Restaurant Review: Public Kitchen & Bar

Posted on November 29, 2011 by Kelly

Full Disclosure: I paid for this meal with my own money and I was in no way reimbursed for this blog post. The opinions are completely my own.

After a long day of walking around Los Angeles, shopping, doing touristy things, and just hanging out with friends, sometimes the best decision for dinner is somewhere close, and easy. For our second night in Los Angeles, we decided to check out the restaurant at our hotel for dinner. Convenience was really the main reason we went to Public Kitchen and Bar. I should also probably mention that we went as a group of 8, so it isn’t exactly easy to find something that everyone agrees on AND has space for 8 people.

We started off with drinks. I had a Peach Bellini which was good, but didn’t have too strong of a peachy taste.

We started off the meal with some Parker House Rolls. Since many nicer meals come with complementary rolls, I feel like I need to make a point to say that these were not free. However, they were really delicious so there was no regrets in ordering them. AND they were only $5 – definitely not too expensive. We ended up getting a few serving of these to share amongst the eight of us.

For my entree, I had the lobster, which also included butternut squash and tarragon gnocchi. I guess I should have known when the price of the lobster dish was $25 that it would be a small portion. The amount of lobster was about equivalent to a couple of jumbo shrimp. I was less than impressed. The butternut squash was good, but the gnocchi was not great, it was pretty dry.

Overall the meal was alright, but not nearly what I expected. It was definitely not filling, and not great. The rolls (and the drink) were definitely the highlight of the meal.

Taste: B, the delicious rolls and drink did bump it up a bit, but overall I really wasn’t all that impressed.
Cost: C, while $25 for lobster could have been an awesome deal, it was actually a let down.

Would I go there again? No, there are plenty of other places to go in the area that are better food than this.