Soulmate

"This new-ish West Hollywood restaurant has one of the best patios in town, making it the kind of place where you and your friends can sip on cocktails while you do some top-quality people watching. You can’t go wrong with the savory eggplant hummus and delicious chicken croquettes for starters before making your way to two different paella dishes. The first is the spicy paella bites, which are essentially a Spanish play on crispy rice sushi. The fried seafood rice squares have that ideally satisfying crunch while also tasting just like saffron and stock-infused paella. The fatty big eye tuna adds some needed freshness and texture contrast to everything, which then gets topped off with a spicy aioli. And then there’s the traditional bomba rice that comes out dark orange from the saffron and tomato-heavy sofrito, which helps form the crispy edges we like to nibble on before the staff takes the pan away. We don’t necessarily mind that the paella’s seafood and chorizo don’t get mixed in (they sit on top with some veggies instead), but it wouldn’t hurt to have the sofrito mingle with the shellfish to make it all feel more cohesive." - Sylvio Martins