Dialogue 2019

Dialogue Santa Monica

Chef Dave Berans breakout restaurant in Santa Monica was highly anticipated by those who have been following him since he left the groundbreaking kitchen of Alinea. This unique place is located in a mall, up an escalator above a candy store. Behind what others might assume to be a janitorial closet lies this intimate restaurant, guarded by an electronic key pad. As part of the reservation process, they send you the code for the day, one can only imagine how many times in an evening the staff gets asked what the code is when guests leave to use the restroom. This must be a necessity of the space, but it is a very unusual thing for me as my experience with this electronic key pad is usually reserved for public coffee shops trying to keep the homeless out of their restrooms. 

I was with some good friends and co-workers for this meal and as we got to the top of the escalator there was a surprise of two familiar faces sitting outside Dialogue waiting to go in. Two amazing people I met while spending time at SingleThread were having dinner that evening as well. We all sat at the chefs counter along with another chef visiting from NYC, a true chefs chefs counter. Watching the team work quietly and at their own pace from only a few feet away is always a great experience. 

The food at dialogue is technically very proficient and executed at a high level. We had one of the last days of the winter menu which takes you through all the fazes of winter and finishes with the hope of spring. The creativity is mostly in the menu design, and while some flavor combinations really challenge you as a diner, most are easily accessible. The ideas in his menu design are to showcase a time of year all the way through it, beginning the new seasons menu with one of the last dishes from the previous menu and to also take one ingredient from the previous course and use it in the next course. Chef Beran is very bold in one transition using Szechuan peppercorns in back to back courses. This to me would have been a complete failure had it not been for his personal explanation of why. The courses were the crusted skate “chop” which overwhelms the palate followed by a take on an Asian tea meant to tame your palate from the numbing and harsh effects of the crusted fish. He described the tea to us in a brutally honest way, “this isn’t what you want right now, but it is exactly what you need”. He was 100% correct, for my taste the tea was not anything I would call delicious or would want again, but it delivered on his promise to bring your mouth back to normal.

It is cliché not to use the name of the restaurant in my reaction. What he is doing there inspires dialogue, a conversation, love it or hate it just think about it and talk about it. Between my two friends and myself we all had extremely different opinions about the whole experience and caused a few lively conversations after dinner. I think it will be truly vital for Chef Beran to make sure his entire staff can deliver the dish descriptions and inspirations to each and every guest they way he did for us. If the story isn’t told correctly, I think most will have a difficult time understanding what is going on. 

While this was a meal I really wanted to have, I guess it was just a little beyond me. I am really excited to see his next restaurant which seems to be his take of a French bistro, something more my style and one I think will be very successful.