The Butter End — Restaurant in Santa Monica

Don’t think, just go! We found out about The Butter End a few years ago, when looking for a fabulous wedding cake bakery. Let me tell you, it is not only an amazing bakery in Santa Monica, it is one of the best in all of Los Angeles!!! Just look at California Wedding Day rankings for the past several years…Kimberly and her team have won the majority of the years and been a finalist for the others. Or, you can ask any of the 150 guests at our wedding! Some of the most consistent feedback was that our cake was mind-blowingly good. You can imagine our excitement when we got the email that The Butter End was going to open their first retail shop right around the corner from us!! When wedding cake shopping, we had to book an appt weeks out and drive to their private (not open to the public) studio in Gardena to do our cake tasting, and even though we were absolutely blown away and fully expecting to call on them for a cake for every special event we ever had again, we were definitely not looking forward to that drive. Great news folks - the cupcakes they make are all the same flavors as their VERY famous (within the wedding industry) cakes, and the artistry that goes into making each one is just ridiculous. Not only that, they can also pick up one of their fantastic cakes, at varying sizes (I believe you have to call ahead and place an order for that), so we have been the most popular guest at many dinners and holiday gatherings by walking in with one of their desserts. This is the best bakery in LA…and not many people know about it yet. So I repeat myself - don’t think, just GO!!! You...

I cannot tell you how incredible and delicious our wedding cake cake was. We got married at Calamigos Ranch in August 2025 , 130 people. When we were trying cakes, my husband and I were traveling a lot and they were so patient with us. They gave us a 10-cake box sampler when we told them we needed to try our cakes while on the road. Let me tell you, we ate the whole entire box essentially in one sitting. For our cake, we ended up choosing coconut cake with passionfruit icing for 2 tiers and then a chocolate almond cherry for the other 2 tiers. It was so delicious. I am counting down the days until our first anniversary so I can eat the whole entire top that we saved! In addition, they were so nice, so lovely, and a great experience overall. I thought that they were also recently priced for such a well known company. In addition, the detailing of the cake was beautiful. I received so many compliments. I am a Physician Assistant and my husband is a Marine Pilot, which is the topper, and we are cutting the cake with his sword. THANK YOU...

As a disclaimer, I seldom write reviews. You can check my review history and to be clear I did not come here to bash this place. My review comes from a place of concern and to raise awareness of my experience at the butter end. I came in last week on a whim to try the vanilla cupcake. Unbeknownst to myself, I was about to embark on a journey of trials and tribulations of pain and regret. In all honesty, the cupcake was not bad but how do you mess up a cupcake? I’ll tell you how, food poisoning. I almost died from dehydration from the diarrhea and still cannot feel my extremities. I wish I could provide more detail to this but I think if you’ve read this far you get the point. Maybe it was from the eggs with bird flu going around but I would utilize extreme caution frequenting this...