My husband and I had a recent date night at Bell's in Los Alamos and our date night experience was completely elevated when compared to all of the date nights we've ever had. I'm still on cloud 9 when I look back at all of the food that I enjoyed there with my husband.
Bell's Los Alamos is located in Santa Barbara County and attracts many visitors from other parts of California and even outside of California for their renowned farm-to-table French cuisine experience. They earned a Michelin star! I highly recommend coming to this Central Coast restaurant to celebrate a special occasion or for a romantic date night.
With a prix fixe menu offer only for dinner, I actually like this format from Bell's very much. The first three items on the menu were not choices but the last three items were choices that you can pick from three different options. I think Bell's Los Alamos does this right and it makes the dining experience really fun! I ordered a nice port and tonic to accompany my meal. It was refreshing and the ingredients balanced well together for a nice and sunny early evening.
What We Ate
First to eat and as noted on the menu, we were presented with the Santa Barbara Sea Urchin with caviar. Delicately put together on top of a small crepe, it was so fun to eat and the different textures danced well in my mouth. It was delicious and a new adventure for my taste buds!
Next, we were presented with a nice salad and their freshly baked seeded sour dough bread. I didn't take a picture but have taken a video of it on my
instagram reel of my Bell's Los Alamos dining experience. The salad was simple but you can tell the salad was locally sourced and the dressing was extraordinary. The sourdough bread was also very wonderful with the cultured butter.
For my choices, I chose the French Omlette (sic) and it was plated so beautifully! The greens and sauce accompanied the omelette so well and I liked it better than my husband's choice: Wild Mexican Shrimp Pain Perdue.
For my next choice, which I liked to call my "main course", I picked the Petrale Sole (fish) while my husband picked the Steak au Poivre. Both would be excellent options if you are torn between the two. I decided to stick to a more pescatarian diet this time, even though I did have a couple bites of his steak.
For dessert, I chose the Mt. Tam as I've been on a very big cheese kick lately. I enjoyed the savoriness of my dessert. My husband chose the Chocolate Bouchon which he absolutely loved. It was very decadent. I also took a couple of bites of that. (Please excuse the dotted mess on the tablecloth below. I thought about editing it out but decided to be more real because sometimes we are a little bit messy.)
At the very end, the server gave us a Mignardise which were some chocolate bites and I loved them. It was a great finale to our romantic date night.
If you're looking for places that offer a kid's night out or parents' night out program so that the parents can have a date night, go to my
blog entry that has a list of places that offer kid's night out or parents' night out events in SLO County.
Go to my instagram to see my video reel of my dining experience at Bell's Restaurant in Los Alamos.
Reservation Experience for Bell's
We hadn't planned to dine at Bell's Los Alamos until a few days before and when we had initially checked their reservation times for Saturday, it was all booked up! So, I decided to put our names on the waitlist. Then, on the very morning of Saturday, I decided to check their reservation availability again on Tock and saw that they had an opening! So I took myself off the waitlist and snatched the 6:15PM time! Since each reservation dinner was allotted 2.5 hours for dining at dinner time, it closed out the other times and I basically took the very last reservation availability. I knew this because when I checked back a few minutes later after depositing for our reservation, there were no times available for other patrons anymore! In order to reserve our reservation, we were required to deposit $25 for each person and it went towards our bill. I think this is a good move to avoid customers from flaking out as much as possible. They only have so much room and a good business like this would know how to capitalize every space.
I was concerned about how long our dinner was going to take so I emailed Bell's later that day (they don't have a telephone number) and I asked if there was a possibility that our dinner could take shorter than 2.5 hours because we had another commitment and if not, we'd like to see if we could box up our desserts to save time. It's a 5 course prix fixe dinner and I didn't know what to expect. Surprisingly, they emailed me back shortly after and said that we could finish up dinner before the 2.5 hour allotment and that if we were cutting it close, they'd be happy to box our desserts! I was so impressed by their proactiveness and communication! We didn't have to box it because we decided to show up earlier than our reservation time.
Los Alamos is not located within the same county as San Luis Obispo but it was close enough for us to have a special dinner. As mentioned, we got to Los Alamos early and decided to walk in to see if Bell's could accommodate us early. If not, we would just roam around and explore the area a bit. So, we walked in at 5:30PM with a 6:15PM reservation. We asked if they would be able to accommodate us earlier than our reservation time. With smiling faces, they checked our names in the system. They were more than happy to seat us right away! I was so impressed with their quick responses and eagerness to make it easy. I'm definitely coming back here again! With incredible food and fantastic service, it is a no wonder that they have a Michelin star!
Read my other restaurants reviews for the Central Coast.
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Posted by San Luis Obispo Mom. Posted In : Restaurants
Originally from San Diego, California, I'm a San Diego State University alumna, veteran's wife and mom of two kids who were born two years apart. After living on the East Coast for 6 years, we now reside in San Luis Obispo County and here, the exploration continues.
@sanluisobispomom