, beautiful afternoon on the Pacific. No one’s in a rush. Everyone’s there to enjoy. Actually, this has surprised you a lot about LA. All these famous addresses, and somehow the ability to maintain a casual atmosphere. Everyone seems sort of...relaxed. As if this kind of proximity to sun and sea just tells everyone: “what is there, really, to worry that much about?”
On the drive back to Shutters you remember one thing people have to worry about here: the Pacific Palisades lie vacant, razed nearly entirely to the ground following the recent fires. A coveted community on the shimmering coast rendered a charred hillside. The juxtaposition of that apocalyptic scene is hard to hold together with the beauty of the ocean and palm trees.
With an afternoon to kill, you can no longer not get in the sea. You know it will be cold, but you’ve been so close to it all day, and now you just want to be in it. You and your friend go down to the beach with hotel towels, and you can hardly wait to shimmy off your sundress and run into the waves, dunking your head in the icy surf, sputtering and thrashing like a kid. Your own kid is across the country, and you don’t get very many opportunities to be weightless in the sea anymore. To be without restriction, without responsibility.
Before dinner, you take advantage of the Shutters bar: a fabulous place to watch a Santa Monica sunset. You’ve seen the sunset the last few nights, and you’ve seen sunsets many times before. But this is just ridiculous. You can’t take your eyes off of it—the orange orb lazily fainting behind the horizon, between the shadowed palms. The whole coast is alight in blues, oranges, and yellows as you sip a California red. Just one though, because you have one last stop today and you want to be thirsty.
You heard about Giorgio Baldi in a magazine long ago and took a mental note: it is Rihanna’s favorite restaurant in LA, maybe in the world. She loves it so much, she sometimes orders several pastas. You figure Rihanna is a woman who understands pleasure-seeking, and decide that if you’re ever in LA you will make it a point to eat at Giorgio Baldi. Well, now is that time.
The restaurant is smaller than you’d imagine for somewhere so well known. It is dark, mostly lit by candles, giving it an intimate and romantic feel. You’re here with your best friend and in the mood to have a long, wine-drenched dinner, where you talk about all kinds of stuff. That, too, is romance—a kind that has become increasingly important to you as you age.
To your delight, everyone working here seems actually to be Italian. They are warm, cheerful, and invested in you having an evening as lovely as this restaurant. Some bread arrives topped with gossamer-thin, warmed prosciutto on top. You’ve never had prosciutto served warm like that, fat ever so slightly rendered and melting. You wonder why more people don’t serve it that way—why there isn’t warm prosciutto topping bread across the country, across the world. Pastas are ordered, agnolottis and bucatinis, and they are as decadent and satisfying as Rihanna promised. And you do get one of those long, perfect conversations with your best and oldest friend. By the time you return back to the comfort of your Shutters room, you feel fed in many ways. And grateful.
Days later on the plane home, you reflect on the deep peace that set within you there, the kind of peace only some real engagement with the ocean can achieve. You still don’t feel a pull to live on the West Coast, but you can understand how someone would. That ability to wake up and dunk your body in the crashing waves. To run in with your arms spread wide, turning your back to the shore and looking out into oblivion like you’re the only person on earth. An emissary to whatever is out there beyond. To be carried along weightless by the waves, to remember you are just one in billions of billions, and to find that comforting.
You think about a time in the future when you come back with your husband and son. Your little boy giggling on the Santa Monica Pier; you and your husband sipping a drink at the Shutters bar at sunset. All together, running into the ocean, arms outstretched, backs to the shore--to the world--like it’s only us.
Les Bonnes Adresses:
bread + butter
2645 Main St, Santa Monica, CA 90405
Phone: (310) 394-0568
Nobu Malibu
22706 Pacific Coast Hwy, Malibu, CA 90265
Phone: (310) 317-9140
Giorgio Baldi
114 W Channel Rd, Santa Monica, CA 90402
Phone: (310) 573-1660
Shutters on the Beach
1 Pico Blvd, Santa Monica, CA 90405
Phone: (310) 458-0030