Sporting unbelievable ocean views and a rooftop perch in Santa Monica, this always-popular restaurant has a wide menu of salads, pastas, pizza, and Mediterranean-inspired plates that should please everyone. The pastas are a real highlight, such as the lobster pasta with tomato marsala passato and mascarpone. Elephante works as a Monday business dinner that doesn’t feel fussy, or an early week date night, with a reservation that’s not too difficult to nab.

There may be no finer Santa Monica restaurant than Pasjoli, with its upscale French cooking from celebrated fine-dining chef Dave Beran and impeccable service standards. Monday nights are a great opportunity to relax and watch one of Los Angeles’s best restaurants turn out plate after plate of unrivaled French fare.

There’s not a lot of pretension at the Arthur J in Manhattan Beach, it’s just that the small-ish dining room and high-quality food make it hard to score a weekend table. On Monday nights the steakhouse is a different place almost entirely, a beachside option for locals to celebrate with grilled steaks and wine.

For more than two decades Talesai has stood as a Thai restaurant for the San Fernando Valley and beyond. The Yenbamroong family has long excelled at creating great menus, but at this location, it’s the retro-cool decor, white tablecloths, and upscale presentation that make it ideal for a Monday date night.

West Hollywood’s party scene is an ever-shifting beast, beset by impossible-to-score dinner reservations and lots of social media-inspired FOMO. Try getting into the white-hot Olivetta for some Monday night moodiness, complete with fine cooking (including pastas, chops, and caviar snacks) from none other than Michael Fiorelli. 

Koreatown’s Soban restaurant continues to prepare some of the finest Korean cuisine in the country, which makes it no surprise that Parasite director Bong Joon Ho seems to visit every time he’s in town. The three highlights are right in the center of the menu and are worth ordering for any table: braised short rib, spicy braised black cod, and the signature marinated and fermented flower crab. The banchan is spectacular too.

Sidewalk dining has rarely felt (or looked) as good as it does at Kismet in Los Feliz. The thoughtful, vegetable-forward restaurant known for its malawach, crispy rice, and confit rabbit is a kaleidoscope of cool people on Friday and Saturday nights, and a much more mellow and endearing place to dine on Mondays.

Bar Restaurant opened not long before the start of the ongoing global pandemic and has become an anchor option in Silver Lake through it all. Chef Doug Rankin is adept at making the difficult seem approachable, from Arctic cod in nettle butter to lamb belly mains and the signature mussels and curly fries that hit just about every table in the effortlessly hip restaurant.

Bavel is among LA’s hardest-to-score reservations, and there’s good reason for that. The perennially hip Arts District destination has some of LA’s best food and makes for great people-watching on weekend nights. Realistically the Middle Eastern-leaning spot is still hard to get into even on Monday nights, but at least there’s a chance to check it out without waiting months.

Pasadena can’t get enough of Union, the Italian spot known for its locavore approach to vegetables and its comforting menu of basics. The restaurant survived the pandemic thanks to the strength of its local clientele and now is back to pushing out plate after plate of pasta both inside and out on the long streetside patio built turning the pandemic. Because this place is so hard to get into on weekends, Monday night may be your best bet.

With its vibrant rooftop and award-winning Italian food, Michael’s on Naples is perhaps the best spot to take a Monday night date in all of Long Beach. There’s an air of class to the place, but without the pretension, that makes this water-adjacent option worth the trip from anywhere in LA.