Window dressing

BACK in the early 21st century, if a restaurant seemed too out-of-your-league pricey, you’d grab a table in the bar, have a snack and a drink, and soak up the scenery.

At the Penthouse in the newly renovated Huntley Santa Monica Beach hotel, things don’t quite work that way: The minimum charge at one of the cabana tables in the bar is $600 (after 8 p.m.). Unless you’re Ron Burkle or Paris Hilton, you might want to book a cabana in the restaurant instead.

This is a far cry from the Huntley’s recent past, when the penthouse restaurant, Toppers, was the place you could go for a beer, happy hour antojitos and spectacular views of the ocean. It was known as the best cheap-date place on the Westside.

Not since Whist opened in the Viceroy has Santa Monica seen a hotel go so dramatically from glum to glam. At the Huntley, you know things have changed when you drive into the porte-cochere on the side of the hotel. Valets gesticulate with huge arm movements as they herd you in. There’s a dramatic fireplace on one side, and the hotel entrance on the other. Inside the stylish lobby, stop and take in the wall-of-piranhas sculpture. Designer Thomas Schoos, the creative mind behind the look at Koi, Wilshire, Citizen Smith, O-Bar and, most recently, Table 8, was responsible not just for the restaurant, but for the entire hotel’s $15-million renovation.

In the Penthouse, the look is beachy-chic, all white and gleaming, with lacquered tables, Murano glass chandeliers and sheer curtains that give the booths running around the periphery their beach cabana feeling. At 7 on a recent Friday night, the bar was already packed; there’s no other place to wait for your table.

My group of five was seated in a cabana in the restaurant -- how swell! Until we realized that no matter how we arrayed ourselves around the huge, square table, with banquettes along three sides including the one with the view, that we’d be shouting distance from each other. These cabanas were clearly designed for much bigger parties.

No matter. We hollered our orders to the waiter, starters like celery root soup with a crispy duck roll; big, citrus poached shrimp with horseradish-spiked cocktail sauce; a pizza-like tomato flatbread with basil and whipped burrata; and something called “green crunch,” a salad of edamame, asparagus tips and sugar snap peas with a pomegranate-tinged vinaigrette.

Sssssssstrrrretch. That’s what the server had to do to reach those of us by the window -- and even that didn’t do it. We helped out by grabbing plates. What funny design!

But those views were truly amazing -- panoramas that looked southwest over Santa Monica to the wide Pacific, and southeast toward Century City, West Hollywood and downtown. Acrophobes need not apply.

Meanwhile, as appetizers gave way to main courses, the action was heating up. A big party had taken over the area in which we were seated. We tried drawing the gauzy white curtains closed so we could talk. Ha! This place is not for low talkers.

The main courses arrived, and we all gave the server a hand, passing plates around: fat scallops skewered on sugar cane, served with braised oxtail and parsnip; steak frites, Kurobuta pork shank with roasted yams and dried cherries; a New York strip loin. Best was a salmon filet crusted with black trumpet mushrooms and arborio rice, served with a hash of fingerling potatoes. The chef, E. Michael Reidt, who came by way of Sevilla restaurant in Santa Barbara, seemed to be getting his sea legs.

A fitting finish might be warm chocolate pudding cupcakes or an “angry marshmallow brownie.” What makes it angry? The raspberry sauce, no doubt.

Or maybe it couldn’t raise the funds for a cabana in the bar.

brenner@latimes.com

*

The Penthouse

Where: Huntley Santa Monica Beach, 1111 2nd St., Santa Monica.

When: Breakfast, 6 a.m.-11:30 a.m. daily; lunch, 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. daily; dinner, 5:30-10:30 p.m. Sundays-Thursdays, 5:30 p.m.-11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Lounge, 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily.

Price: Dinner appetizers, $9 to $18; entrees, $20 to $38; sides, $9; desserts, $9.

Info: (310) 393-8080, www.thehuntleyhotel.com