Drake's Hollywood — Restaurant in West Hollywood

Drakes’s: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

THE DEFINITIVE REVIEW

*Before I write this admittedly rough (but thoroughly fair) review, I want to start with The Good (and note we sat at the bar on a Thursday and arrived at 6:30 pm after work).

— The Good

*Service: everyone is lovely, including the management (I will describe WHY I met them below). Attentive bartenders. Great front door guys. Sweet hosts / hostesses.

*Décor: great work on capturing an old Hollywood vibe. You definitely feel transported, from the speakeasy-style door you walk through, to the 1970s-style tiling at the bar, to the thick, glossed wood adorning multiple surfaces. Great work.

*The Drinks: healthy pours of liquor and wine, with knowledgeable bartenders who can talk through the options and fulfill your dirty martini fantasies in spades.

— The Bad

*The Food: Alright. Let me break it down by dish. This is the rough part. Strap in.

Let me start by saying that I am aware everyone has different tastes. But we can all agree on a few basic principles.

1/ Hamachi. 3/10. Hamachi should be fresh, not fishy, sliced thin, not in large chunks, and served with proper accoutrement. You shouldn’t be fishing bones (no pun intended) out of your mouth. Or eating large, poorly sliced, disorganized chunks of it off a platter plate bathed in a citrus-buttery sauce.

We sent this one back (I genuinely NEVER do that at restaurants since I think it’s fussy, somewhat disrespectful and wholly unfair to those who have to deal with it). However, the absolutely fantastic, lovely management were quick to politely approach us and discuss our concerns with the dish. They were receptive, respectful and proactive, and assured us they would check in with the kitchen and remove the dish from the check.

2/ French Fries. 8 / 10. These are crazy good. However, with an eye toward the integrity of this far too detailed review, I offer the following commentary: Order these. Perfectly fried, good salting and, of course, crazy toppings. There could be more bacon. There could be more effective layering (sauce, stack, sauce, stack). Drake’s dumps that holy sauce on like a teenager getting baptized during Covid. The result is an uneven distribution of an excellent sauce. Let’s give those lower levels some love, shall we? Oh, and on that note: they’re stacked way too high. It’s like playing Jenga to extract the rare, sauce-laden fries from the pile. And just like Jenga, there’s always that person that knocks it all over then complains that their place in the playing order ruined their chances to have successful pulls. Idea: serve it on either a) a bigger plate; or b) in a form that isn’t 9 inches of a perfectly fried, golden-brown delight. Get your mind out of the gutter.

3/ Caesar. 5.650 / 10 (this was a hotly contested and thoroughly negotiated rating). Thus, I will simply make statements about features of the dish to avoid the suspicion of bias while backing the hard-fought middle ground we arrived to: garlic. Medium consistency sauce. Too little shaved cheese. Watery lettuce that is room temp. Garlic. Garlic? Garlic.

— At this point, we agreed to cease eating operations. You will likely proceed to other dishes. We did not. We were thoroughly put off by the largely unappetizing food.

HOWEVER… we will note the following: if you order the chocolate pie, you have ordered well, my friend. 10.259/10 (another negotiated rating). Decadent. Perfect consistency. Numerous cookie and graham cracker chunks. Stop taking yourself so seriously and dig in like the kid you once were (I’m not saying you’re old but you’re also committed to reading a review that is far too long when you could definitely be spending your time elsewhere).

AND FINALLY, CHAPTER III: THE UGLY.

1/ The People. I need to admit the following: I am a native New Yorker from Manhattan. You Californians have a good state so I have decided to make it my home. HOWEVER, folks, let’s be real: you don’t dress up. You dress like you’re going to a BBQ in Orange County at a 55+ community.

2/ THOTS.

3/...

Let me start by saying this was the single most disappointing food I’ve ever had. I’m a chef and I own a restaurant so I’d like to think I know something about food.

I’m gonna make this sweet and straight to the post Bc i don’t wanna waste anymore of my time on this horrendous restaurant.

Scully Fries 2/10: taste like a seasonal item on the Arby’s fast food menus. Sauce bad, topping poor quality, presentation mediocre.

Ozzy Pizza 7/10: moderately tasting pizza, good quality ingredients and cooked nicely. Flavor not wowing me at all tho.

Lobster Escargot 8/10: this was cooked well, presented nicely, flavor profile what is expected

Some red pepper past, idk the name 2/10: simply bad. Oh it had some flavor but that flavor was not good.

Hawaiian Ribeye 5.5/10: good quality meat, cooked perfectly but flavor not there. The marinade flavor profile for me can be scripted as a 30% watered down version of a premade marinade from Ralph’s grocery store.

Mac&Cheese 7/10: nice use of the cast iron skillet for presentation and temperature control. Good choice of cheeses, good quality noodles, flavor not wowing me tho.

Dynamite Cauliflower 2/10: flavor lacking, texture not crispy enough, presentation lacking no garnishment sesame seeds, chives, cilantro I mean nothing.

Pan seared salmon 2.5/10: cooked perfectly, seemed like a quality piece of fish, but bland flavor profile. Reminded me of a dish a layperson learned to cook on a date night at the local cooking school.

Chocolate cake 6/10: presentation good, flavor decent, consistency and textured well, just not wowing me in any way.

To sum up yes this was for me and my spouse the single most disappointing and dissatisfying food I’ve ever had. I’ll never forget how bad this meal was and will happily tell everyone of my experience so they can save themselves the time and outrageous prices. They should be ashamed to have put there location next to catchLA.

I’ll give them this tho. Ambience was good, age group of clientele was around mine 30-45. I fit in being the 3rd person in there with neck tattoos. Customer base all seemed successful in some way and the vibe was easy going in a Hollywood throwback kinda way.

If your someone who wants to come dine here and get sloppy drunk, and not have any value of money then by all means make your way to Drakes Hollywood but if that’s not you run the other way and don’t look back.

Server was nice, we tipped 20% Bc it’s not her fault...

Overall, we had a really nice dinner, but I would not classify Drake’s as fine dining, more so upscale casual in a really beautiful and well designed setting. I am giving a 4/5 because I feel the price did not match the quality. We spent just over $200 for our dinner, without alcohol, and I spent less across the street at Cecconi’s the prior weekend and received higher quality food. As mentioned the interior is really beautiful. It looks like classic Hollywood or a Chicago speakeasy. It’s covered in large murals of famous Hollywood celebrities both young and old in a very dark and red lit setting. There is a very large Art Deco bar in the center of the restaurant. We sat at a booth on the edge and were able to view the entire space which we loved. Our server Breanna was really great and very attentive, she did a great job. They don’t have a parking lot so it will be $15 for valet or it will be metered street parking which we were able to find two blocks away for our 7PM Saturday dinner.

They have a fairly large menu with a lot of classic comfort foods. They bill themselves as a steakhouse, but everyone I know who has visited did not order steak, so I didn’t consider doing that for my meal. I started off with the Lobster Escargot and thought it had some great flavors, but it really was lacking in quantity of lobster and the overall size of the dish. It had nice flavors, but just very few of them. Next we tried the Vince Scully Fries, which had some great toppings, but the fries were nothing special. They tasted the same as pretty much any standard restaurant. For my entrée, I chose the Chicken Parmesan and thought it had a nice Ragu top, but the chicken was a bit overcooked and had zero moisture left. It was overly crispy and I really needed to drink a lot to finish it. It was no Dan Tana’s Chicken Parm. Finally for dessert we had my favorite dish of the night, which was the 21 Layer Strawberry Cake. It’s not nearly as good as the Red Velvet from The Ivy but it was honestly very good and was both of our favorite bites of the night.

Overall a nice place, but I would suggest going for drinks rather than food, considering there are many well-known restaurants in this area, such as Cecconi’s and Craigs. I would recommend for a date or a dinner with friends or family, not so much a...