Date Night at Ivy at the Shore

The best Santa Monica date nights start the same way: a walk along Ocean Avenue as the light goes gold over the Pacific, and then a pink doorway draped in bougainvillea. Ivy at the Shore has been the neighborhood’s romantic table since 1985 — close enough to the water to feel like a getaway, warm enough inside to feel like a secret.

The room does most of the work for you. Pink walls hung with seaside paintings, rattan and white linen, and a pitcher of fresh roses on every table — the kind of setting where a second bottle feels reasonable and dessert is never skipped. The menu adds the rest: fresh seafood beside the American and Italian classics The Ivy is known for, and a classic cocktail list that rewards arriving a little early.

Time it how you like. A weekend brunch date runs until 2pm, lunch stretches pleasantly on the Tuesday-through-Friday side, and dinner settles in until last reservations at 9pm most nights — 9:30pm on Fridays and Saturdays, when the evening deserves extra room. We’re closed Mondays, which is simply an argument for Sunday.

If the night is a big one — an anniversary, a proposal, a first date you’d like to look effortless — reserve through the OpenTable widget on this page and then call us at 310-393-3113. We’ve helped stage more than a few memorable questions over the years, and the team is glad to have the roses, the corner table, and the timing on your side. However the evening ends, the walk back along the bluffs is the closing scene Santa Monica wrote for you.