Paradise Cove Beach Cafe

About Paradise Cove Beach Cafe

Paradise Cove occupies a private beach on Pacific Coast Highway where the road curves closest to the water, and the restaurant built around that beach has been perfecting the art of the California beach lunch since 1989. The setting is almost unreasonably beautiful: a thatched bar opens directly onto sand, the Pacific stretches to the horizon in every direction, and the light in the late morning achieves the specific quality that photographers travel from around the world to find. It is no accident that this beach has appeared in more films and television productions than almost any other private beach in Southern California.

The menu is built around the classics of Californian beach dining sharpened to something better than average. World-famous tacos have been on the menu since the beginning. The coconut shrimp is genuinely good rather than merely good enough. The seafood tower — a iced construction of oysters, crab, shrimp, and whatever the ocean has delivered recently — is one of the more theatrical lunch options in Malibu. The Kobe beef BBQ ribs suggest that the kitchen understands its audience is not always ordering from the ocean.

For a solo lunch, Paradise Cove is extraordinary. The setting takes the social pressure off a meal eaten alone and replaces it with something better — a genuine sense that you are somewhere remarkable, doing something that the city's pace usually prevents. Sit at the bar with your back to the ocean or face it; either works. Order the tacos or the shrimp or whatever the board recommends. Drink something cold. The afternoon belongs to the Pacific, and for a few hours, so do you.

Practical Information

Also Great for Solo Dining in Malibu

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