Father’s Office Cheers the Neighborhood

How’s this for a concept? A bar with great food. That’s exactly what I’d been hearing about Father’s Office since former Michael’s chef Sang Yoon took over the Santa Monica watering hole earlier this year. On an exploratory mission to Montana Avenue one night, I brought along an inveterate bar hound.

He was puzzled. “This is unlike any bar I’ve ever been in,” he said, wonderingly, at the clean-cut space. “It looks too innocent, like a college hangout.” Except everybody here is well out of college, I couldn’t resist pointing out. It’s a neighborhood hangout, and the neighborhood is decidedly upscale. The bar’s wholesome atmosphere unnerved my cigar-smoking companion, who is used to more unsavory haunts.

Still, he was game, and we found perches on the barstools. Father’s Office is a beer lovers’ bar, with a long row of draft suds from artisanal producers, plus an equally long list of hard-to-find bottled beers, including fashionable Belgian ales. It can take a while to catch the bartenders’ attention, though. Only one guy seems to be taking orders, both from the people at the bar and from everyone at the tables too. It’s an incredibly inefficient system. Now, should a bird of paradise with blue fingernails and kohl-lined eyes and a rhinestone chain threaded flirtatiously through her waistband have to wait 15 minutes to order a glass of wine?

Meanwhile, we suss out the menu and order a few tapas. A long time later, they arrive in terra-cotta cazuelas . Why not a plate? It’s odd because each consists of two or three thick slices of cottony French bread with a topping--two styles of paprika-streaked chorizo, some jamon serrano (the dry-cured Spanish ham), lomo embuchado (dry-cured pork loin) and vinegar-marinated Spanish white anchovies. My favorite is the roasted sweet piquillo peppers, like red velvet.

The best item in the “real food” section of the menu is the Maryland soft-shell crab po’ boy garnished with avocado, red onion and an aioli lit with harissa hot sauce (unfortunately the blackboard proclaims “last week for soft shell crab”). When our barfly asks for ketchup with his burger, he’s told the chef prefers it be eaten just the way it comes from the kitchen: no ketchup. With this, I can imagine one of us wearing a ketchup bottle strapped to the ankle to the Office next time.

It’s not as if this is a purist’s burger. It’s piled with onion that tastes as if it’s been caramelized in cheap balsamic vinegar. And if that’s not enough innovation, bacon “compote” and both Gruyere and Maytag blue cheese take it well over the top. “Ixnay the fancy trimmings,” complains our bar aficionado about the “haute dog” too. It’s a new-age chicken dog, anyway, garnished with spicy onions and--radicchio. The bun is awfully squishy.

What’s great at Father’s Office is the basket of frites “a la cart,” a heap of wonderful skinny shoestring fries overflowing a miniature wire shopping cart. That’s what I’d have next time. That and some draft Sierra Nevada Best Bitter Ale.

At Father’s Office, Father says: “No substitutions, modifications, alterations or deletions. Yes, really.”

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Father’s Office, 1018 Montana Ave., Santa Monica; (310) 393-2337. Open daily 4 to 10 p.m.; tapas, $3.50 to $7.50; “real food,” $2 to $14.50. All prices include sales tax. Street parking.