The Top 13 Tasting Menus Near Fairmont Miramar Hotel & Bungalows
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Rank 1. Seline
Californian
Chef Dave Beran's tasting menu at Seline pivots between high-concept ambition and playful surprise, serving ice cream mid-meal and edible succulents in caraway soil. Black cod with wild bay laurel and lamb with burnt strawberry jus demonstrate his gift for balancing sophistication with an edge.
- James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best Chef: California · Dave Beran
- Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
- Los Angeles Times 2025 · #13 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles
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Rank 2. n/naka
Kaiseki Japanese
Chef Niki Nakayama's intimate tasting room presents a graceful interpretation of kaiseki that moves between delicate broths and grilled wagyu, drawing on Japanese and California sources with a light hand. Her signature abalone spaghetti with cod roe and black truffle never leaves the menu, a flourish that signals her vision even as each course shifts.
- Michelin Guide 1 Star
- James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Outstanding Chef · Niki Nakayama
- James Beard Awards 2023 · Nominee · Outstanding Chef · Niki Nakayama
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Rank 3. Shunji
Sushi
Chef Shunji Nakao's counter in this minimalist Santa Monica space opens with delicate appetizers—smoked mackerel, sesame tofu—before progressing through nigiri of uncommon precision. The sea perch and eel justify prices that reflect uncompromising sourcing and a sushi veteran's refusal of the ordinary.
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Rank 4. Spago
Californian
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Rank 5. Tempura Endo
Japanese
A copper cauldron gleams at the counter of this Beverly Hills temple to tempura, where the chef fries each piece—sweet corn, Hokkaido scallops, shiso-wrapped snapper—to a lacy, almost transparent shell and sets it before you alone. The tasting menu unfolds at leisure, each bite a study in the difference between frying and the precise art of it.
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Rank 6. Somni
Spanish
Chef Aitor Zabala has restored Somni into a Catalan dream of meticulous small plates—mussel escabeche, gazpacho, shiso tartare tempura—where kitchen and service move in perfect synchrony. The hushed dining room, anchored by a colorful bull's head, channels Spain through endless textural invention and restrained elegance.
- Michelin Guide 3 Stars
- The Infatuation 2025 · #2 · The Top-Rated New Restaurants
- Los Angeles Times 2025 · #50 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles
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Rank 7. Restaurant Ki
Contemporary Korean
Chef Ki Kim's ten-seat Korean tasting menu hides behind an unmarked entrance in downtown Los Angeles, rewarding the hunt with playful dishes like truffle gimbap and charred snap peas with fish roe. Confident cooking threads global ingredients through refined courses, from barbecued squab to mushroom ice cream.
- Michelin Guide 1 Star
- James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Best New Restaurant
- World Culinary Awards 2025 · Nominee · North America's Best New Restaurant
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Rank 8. Orsa & Winston
Contemporary
Chef Josef Centeno orchestrates Japanese and Italian influences through an open kitchen, where crudos meet uni-crowned rice porridge with unforced invention. Peak-season ingredients bend between Mediterranean and Japanese sensibilities, rarely settling into tradition.
- Michelin Guide 1 Star
- Time Out #12 · The 40 best restaurants in Los Angeles you need to try right now
- Los Angeles Times 2025 · #25 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles
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Rank 9. Sushi Kaneyoshi
Sushi
Hidden in a downtown basement, Sushi Kaneyoshi unfolds with the restraint of a Japanese tea room—minimalist, serene, every element considered. Chef Yoshiyuki Inoue attends to particulars: hand-thrown pottery, seared ocean perch with crisp nori, warm oysters in soy, prawns dusted in yolk and umami. Nothing escapes notice, not even the miso soup.
- Michelin Guide 1 Star
- Los Angeles Times 2025 · #24 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles
- Time Out #16 · The 40 best restaurants in Los Angeles you need to try right now
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Rank 10. Asanebo
Sushi
Asanebo's spare room, lined with fire-glazed pottery and hello kitty figurines, feels like a collector's private space. Two decades in, the kitchen moves methodically through omakase and an expansive menu of maki and house signatures, leaning toward accessible flavors over flash. Prices drift upward, but the daily specials offer the clearest path through a somewhat dizzying catalog.
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Rank 11. Yong Su San
Traditional Korean
Behind carved wooden doors and hanbok-clad servers lies a Seoul transplant devoted to royal Korean court cuisine, where bibimbap and galbijjim arrive surrounded by abundant banchan. The braised short ribs taste of history and restraint, each plate a study in what happens when tradition refuses to hurry.
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Rank 12. Omakase by Gino
Sushi
A sushi counter in downtown Santa Ana where distressed wood and Japanese touches frame Chef Gino Choi's assured hand—yuzu cream cradling house-cured ikura, flame-kissed tuna over miso. The udon arrives thick and creamy with uni and black truffle, a dish that tastes like joy.
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Rank 13. Hana re
Sushi
A ten-seat counter hidden in a Costa Mesa strip mall becomes a sanctuary of unhurried precision under Chef Atsushi Yokoyama, who moves from delicate composed dishes—chawanmushi crowned with blue shrimp, braised abalone with uni—into nigiri with the inevitability of ritual. What emerges across the evening is a argument for restraint: excellent fish, simply prepared, allowed to speak for itself.