Rustic Canyon, Wine Bar & Seasonal Kitchen - Chef Jeremy Fox on Wilshire Blvd. in Santa Monica

[Joe H]

I'm going to have about 8 hours to kill at LAX between flights.  As luck would have it, an old friend works near LAX and offered to pick us up and take us to lunch and help kill the time.  He's not much of a foodie, though he's willing to take us just about anywhere.

So, what's a good place for a mid-afternoon meal not too far from LAX?

Please define mid afternoon?  Rustic Canyon Wine Bar is superb and one of the hottest restaurants in L. A. right now (#6 in Jonathan Gold's top 100 L. A. restaurants) but it does not open until 5:00PM.  Ten minutes from LAX in Santa Monica-we went a month ago and loved it.  On par wtih Red Hen or Rose's; extremely creative.

Superb wine list heavy on Central Coast wines.

If the time works it would be my first choice of any.

Press reports on Rustic Canyon including LA Times and New York Times:

[dcs]

The Evolution of a Restaurant Dish, From Vision to Revision, by Karen Stabiner, October 30, 2018, on nytimes.com.

[DonRocks]

46 minutes ago, dcs said:

The Evolution of a Restaurant Dish, From Vision to Revision, by Karen Stabiner, October 30, 2018, on nytimes.com.

I went to Rustic Canyon last year - it surprised me how good it was. I don't remember any specifics about the meal; just that I walked out thinking I'd just dined very well (I'm sure I could find my receipt if anyone is interested - it's in a pile of about 500 other receipts from meals I haven't written about). 😦

[Mark Dedrick]

Definitely looking at dining here during my upcoming trip, has anyone been recently?