Pasjoli

The focus at Pasjoli is the open kitchen, a brightly lit stage where chef Dave Beran’s team applies exacting French technique to ingredients sourced from Southern California’s markets. The rest of the Santa Monica space is elegant and warm, with exposed brick walls, dark wooden rafters, and polished brass accents that catch the soft light. You walk in to find a marble bar and a few high-top tables on one side, with the main dining room leading back toward the kitchen. There’s also a separate, quieter dining space tucked away in a small "secret garden" area. While the menu has an à la carte list of refined bistro classics – think chicken liver mousse, Parisian gnocchi with escargot, and steak frites – the restaurant is built around its canard à la presse. This is a multi-course, tableside affair for two centered on an antique silver duck press. The entire device is wheeled to the table and used to extract the juices for a deeply rich and complex sauce, turning the meal into a piece of culinary theater. It’s a process that commands attention from the whole room. A few practical things to know: the bar and high-top tables are kept for walk-ins and serve the full menu, making it possible to get a table without a reservation. And if you want the bitter chocolate souffle for dessert, it needs to be ordered well in advance, as it requires a full 45 minutes to bake.