Pacific Dining Car
2700 Wilshire Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA
Princeton
310-453-4000
From the outside, it's the antithesis of flash: Score a point for Pacific Dining Car.
Seen from Wilshire Boulevard, this place, which opened in 1990, has always seemed so forbidding: a concrete bunker with no way to peer inside. I admit I passed it by for years for that very reason. Step up to the entrance, though, and there is a bit of ornament: opaque windows framed in metal to suggest a railroad car. At the original downtown, which opened in 1921, and where the booths are favorites with politicos and stockbrokers, the interior replicates a railroad dining car, but here it's just an exterior suggestion.
— S. Irene Virbila
May 3, 2006
Hours: Open 24 hours. Breakfast, 11 p.m.-4 p.m.; lunch, 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; afternoon tea, 3-5:30 p.m.; dinner anytime.
Venue Details
| Cuisine |
American
,
Steakhouse
|
| Rating |
|
| Best dishes |
Onion rings, Maine lobster appletini, shrimp cocktail, cowboy steak, Colorado rack of lamb, chocolate soufflé.
|
| Best table |
Hard to pick; you can't go wrong with one of the booths.
|
| Of Note |
Full bar. Valet parking, $3.50.
|
| Payment |
Checks
,
American Express
,
Diners Club
,
Discover
,
MasterCard
,
Visa
|
| Prices |
Dinner appetizers, $10-$17; prime beef, $37-$55; surf 'n' turf, $43-$49; other main courses, $29-$49; sides, $5-$7; dessert, $9-$11.
|
| Service |
Gracious and polished.
|
| Wine list |
Extensive and broad-ranging with some great Rhônes and cult California Cabernets at very fair prices. Corkage, $35.
|
