Truly a remarkable experience. Such excellent, well-thought out food.
Beverly Baker
I really liked the food here. But the prices here are still high. Nice decor and atmosphere. But the service is very slow. The impressions are mixed.
Stacia H.
Our new spot!!! We're locals to Santa Monica and was excited to have this come into our neighborhood. To have culinary stars Jessica Koslow and Gabriela Cámara is truly a dream come true for any neighbor. First, foremost, and forever order the chips and salsa that comes with 4 different dips, yes... 4 and endless chips - lightly crispy and lightly salted. Thank me later. I've been a few times and if you're a foodie, come here. I've had the Caesar Salad, yes please! The Grilled Branzino shared with hubby... the Halibut Tartare with a splash of lime that sends your taste buds rushing for more. Sweet Potato Taco is a must have and extremely filling. Oh, and did I mention the octopus? Simply delicious. If nothing else swing in for a chilled margarita and chips and dips for an after work pick me up. The interior decor is simple and artsy. As an artist myself I can appreciate it.
Stephanie B.
To be fair, I didn't eat in this gorgeous restaurant, but I ordered a couple of those amazing gluten-free plum cakes ($4.50 each) and a bottle of wine. Hats off to Jessica Koslow for keeping the restaurant going and trying to keep people employed. These delicious cakes looked dry but tasted amazing. They were moist and reminiscent of sticky pudding. Living about an hour away, I only wish that they were doing meal kits, but their savory items are not designed to travel. I look forward to coming back after this madness is over. Gorgeous space and friendly staff!
Endless Sea
Amazing service. Thoughtful and innovative cuisine. Perfect ambience for an intimate dinner or a business meeting.
Tarita
So delicious that I forgot to take pictures. Every dish is flavorful, yet balanced. It's quite a combination of two very talented chefs. Staff is kind & helpful and the space is inviting. The bar is very well curated. In my top 3 on the westside for sure! Can't wait to try daytime offerings. Vegetarian friendly.
Ryan O.
Went here for the first time tonight and it was love at first bite. The space is lively and the servers are so upbeat and friendly it makes you feel great. Our server was Nathan and he was awesome but several other staff touched our table and made us feel fawned over. The wine list was very fun and curated with many selections I was unfamiliar with so I just put myself in the sommeliers hands and was thrilled. I found the food to be very creative and fun as well, just like the ambiance and we tried several different items. The caesar salad is a can't miss item as is the sweet potato tacos and I was also a big fan of the trout tacos. The dessert was a super fun and tasty creation that had sorbet on top but also had notes of cheese... for the life of me I can't remember what it was called but we loved it. Can't wait to come back and sample more items and try some craft cocktails. The staff here really shine!
Taylor W.
Yum!!!! Uff! I love their other restaurant Sqirl, so I was automatically super pumped about this new hot spot opened by the same owner. I was confused of the exact location since the entrance to Proper Hotel was on the other side of the building. After asking the front desk staff of the hotel, they showed me down the yellow brick road to heaven. The food was fantastic as planned! The staff were very friendly.
Karen Busa
Great food. Great and professional service.
Alice B.
Onda in the daytime is a dream. I've heard a lot of people say that Onda's brand new breakfast/lunch service is like Sqirl for the Westside. But after visiting, I heartily wish that I lived smack dab in the middle so that I could pay due patronage to both uniquely wonderful places. What's different about Onda and Sqirl? Err, everything. While I spend approximately 42% of my life perched on a stool at the Sqirl wall counter, fetching my own flatware and water and loving every second of it, at Onda you'll be drinking out of the same lassi-ish cups but the water will be delivered to your table in carafes that are never allowed to idle empty. The space, transformed during the day by the soft beachy light, is airy and welcoming. During my mid-afternoon visit on a Saturday, I saw several other lunchers camped out by the windows with books and laptops, and I was jealous of their cozy makeshift offices. While the menu might lure you you in with the iconic crispy rice salad and the Weiser potato hash, the flavors here are completely new and completely Onda. The chilaquiles are a perfect thing, smothered in a confit tomato sauce you'll wish you could drown yourself in. Next time, I'll add chorizo to make it a "Meatlover." Or not, because my husband just might leave me for it. The tlacoyo was a new-to-me dish, a gorgeous specimen of perfectly fluffy eggs on a masa boat. If you fell in love with the ridiculously smooth bean dip at dinner service, this dish for you. The same silky beans marry the egg scramble with the masa, proving that every culture has an insane version of soft eggs on carbs. And cotija on everything, why not, because it's creamy, salty, delicious. For something sweet, the masa ricotta pancake is yet more masa goodness because, well, what else did you come here for? One of my consistently favorite things about Chef Jess' food is that while the format is pure comfort--rice bowls, porridge and pudding, toast, pancakes--the flavors knock you off your ass--tart, jammy, guajillo-ed, fermented. This pancake proves the rule. Fluffy and lightly sweet but an extra notch more interesting with masa complexity, it's topped with that whipped ricotta you were looking for and also a heap of perfectly bittersweet marmalade. Add the maple syrup gratuitously like I did, just because you enjoy being over-the-top, but know that it's not at all necessary. My favorite items for daytime service, however, have to be the pastries. Admittedly, I'm a pastry n**** but the opening selection at Onda is absolutely magnificent. Any single one of the three that we selected was easily one of the most delicious pastries I've ever tasted in my severely butter-packed life. For my first visit, I had to get the Saturday special, a corn tea cake made from the leftover masa dregs of their masa kombucha operations. If you've had any experience at all working in a kitchen, you know that there's nothing more beautiful than when you can turn something that you would otherwise toss out into something absolutely delicious. Any restaurant can dump burrata and uni on toast and charge you $48 for it, but it takes a special restaurant and a special team to make the absolutely most of what they have. This cake is exactly that, and I'm smitten all over again. It's a delicate little poppy seed-encrusted, just-sweet-enough four-bite cake, rocking a texture that I can only describe as PLUSH. I would drive to the Westside on a Saturday just for this. It's perfect with your Earl Grey, or latte, or water, to be honest. Which, by the way, the cajeta latte here is an absolutely treat. Next, the cajeta (are you sensing a trend here?) linzer, the perfect collision of a cute cutout sandwich cookie and a dulce de leche-filled alfajor. This is buttery, caramely indulgence--I shouldn't have to talk you into it. Read: Cajeta. Linzer. But my favorite bite of our three was easily the dried pl
I'm sad for this restaurant. Contramar is one of my favorite restaurants in the world and I was really excited to try Onda. So excited that I thought all of these other reviewers must be wrong. With two great chefs as partners, how could it possibly be bad? Well. It is. It's not average or mediocre. It's just flat out bad tasting, poorly prepared food. I wish it wasn't. But it is. The ambience is gorgeous and the drinks are nice and the service was solid. The food is just bad. We ordered nearly everything on the menu. Yuck. Sad.
Jennifer Welsh
Contramar is one of my favorite restaurants of all time. So I was excited to visit Onda. Unfortunately, it's not good, really at all.
Jennifer W.
Contramar is one of my favorite restaurants of all time. So I was excited to visit Onda. Unfortunately, it's not good, really at all. The two stars are for ambience (quite sexy in the evening) and a very friendly staff. So two stars. About the food... We were a party of four, and we ordered about 16 items (everything is served family style). The menu isn't that big, so we ordered more than half of the whole menu. The chips and dips (first item) was pretty good, and nothing else was good after that. The prices are high, and the food is nothing special. Some of it was actually horrible. The turkey quesadilla and the fish hiding in kelp were actually offensive. For a party of four with 6 drinks total, the bill was $500 + gratuity. So $600. I definitely won't be back, and I can't recommend it. Too bad about the food, because the elements of a successful restaurant are there otherwise. Maybe the location will attract diners no matter what. But not me. It's a real shame.
James Higa
It’s easy to be skeptical about chef collaborations. Phone in some menus, mash it up, and there you go. When it’s two all star chefs, Jessica Koslow of SQIRL and Gabriela Càmara of Contramar, both places I adore, one can’t help but cross your fingers that it isn’t hype. Have no fear, Onda is truly a 1+1=3. It’s obvious after the first bite that the chefs really sweated the collab. There’s a broad knowledge of ingredients, producers, technique, and influences from both chefs coming together here. That’s how you get surprises like Koji-Marinated Satsuma Sweet Potato, who-needs-meat, goodness. Or a tower of octopus with tasty char and potatoes and picked red onions. And Smoked Pork Jowl madness that is like the toro of pork in a Vietnamese-ish lettuce wrap. Mostly just keep a steady order of those can’t ever get enough home tortillas coming to the table and you’ll leave happy.
Charlie Garoupa
Went on a whim for dinner on a Thursday night. Simple modern yet casual ambiance. Seating was packed but they had plenty of bar seating. The Palm heart ceviche is highly underrated, the drinks are fantastic, this place is a true culinary treat. I’ll be coming back many times.
Truly a remarkable experience. Such excellent, well-thought out food.
I really liked the food here. But the prices here are still high. Nice decor and atmosphere. But the service is very slow. The impressions are mixed.
Our new spot!!! We're locals to Santa Monica and was excited to have this come into our neighborhood. To have culinary stars Jessica Koslow and Gabriela Cámara is truly a dream come true for any neighbor. First, foremost, and forever order the chips and salsa that comes with 4 different dips, yes... 4 and endless chips - lightly crispy and lightly salted. Thank me later. I've been a few times and if you're a foodie, come here. I've had the Caesar Salad, yes please! The Grilled Branzino shared with hubby... the Halibut Tartare with a splash of lime that sends your taste buds rushing for more. Sweet Potato Taco is a must have and extremely filling. Oh, and did I mention the octopus? Simply delicious. If nothing else swing in for a chilled margarita and chips and dips for an after work pick me up. The interior decor is simple and artsy. As an artist myself I can appreciate it.
To be fair, I didn't eat in this gorgeous restaurant, but I ordered a couple of those amazing gluten-free plum cakes ($4.50 each) and a bottle of wine. Hats off to Jessica Koslow for keeping the restaurant going and trying to keep people employed. These delicious cakes looked dry but tasted amazing. They were moist and reminiscent of sticky pudding. Living about an hour away, I only wish that they were doing meal kits, but their savory items are not designed to travel. I look forward to coming back after this madness is over. Gorgeous space and friendly staff!
Amazing service. Thoughtful and innovative cuisine. Perfect ambience for an intimate dinner or a business meeting.
So delicious that I forgot to take pictures. Every dish is flavorful, yet balanced. It's quite a combination of two very talented chefs. Staff is kind & helpful and the space is inviting. The bar is very well curated. In my top 3 on the westside for sure! Can't wait to try daytime offerings. Vegetarian friendly.
Went here for the first time tonight and it was love at first bite. The space is lively and the servers are so upbeat and friendly it makes you feel great. Our server was Nathan and he was awesome but several other staff touched our table and made us feel fawned over. The wine list was very fun and curated with many selections I was unfamiliar with so I just put myself in the sommeliers hands and was thrilled. I found the food to be very creative and fun as well, just like the ambiance and we tried several different items. The caesar salad is a can't miss item as is the sweet potato tacos and I was also a big fan of the trout tacos. The dessert was a super fun and tasty creation that had sorbet on top but also had notes of cheese... for the life of me I can't remember what it was called but we loved it. Can't wait to come back and sample more items and try some craft cocktails. The staff here really shine!
Yum!!!! Uff! I love their other restaurant Sqirl, so I was automatically super pumped about this new hot spot opened by the same owner. I was confused of the exact location since the entrance to Proper Hotel was on the other side of the building. After asking the front desk staff of the hotel, they showed me down the yellow brick road to heaven. The food was fantastic as planned! The staff were very friendly.
Great food. Great and professional service.
Onda in the daytime is a dream. I've heard a lot of people say that Onda's brand new breakfast/lunch service is like Sqirl for the Westside. But after visiting, I heartily wish that I lived smack dab in the middle so that I could pay due patronage to both uniquely wonderful places. What's different about Onda and Sqirl? Err, everything. While I spend approximately 42% of my life perched on a stool at the Sqirl wall counter, fetching my own flatware and water and loving every second of it, at Onda you'll be drinking out of the same lassi-ish cups but the water will be delivered to your table in carafes that are never allowed to idle empty. The space, transformed during the day by the soft beachy light, is airy and welcoming. During my mid-afternoon visit on a Saturday, I saw several other lunchers camped out by the windows with books and laptops, and I was jealous of their cozy makeshift offices. While the menu might lure you you in with the iconic crispy rice salad and the Weiser potato hash, the flavors here are completely new and completely Onda. The chilaquiles are a perfect thing, smothered in a confit tomato sauce you'll wish you could drown yourself in. Next time, I'll add chorizo to make it a "Meatlover." Or not, because my husband just might leave me for it. The tlacoyo was a new-to-me dish, a gorgeous specimen of perfectly fluffy eggs on a masa boat. If you fell in love with the ridiculously smooth bean dip at dinner service, this dish for you. The same silky beans marry the egg scramble with the masa, proving that every culture has an insane version of soft eggs on carbs. And cotija on everything, why not, because it's creamy, salty, delicious. For something sweet, the masa ricotta pancake is yet more masa goodness because, well, what else did you come here for? One of my consistently favorite things about Chef Jess' food is that while the format is pure comfort--rice bowls, porridge and pudding, toast, pancakes--the flavors knock you off your ass--tart, jammy, guajillo-ed, fermented. This pancake proves the rule. Fluffy and lightly sweet but an extra notch more interesting with masa complexity, it's topped with that whipped ricotta you were looking for and also a heap of perfectly bittersweet marmalade. Add the maple syrup gratuitously like I did, just because you enjoy being over-the-top, but know that it's not at all necessary. My favorite items for daytime service, however, have to be the pastries. Admittedly, I'm a pastry n**** but the opening selection at Onda is absolutely magnificent. Any single one of the three that we selected was easily one of the most delicious pastries I've ever tasted in my severely butter-packed life. For my first visit, I had to get the Saturday special, a corn tea cake made from the leftover masa dregs of their masa kombucha operations. If you've had any experience at all working in a kitchen, you know that there's nothing more beautiful than when you can turn something that you would otherwise toss out into something absolutely delicious. Any restaurant can dump burrata and uni on toast and charge you $48 for it, but it takes a special restaurant and a special team to make the absolutely most of what they have. This cake is exactly that, and I'm smitten all over again. It's a delicate little poppy seed-encrusted, just-sweet-enough four-bite cake, rocking a texture that I can only describe as PLUSH. I would drive to the Westside on a Saturday just for this. It's perfect with your Earl Grey, or latte, or water, to be honest. Which, by the way, the cajeta latte here is an absolutely treat. Next, the cajeta (are you sensing a trend here?) linzer, the perfect collision of a cute cutout sandwich cookie and a dulce de leche-filled alfajor. This is buttery, caramely indulgence--I shouldn't have to talk you into it. Read: Cajeta. Linzer. But my favorite bite of our three was easily the dried pl
Restaurantji Recommends
I'm sad for this restaurant. Contramar is one of my favorite restaurants in the world and I was really excited to try Onda. So excited that I thought all of these other reviewers must be wrong. With two great chefs as partners, how could it possibly be bad? Well. It is. It's not average or mediocre. It's just flat out bad tasting, poorly prepared food. I wish it wasn't. But it is. The ambience is gorgeous and the drinks are nice and the service was solid. The food is just bad. We ordered nearly everything on the menu. Yuck. Sad.
Contramar is one of my favorite restaurants of all time. So I was excited to visit Onda. Unfortunately, it's not good, really at all.
Contramar is one of my favorite restaurants of all time. So I was excited to visit Onda. Unfortunately, it's not good, really at all. The two stars are for ambience (quite sexy in the evening) and a very friendly staff. So two stars. About the food... We were a party of four, and we ordered about 16 items (everything is served family style). The menu isn't that big, so we ordered more than half of the whole menu. The chips and dips (first item) was pretty good, and nothing else was good after that. The prices are high, and the food is nothing special. Some of it was actually horrible. The turkey quesadilla and the fish hiding in kelp were actually offensive. For a party of four with 6 drinks total, the bill was $500 + gratuity. So $600. I definitely won't be back, and I can't recommend it. Too bad about the food, because the elements of a successful restaurant are there otherwise. Maybe the location will attract diners no matter what. But not me. It's a real shame.
It’s easy to be skeptical about chef collaborations. Phone in some menus, mash it up, and there you go. When it’s two all star chefs, Jessica Koslow of SQIRL and Gabriela Càmara of Contramar, both places I adore, one can’t help but cross your fingers that it isn’t hype. Have no fear, Onda is truly a 1+1=3. It’s obvious after the first bite that the chefs really sweated the collab. There’s a broad knowledge of ingredients, producers, technique, and influences from both chefs coming together here. That’s how you get surprises like Koji-Marinated Satsuma Sweet Potato, who-needs-meat, goodness. Or a tower of octopus with tasty char and potatoes and picked red onions. And Smoked Pork Jowl madness that is like the toro of pork in a Vietnamese-ish lettuce wrap. Mostly just keep a steady order of those can’t ever get enough home tortillas coming to the table and you’ll leave happy.
Went on a whim for dinner on a Thursday night. Simple modern yet casual ambiance. Seating was packed but they had plenty of bar seating. The Palm heart ceviche is highly underrated, the drinks are fantastic, this place is a true culinary treat. I’ll be coming back many times.