The Galley — Restaurant in Santa Monica

I'll try to keep this short and sweet, this place is a sleeper 5* fine dining restaurant disguised as a cozy, friendly, and fun local dive bar.

We were greeted by the owner Ron and his son (I can't remember his name 🤦‍♂️) who were very friendly, very personable, and seated us immediately to a nice booth. There were Christmas lights everywhere, a full bar of patrons laughing and living it up, and a back patio area for additional seating outdoors as well. Overall a very warm, cozy, fun, friendly and inviting dive bar atmosphere.

It was my birthday the day before but we celebrated the next night at the Galley. Everything was EXCELLENT, I'm talking 5* fine dining excellent without the 5* price tag. We ordered the clam chowder (I'm from Boston so I'm very picky about my clam chowder, and I am going to order it again next visit), full wedge Caesar, garlic bread, veggie pasta for my fiancé (she's vegetarian) and I had the 40oz tomahawk medium rare with asparagus and loaded baked potato. Again everything was DELICIOUS and fresh made to order. The asparagus was surprisingly grilled to perfection, most places overcook or undercook it always but theirs was perfect. And the Tomahawk.... Just WOW. My 2 favorite places to go for Tomahawk steaks in the Santa Monica area where we live are BOA Steakhouse and Mastro's Ocean Club, but let me tell you, the Galley's just may have been better (and much more affordable). We used to go to BOA like once a month after a great work week, but I think we're going to be frequenting the Galley weekly now just for this Tomahawk. Words can't describe how good it was, I had dreams about it after haha. It was perfectly seared, perfectly seasoned, and the temperature was spot on MEDIUM RARE. I can't tell you how many restaurants overcook medium rare and bring me a medium or well done, but the Galley nailed my favorite medium rare. 5 stars!

I highly highly HIGHLY recommend this place and cannot wait to return and try the rest of the menu, everything looked amazing. I'm so excited to find a new place to frequent with my fiancé now after a long week of work to reward and enjoy ourselves.

Thank you to the chef, all of the staff, and captain Ron, we will be...

I honestly wish that I could give this place zero stars. The waitress, Sarah, was absolutely terrible at her job. Took 30 minutes to get 4 drinks and a soda, and asked for a refill 3 separate times (which finally came 45 minutes later). It took almost an hour and a half for our food to get to the table (it was not busy, this is COVID-19 times), and when we got the food it was awful. “Garlic” mashed potatoes were extremely dry, the 30 oz sirloin was cooked good (ordered medium rare), but was terribly bland, and the coleslaw was just shredded rabbit food. The other people at our table were unhappy with the value of the food, very small portions for the price. When it came time for the bill, our party that was forced to sit at 2 different tables, was never asked how or IF we wanted to split it. We were then told to draw triangles and circles and split it ourselves because “it isn’t her job to keep track of what we all have eaten.” Because we were unhappy, Sarah thought it would be okay to bring 3 pieces of “chocolate cake” to the table and told us to bring our completely uneaten steak home and season it ourselves. When we asked for the manager, Corinna came to the table and proceeded to be unapologetic in the fact that her waitress had failed to do her job, and stood up for her versus trying to help the situation. Corinna then called Captain Ron (the owner) to see if there was something he could do about the bill, which he would do nothing about. After finally getting the bill split (by my own hand), and getting the 18% undeserved “gratuity” removed, we were attempting to pay and were locked in to the restaurant until we paid the entire bill for a meal we did not consume, and when attempting to leave was assaulted by the waitress named Sarah and forced to pay for a meal that was tossed in their own garbage can. This restaurant is awful (the outside decor is nice), poor wait staff, clearly untalented cooks, terrible “management”, and inattentive owner. Nothing will fix what happened tonight, and it’s very unfortunate because they lost a couple of locals and 4 tourists who will now take this experience back to the Midwest and...

The galley restaurant on Main Street used to be our go to place for dinner. It was warm and inviting and right in our own neighborhood. Perhaps the last time we were there was a bad night for them however it was a week We were seated quickly and the bar was packed. Our server was lovely and asked us what we wanted to drink. As a sidenote, the busstaff is fantastic. We ordered and our dinner came after a long while. When my dinner companion’s dinner came it was not what he had ordered. We called the server over and her first response was “well that’s what I heard you say”. It was crazy. I knew what he ordered, he knew what he ordered but apparently the server didn’t write it down. She took back his plate and there I sat with my dinner getting cold. Afterwhile his correct dinner was served. They were nice enough to bring me some warm sauce to put over of my dinner. It didn’t help. I was a little surprised that not another mention was made of the problem and the mistake. I’m sure if the owner was there there would have been some sort of discounted bill. Our server didn’t really seem to care. We’ll give it another chance one of these days. But I was pretty disappointed in...