La Marina Trattoria — Restaurant in California

Locals and tourist alike will love La Marina. It is so close to a 5 star, but I just can't go there yet.

The place in the Fisherman's Village in Marina Del Rey. Parking is easy, but for a fee. It is set in the middle of the Village. The Village itself is old now, but there are still a few great places to eat and the walk along the water is lovely. The stores for the most part are now closed and the place needs to be remolded to bring back the tourist crowd, but there is other things to do there. It is never too hot since it is right next to the Marina with boats and sea lions and the smell of the sea.

La Marina is super cute. You can dine inside or out. The inside is super clean. It is however very loud and it was not crowded. The place just has terrible acoustics. Now, they can't afford to fix this issue and I don't blame them, but if you want more quiet just eat outside on their great patio. The place is so well maintained and there are great views of the boardwalk and Marina.

The service is very nice, but for us this time, it was really slow. But the server was super kind and listed all the specials for us. Listen to the specials because we had one and it was just fantastic.

We ordered quite a few items. Their starter fried calamari and shrimp was battered lightly and tasted great. They also have the best bread with olive oil for you to pour. We ate it all. It was that good. My husband had a wonderful salad, ever so crispy and fresh as well as their special filet mignon with fresh mashed potatoes. It was cooked perfectly. It is covered with a good sauce and fresh mushrooms. He loved it and I had to remind him to save a small piece for our dogs. He also loved his fresh unsweetened ice tea. He was happy as a clam.

I had the four cheese homemade gnocchi and once I was able to eat it, I loved it. The problem is it came out boiling, I mean literally boiling. I could not touch it. We finally had to remove it from the tray it came in and put it on the plate to try to get it to cool. Now, hot is fine, but had I put that in my mouth I would have been very badly burned. My husband could not touch it either. It took 20 minutes to be eatable. My husband did not want to eat without me, but I insisted he not let his food get cold so he ate and all his food was gone and we were still waiting for this to stop boiling. I was not pleased. Once I was able to eat it, I loved the flavor, it had a tad too much cheese, but overall it was very good. I won't have it again however.

They have a very nice wine list. Their coffee is super.

We will give them another go because there are other things on the menu that also looked...

I came here with my wife and 3 year old daughter. It was around 8 pm when we asked to see the dessert menu because we promised our daughter dessert after dinner. I can't believe how rude the manager was when we asked to see the dessert menu. He literally told us that 8 pm is still dinner time and we had to leave and come back later if we want dessert. We have a 3 year old daughter, it was 8 pm, there was absolutely no possibly for us to come back later to eat dessert because it was already my daughter's bedtime. This place is not family friendly at all, and the food was not the best quality for the price we paid.

Edit: I'm editing because I read the BS response from the restaurant. The manager specifically singled us out because we had a 3 year old child with us and he considered that a nuisance. It was around 8 pm when he asked us to leave because he said it was dinner time, but my response was it is my daughter's bedtime and he said it was too early for dessert. There was no conversation about eating another dinner. We were full from dinner already, so that was not an option. You have to be cold blooded to treat a family with a baby so disrespectful and rude. I have been here enough to see the manager throw his temper tantrums. He is worse than my daughter when it comes to temper tantrums. I have seen him throw chairs around when he was angry in the past. The only reason I ever ate at this restaurant was because every other restaurant had a wait time and this restaurant is always empty. I have eaten at this restaurant plenty of times to know how horrible it is. I have lived in this neighborhood for over 7 years and before that Culver city for 4 years. I met my wife 5 years ago at Whiskey Red's (right next to this restaurant) 5 years ago.

The truth about that night is the manager knew he was having a lousy night with low customer turnout and just wanted to take his aggressions out on someone, and at the same time in hopes there would be some customer showing up so he could swindle them keeping as many tables open for his high prices/subpar dinner.

Don't worry, we will never return to your restaurant. Take some anger management classes. Start using quality ingredients. Start treating your staff and customers better. If you put a better foot forward, you might actually start filling more tables. Instead you want to hurry people out in hope to get a dinner rush, but at 8 pm, you need to realize the reality that it's not...

We went here about a year ago and had the most delicious food. We didn't go back again as we had kind of forgotten about it and went back recently as we were in the marina and remembered how much we'd enjoyed it. It was a Saturday afternoon and the weather was beautiful and we sat outside. The view was great and the live music nearby was great, people dancing - it had a fun atmosphere. Our waiter seemed nice and we ordered our drinks and food. We started with Barrata and it was delicious - I work in Italy a lot and it was good Barrata. The main courses arrived, my salad came absolutely slathered in dressing after I had asked for none as I often don't like it, or there's simply too much of it. I couldn't taste the salad, just the strong taste of this dressing. My husband had ordered chicken, it was disgusting. The cheapest cuts of 'knuckle' chicken that was riddled in fat. It looked like the cheapest street food chicken you could find. The waiter asked if our food was ok - I said I had asked for no dressing and it had loads of dressing so he took it away and replaced it saying nothing. My husband didn't eat his food as there wasn't much accompying the chicken and that was revolting. At the end the waiter asked if he didn't like it and my husband said it was poor quality meat and not what he'd expected. He still said nothing and gave us a bill. For this and two beers each, with the tip - pretty much $100. Complete waste of money. We eat out at least a couple of times a week and never, ever complain. This was a terrible experience and we were annoyed with ourselves for tipping the waiter 20% out of habit when the waiter did nothing to put anything right. We will never go there again. Beautiful view, terrible service/food. There are too many other great restaurants around which serve better food and they care if...