Esters Wine Shop & Oyster Bar — Restaurant in Santa Monica

SO good I forgot to take pictures of everything I ate lmao!

What an exquisite place to dine. I happen to know one of the chefs, and wanted to check out where they worked! It’s hard to know where to begin.

The logo is adorable and the ambiance alone is worth going for. It has a casual yet elegant feel, without being elitist or exclusionary. The staff is SO friendly, too. I frankly didn’t know what a lot of the menu was, and the way it was explained was kind and compassionate :]

Another interesting thing to note: in addition to being into wine, they are REALLY into cheeses here. The owner is passionate about sustainability, too! Apparently a lot of cheese isn’t even vegetarian: they still use the stomach lining of a calf to process it, which I didn’t know. But Esters has a wonderful selection of true vegetarian cheese that was sustainably made and sourced. Everything on the menu was!

Honestly I had a LOT of different items and I recommend them all. The almonds, the focaccia, all the different cheeses that came with a small charcuterie board! I had the gnocchi which was just exquisite. I didn’t know gnocchi could be so light and fluffy! I usually make my own, but I make it very dense.

I’ve also never had better oysters in my entire life. NO grit, not even slightly. DELICIOUS.

The flavor profiles were phenomenal. The fruit and jams paired with the cheeses ruled; the entire gnocchi from the sauce and spices to the pasta itself was exquisite; the servers also had PHENOMENAL wine pairing recommendations.

If you like a fun and casual (yet exquisite) dining experience that focuses on ethical and sustainable dishes, you will be right at home at Esters. I know I’ll...

I’ve had this on my saved list for a while because I love a good happy hour and had to give it a shot. What came out of it felt laughable. My friend and I showed up pretty early in the happy hour to a mostly empty patio and sort of searched around for a server. There was a woman outside having a full volume conversation near the entrance with a laptop that we figured was a patron trying to keep her business to herself so we found a server inside and asked to be seated on the other side of the patio. I will say our server was pretty darn nice but overall the experience was sort of comical. The wine on happy hour was pretty fair at 9 dollars a glass but we ordered the happy hour charcuterie board for 20 dollars and what came out almost, at the risk of aging myself, felt like we were getting punk’d. What looked like some thrown together mortadella and salami, with some random corn nuts and cornichons and a dollop of mustard. No bread, just a super thrown together plate. Alright sure. So we asked for bread and the bread itself is an extra 9 dollars. So for the sweet price of 47 dollars we got 2 glasses of wine, some thrown together cold cuts, and bread not including tax or tip. I’d give this one a hard pass.

Also plot twist- the lady having the incredibly loud conversation that didn’t acknowledged us worked there....

The ambiance is super cool and a cool place to hang out with friends.

The wine selection is Okay as most of their red selection is in the 50-60 dollar range which a-lot of times are not great wines and then it jumps to 180 dollars with nothing in between. So for that reason at least the red wine selection in my opinion was not the best. This is only for the red wine.

The food selection is really not great. The Fish was pretty good. The prime rib was pretty good probably their best option. The overhyped grill cheese was really overrated. The salad was pretty good. Oysters were Okay.

Service was pretty good.

The biggest problem was that they called last call at 9:30 on a Saturday and literally kicked us out by 10:30. I understand that it’s probably city ordinance but it still sucks to have to leave as soon as you settle.

Over all I would give them 3.5 but since that’s not an option I ll five them a 3 because a lot of the issues I see can be improved.

3 for food 5 for ambience 3 for wine...