From the whimsical yellow giraffe at the front entrance to the red number stamped on the back of the menu presented at the end of the evening, every aspect of Somni has meaning, intent and purpose. The outdoor sculpture, according to chef-owner Aitor Zabala, nods to the animal’s meaning in some cultures as a symbol of good fortune, elegance and tranquillity. The little red digits correspond to the thousands of diners the newly revived tasting menu restaurant (back after a four-year hiatus) has served since its buzzy debut in West Hollywood last November.
Before you even take a single bite or sip, there’s the breathtaking hidden courtyard, where dreamy white cloud sculptures suspended from the trees overhead sway in the breeze. (The feeling is no coincidence—Somni means “dream” in the chef’s native Catalan.) By the time you nibble on a delicate cheese feather and crunch into a fried almond painstakingly reconstructed to resemble the original in its shell, you can almost forget the fact it costs at least $840 per person, with a minimum party size of two, to be there.
Six months after reopening, Somni is undisputedly L.A.’s most dazzling, destination-worthy fine dining experience. Playful, elegant and downright delicious, the Spanish-influenced meal is full of avant-garde delights and insider nods to now-closed Michelin giants like Spain’s famous El Bullí—where Zabala worked for many years—and Manresa up north in Los Gatos. It’s a strong, promising start for the Catalan-born chef, who helped launch the original Somni alongside celebrity chef José Andrés as a 10-seat tasting counter inside the SLS Beverly Hills back in 2018. It’s also, as of writing, the most expensive restaurant in Los Angeles. And while I do think the impeccable artisanry at every level justifies the steep cost of admission, I don’t consider it an essential L.A. dining experience.
Let me explain. Starting at $645 per person, a meal at the new Somni is nearly twice the price of several of L.A.’s top tasting menus. Technically, the tasting menu “only” costs $495, but as of February, the restaurant began requiring diners to opt in for, at minimum, the $150 non-alcoholic pairing. If you opt into the standard wine pairing ($225), you’re looking at $940 after tax and a well-deserved 20 percent tip for the lovely staff. After visiting and revisiting Somni, and reflecting on my other fine dining experiences in L.A., I can honestly say that while a meal at Somni comes nigh on close to perfection, the average diner is likely to leave Kato, Hayato, n/naka and Providence—the ultra-expensive options on my guide to the city’s “best” restaurants—just as satisfied with the added bonus of keeping another $200 to $300 in their metaphorical pocket.
The irony of writing about the most expensive restaurant in L.A. isn’t lost on me at a time when food costs have gotten so high that influencers gush over their Costco grocery hauls and many of the nation’s leading economists predict that a global recession will occur within the next year. Bluntly put, no matter how great Somni is, the price point is unfathomable for the average Angeleno, even for the most special of occasions, and it goes above and beyond what you need for a fancy showstopper of a meal. The restaurant seems to exist primarily for the extremely rich—or, more realistically, their offspring—or the extremely food-obsessed, which includes plenty of people who work in the restaurant and bar industry.
To arrive at this conclusion, I’ve visited almost every Michelin-starred tasting menu in L.A. at least once, most of them at least twice. And while I don’t have a gourmet-inclined one-percenter’s breadth of knowledge when it comes to the world’s greatest restaurants, I do know, at least compared to all those ultra-expensive local meals, that Somni goes the extra mile in every possible category. There’s nothing else like it in Los Angeles, but that doesn’t mean that the mind-bogging level of detail and thoughtful service will justify the additional hundreds of dollars invested for everyone.
I never tried the original Somni, which closed its doors in 2020 amid a bitter lawsuit between the hotel and Andrés’s hospitality group, but L.A. Times critic Bill Addison’s past review reveals a somewhat theatrical chef’s counter experience similar to the one you’ll visit today. At the new Somni, the counter now holds 14 seats, each with a pendant light that illuminates the area where each dish sits before you. As with all chef’s counters, the meal is far from intimate—if you’re in a party of two, you’ll sit next to your dining partner, but you’ll also be sitting next to whoever else has booked a reservation that evening. For a romantic dinner, I prefer Providence, n/naka and Kato, all of which have separate tables.
Some might argue that trying to pit Somni against a dazzling kaiseki meal at n/naka or Kato’s Taiwanese-influenced fine dining is like comparing apples to oranges. This is technically true for two reasons: Somni is nearly twice as expensive as any other L.A. fine dining options, and each restaurant offers a vastly different experience. But then again, I’m certain that for most people, a splurge of this expense and caliber maybe happens once or twice a year, if it can even happen at all.
Once you leave the courtyard (where a handful of snacky amuse-bouche are served), every course starts with a monologue from one of the chefs, with most dishes accompanied by a second staff member adding a finishing sauce or other accoutrement. While most tasting menus in L.A. include this kind of culinary storytelling to some degree, Somni takes the cake when it comes to choreography of movement and baseline informational depth. If you’re not used to hearing a story with every course, the experience can feel a little drawn out. For someone like me, who enjoys learning about the provenance of ingredients and attempting to grasp the finer details of terroir, this might be a bonus. For others, this might feel like overkill. It also means a dinner here will take at least three hours, if not four.
A few courses at Somni have changed on a seasonal basis, but much of the menu thus far has largely stayed the same; Zabala and his team are always tweaking little details to further refine each dish. Between my two visits in January and April, about 25 percent of the menu changed entirely. The remaining dishes have only become even better on my second visit. There are nods to Spain in the form of jamón ibérico and more recently, a choice piece of secreto, a lesser-known Spanish cut of pork shoulder.
Zabala seems to enjoy serving things that crunch: softly, loudly, bite by bite or all at once. Savory meringue makes an appearance in the form of a fish-shaped vehicle for Chinese caviar; far-too-ubiquitous truffle is reimagined as a cream-filled, mushroom-shaped cracker sandwich topped with Spanish black truffle rounds; and I’ll never forget the beef tartare course, which uses a tempura-fried shiso leaf as a vessel for strip loin tartare showered with vibrant purple flowers. It’s a gorgeous dish that tastes as wonderful as it looks.
If you count each of the amuse-bouche served in the courtyard, a meal at Somni usually consists of over 20 courses—an intimidating number, especially for those with lighter appetites. On my first visit, I had to start leaving food on my plate about two-thirds into the meal; I’d devoured the hefty piece of blue corn masa sourdough that accompanied a creamy Dungeness crab dish topped with a huitlacoche (corn fungus) “ravioli,” and got way too full in the process. The striking purple bread comes from 61hundred Bread, a Santa Ana bakery considered one of the best sourdough operations in Southern California.
On my second visit, the kitchen had tweaked the amount of bread such that I managed to get through all of the savory dishes and finish most of the dessert. The delightful purple sourdough isn’t the only carb-heavy course at Somni; there’s also an oxtail bao bun served with a spicy curry sauce and a smear of black garlic. For some of the dishes, the staff also explain the origin stories behind some of the beautiful plating and utensils; the penultimate savory meat course is served with steak knives made by Barcelona’s Florentine Kitchen Knives, which custom made the set just for Somni.
By the time the cheese course—which comes with an adorable cow-shaped cracker—rolled around, I looked around the room during both of my meals and found that more than a few of the other guests had left bites of food on their plates. Clearly, I’m not the only person who finds over 20 courses to be slightly overindulgent. Then again, given the price of visiting Somni, I’m sure you’d rather leave the restaurant a little stuffed than slightly peckish. It’s happened to me before at other tasting menus, so I appreciate the restaurant’s attempt to pack in as many individual flavors, tastes and textures as possible.
Where Somni falters, oh so slightly, is in the sweets department. Dessert currently consists of a dish inspired by the flavors of piña colada and an array of “sweet little things,” or mignardises. I loved the former, which captures the tropical flavors of the classic frozen cocktail in an elegant, cloud-like creation. The latter, however, consists of several visually impressive sweets, some of which didn’t taste as good as they looked. Your eyes will likely be drawn to the sprinkle-topped chocolate “doughnut,” inspired from Southern California’s classic pink box shops. Take one bite into it, however, and the slightly wet chocolate shell (most of the sweets aren’t stable at room temperature) collapses into a creamy, liquid center with an indistinct flavor. Other mignardises, like a caviar-topped “croissant” and seasonal berry-shaped fruit jellies, served alongside their dehydrated originals, are more successful.
For all the use of local produce and nods to regional foodways, I’m still struck by how estranged Somni seems from the rest of the L.A. food scene. It almost feels like you could be at a fancy tasting counter in any other cosmopolitan world city, dining on truffles and caviar flown in from across the globe. The restaurant’s feats of molecular gastronomy are truly impressive, but the dreamy, transportive quality of Somni also means that it feels like the restaurant could exist anywhere. It just happens to be in Los Angeles.
Somni earned five stars—“amazing”—from us. To find out more about Time Out’s curation methods and ethics policies, head to our global “How we review” page.
Somni
9045 Nemo St, West Hollywood, CA 90069.
Wed–Sun at 7:30pm (one seating per night)
Reservations are available via OpenTable