Elephante Los Angeles

Elephante sits atop 1332 2nd Street in Santa Monica. The restaurant focuses on Mediterranean and Italian seafood, positioned a five-minute walk from Santa Monica State Beach.

While the surrounding Santa Monica streets are dense with tourist-focused cafes, this rooftop provides a reprieve that ground-level dining lacks. The room runs smart and elegant, but the draw is the vantage point; it feels like an extension of the coastline rather than a perch over the Third Street Promenade nearby. You choose it for the proximity to the pier without the constant noise of the boardwalk. It is a place to watch the sun hit the water, provided you prefer coastal dining with a polish that neighboring beach shacks ignore.