Plan Check Kitchen + Bar recently opened its fourth LA location in Santa Monica. In case you are wondering, the restaurant’s unusual name comes from its first location next to the City of Los Angeles Department of Building & Safety where architects and designers submit their plans.
That location soon earned a name for burgers and its fried chicken started showing up on the best lists for the category, so its no surprise that these items form the the core menu at all locations. But as the mini-chain expanded, each location began adding its own unique items. So guess what what might inspire the menu at the beachside location? Yes, seafood.
The Santa Monica location’s seafood items are modern twists on traditional seaside dishes such as lobster rolls and hot fish sandwiches amplified with Oriental accents like kombu, ponzu, and gochujang. For starters, there are Chowder Fries with housemade clam chowder and steamed little neck clams in the shell. The Hamachi Crudo is garnished with apple, cucumber, radish, candied ginger, crispy shallot, and lemongrass-serrano ponzu. The Nashville Hot Fish Sandwich has crisp mahi-mahi with Kaffir lime slaw, kombu pickles, and cayenne. The Plan Check Lobster Roll is garnished with Kewpie mayo, gochujang, shallots, key lime, and chives. The Seafood Platter offers lobster, shrimp, calamari, mussels, clams, yuzu cocktail, and tartar sauce. Lobster Pot Pie is filled with curried lobster bisque, baby beets, green beans, corn, carrots, and potatoes. And amongst the most intriguing of the seafood offerings is the spicy Korean Cioppino with mussels, clams, calamari, shrimp, gochujang, and a soju bomb: I have not seen this dish on the menu elsewhere.
The signature dessert item is Key Lime Pie Donut with lime curd, toasted meringue, and graham cracker crumbs, fried to order.Plan Check offers a weekend brunch featuring Fried Chicken & Crullers, Breakfast Donuts glazed with cereal milk, and Pork Belly Benedict with Sriracha Leather.
Weekdays from 11am-4pm, Plan Check offers the Six Dollar Signatures which include the classic PCB – Plan Check Burger- and Southern Fry. The 12-seat bar features craft beers on tap, a wine list, handcrafted Japanese whiskey, an extensive bourbon collection featuring single-malt varieties aged over19 years and more, and a selection of cocktails. They include Pimm’s-In Ain’t Easy – whiskey, cucumber, wtermelon radish, Pimm’s, lemon, agave, mint, and sea salt; Plan Check Penicillin – mescal, ginger, lemon, agave, fennel, and buzz button flowers; and El Pomelo Rose – mescal, grapefruit-rose liqueur, Campari, agave, lime, egg white, and an edible bouquet of flowers. A happy hour includes $5 select draft beer and house wine and $6-8 cocktails available Monday through Friday from 11am-7pm.
For more information, please visit www.plancheck.com.