We didn’t have reservations but they agreed to let us hang out at the bar.  Cool room, reminds me of Fraiche.  Industrial look, lots of stone.  Awesome drink list and tons of wine by the glass.  Dinner is a motley assortment of small plates, salads, pizza, big plates, etc.  Their thing is the whole local/sustainable/organic movement that has invaded LA.  This place may look casual, but their prices say otherwise.  On their lunch menu, burgers are priced in the teens.  “Big Plates” on the dinner menu are well into the $20’s. 

I first ordered the house signature drink: The Akasha.  42 below, kiwi vodka, organic cucumber juice, homemade thai basil elixir.  I had very high expectations for this drink as I generally like all these ingredients…separately.  Together, they were so medicinal they were reminiscent of some herbal vitamin drinks I have endured in my past.   I couldn’t even get it down.  They kindly agreed to take it back and I got a nice Dolcetto instead, afraid to try any more drinks.

Scot chose a glass of the 06 Pelerin St. Vincent’s Pinot from Santa Lucia Highlands.  He liked it ok, but he did not like it $17 worth which is what they charged.  I checked, the retail on that bottle is ~$40 so that is some generous markup. 

We also got one appetizer, the Cannelinni bean hummus, $8.  The description said truffle salt, flatbread, marinated olives.  The flat bread came covered in sauteed onions and tasted of cumin.  There was no truffle salt that we could taste, but even if we could I don’t think it would have mixed well with the cumin.  It was also a very tiny portion; about 2 Tablespoons of humus and about 3-4 small wedges of flatbread.  We continued to study the menu,  looked at other people’s plates, and found that nothing appealed to us.  We decided to quietly pay for our $40 appetizer & drinks and go somewhere else. 

Funny thing, we wound up at Versailles.  Full dinner and drinks cost less than the Akasha “snack,” and it tasted a lot better.  But it was not local, organic, or sustainable.  Or particularly cool. 

http://www.akasharestaurant.com/
9543 Culver Blvd
Culver City, CA
90232
Phone: (310) 845-1700