Hi Everyone:
We will only be in LA for 2 days, where would be a great restaurant to try? We will be staying at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverely Hills. We like fish, seafood, steaks, good portions, clean 4 or 5 star? Not touristy and not pretentious. We just love great food.
Thanks,
Helen

Price range? I love the Grill on the Alley in BH. Meets your requirements. Expensive,

Price range : $20 to $35 for an entree. THanks.

Definately a questions for chowhounds.com Southern California section - do a search there.

Cheesecake Factory in Beverly Hills;
Ruth's Chris Steak House (expensive), Lawry's the Prime Rib.

Morton's Steakhouse in Burbank or Beverly Hill. For exotic seafood and good portions-Palms Thai Restaurant in Hollywood with a singing Thai Elvis... still not too touristy either.

Bastide in West Hollywood (Melrose Place)-- received the very rare 4-star rating (highest) from the "LA Times" food critic. Only open Monday through Friday. Awe-inspiring, unreconstituted French cuisine.

L'Orangérie (also West Hollywood) is one of many LA dining institutions.

Chadwick is in Beverly Hills and gets high ratings from the "Times".

The Water Grill downtown is considered one of the best seafood restaurants in the US. It has a sister property in Santa Monica: Ocean Avenue Seafood. Also excellent.

Patina and Lucques are also highly-regarded restaurants, both on Melrose.

Whist, in the Viceroy Hotel in Santa Monica, is brand-new and building a lot of buzz over its creative, fun cuisine. Might be worth checking out.

I have to gently disagree with clarkgriswold-- Cheesecake Factory and Ruth's Chris Steak House are chains, so why bother? Lawry's is fine for what it is, but it's kinda Old LA.

Yes, Bastide. Beautiful, elegant, wonderful food. If you are goind downtown, Water Grill is another very good suggestion. My last visit to L'orangerie was a disaster - sloppy service, mediocre food...but , who knows, could've been a bad night.

I hesitate to suggest Spago for a couple of reasons:

-- Tourists head here due to the Wolfgang Puck factor (he's got a TV show! And that funny accent!), as well as for the occasional Star Sighting

-- His free-association style of cooking (classical techniques, outstanding ingredients locally available year-round in CA, thrown together in non-classical combinations) is well-known, and exported to the Hinterlands with his ubiquitous Wolfgang Puck Cafés

However, it IS reliably good, and it's a nice room. Have it in your back pocket.

Has anyone been to Morton's recently (the one on Melrose, that is)?

I have heard recent grumblings about L'Orangérie-- it's a shame. Well, how about Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills? I've never gone there, but it's pretty glam, and the chef's quite famous (Nobu Matsuhisa-- how many chefs will open Japanese-Peruvian fusion restaurants on both coasts, in Vegas AND in South Beach?!).

Crustacian in Beverly Hills. Not touristy, maybe a little pretentious due to the celebrity clientele, but with an entire crab on your plate and garlic noodles on the side, plenty of great food to enjoy.

Chinois (Wolfgang Puck)on Main Street Santa Monica has wonderful food.
I thought the food at Crustacian very poor.

Chinois on Main is a great place, and might be worth the drive from BH.

A more offbeat, but equally worthy destination eatery, would be Joe's Restaurant on Abbot Kinney in Venice Beach. Absolutely sublime, one of the best examples of marrying French technique with local ingredients (which, after all, are among the best you'll find in the world). The place is always wall-to-wall, so if you want to try, make reservations well in advance.

Forget the restaurants, even some of the REPLIES are pretentious!

Yeah, pretentious maybe, but one gets tired of typing "delicious" or "good". How about fitting the level of language to the eatery, such as:

"Denny's s@$ked, I @#$t corn for three days!"

Besides, I LIKE the word "sublime".