Restaurant Review #8: Typhoon, Santa Monica

Don't be fooled by this restaurant's location at the Santa Monica Airport. The interior is sleek and the food high quality. Nor does the clientele consist primarily of pilots and other airport-related folks. The weekday lunchtime crowd is largely suited. The restaurant is small and aesthetically pleasing, and overlooks the runway, but is noisy due to poor acoustic design (a concrete floor and large windows). The planes themselves don't provide excess noise and are fun to watch.

Surprisingly (to me) the menu consists largely of Thai dishes. I had the sea bass. The fish was served whole in a succulent chili lime sauce with a side of rice. I am not a fan of picking my meat off of bones or of being reminded that I have chosen to end something else's life in the name of gastronomic pleasure, so I would have preferred my fish filleted, and nothing on the menu indicated that my fish would be presented as it was. In spite of this, I must say that I very much enjoyed this dish, and it was the best cooked fish I have had in a long time. I even had a small serving of leftovers (granted, I don't tend to eat a lot in one sitting).

To drink, I had green tea. Disappointingly, they do not serve matcha, but it does come in a very cool iron teakettle (don't burn yourself).

Typhoon has a sushi chef by night (they no longer have one at lunchtime) and I hear that their sushi is superior to that of The Hump, located upstairs (though I find this hard to believe). These restaurants are definitely tied together somehow--I'm not sure if they have the same owner, but I suspect that Typhoon's sushi may come from upstairs, and you have to use Typhoon's bathroom if you're dining upstairs at The Hump.

Typhoon
(310) 390-65653221
Donald Douglas Loop S
Santa Monica, CA 90405