No list of the best restaurants in Los Angeles can be complete without Patina. It’s located in the beautiful Disney Concert Hall in the Music Center complex. The room is quietly elegant. The food is consistently excellent. And the staff is worthy of a fine dining experience.
The location makes Patina a popular spot for a pre-theatre dinner. We’ve done that without feeling rushed. My preference, however, is for a more relaxed meal with no curtain time clock to watch.
The menu offers three-course, five-course, and eight-course prix fixe meals with enough variety of choice in each course to cause dilemmas in making a selection. How does one pick between shaved, frozen foie gras and escargot on a bed of sushi rice porridge? I went for the escargot because the quail entre I ordered included a nice piece of sautéed foie gras. John Dory or Dover Sole? It isn’t fair. I love each of them.
There also is a three-course, or five-course vegetarian menu.
The cheese cart is a heavenly chariot. Most times I ask the waiter assemble a plate for me, rather than go safely with the familiar.
Whatever your culinary choices, the ambiance of Patina invites an unhurried dinner, a lingering over an after-dinner drink or coffee, and a hesitation to leave the calmingly decorated room and venture back out into the world outside.
