Dunsmoor
Glassell Park, Los Angeles
📍 3501 N Eagle Rock Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90065
🍽 Early-American / Heritage Southern, Wood-Fired · California
📅 Visited: September 2026
🍴 Forks Given: 🍴🍴🍴🍴☆ (4.25 / 5.0)
A hearth-fired hit list with one true mid dish, capped by a tuna toast and a sticky date pudding that both deserve their hype.
Overview
Dunsmoor is one of the best restaurants in Los Angeles, and this visit was an outstanding meal from start to finish. This was not our first trip, and it will not be the last. Chef Brian Dunsmoor runs the wood-fired hearth here the same way he ran it at Hatchet Hall in Culver City, and the Glassell Park spot has been doing it since 2022. That is the background. The food is still the actual story tonight.
What We Ordered
Bluefin Tuna Toast
Savory, bright with lemon, on sourdough that pulled its own weight instead of just holding the fish up. The balance was perfect. This is the best tuna dish around, full stop, and it made a case for retiring crudo altogether. Forget crudo. This is where it’s at.
Warm Medjool Dates
Amazing, and a genuine sweet-and-sour combination between the dates and the brown butter and vinegar underneath. The bread that came with it was great on its own. The dates themselves were super sweet, which is exactly the point of a Medjool.
Market Tomatoes
The first dish of the night that was not an absolute hit. Good, not amazing. Ripe tomatoes, cheese, oil, vinegar, basil, all present and correct, but everything landed at just fine. If you have had tomatoes and burrata anywhere else, you have basically had this. The cheese here was different in texture, but nothing else set it apart.
Edna’s Sour Milk Cornbread
Awesome, and a reversal of past positions on cornbread in general. Yes, they cheat by loading it with butter. It is still amazing anyway. Salty, buttery, and the hatch chile still comes through underneath all that richness.
Aunt Emmy’s Pork & Green Chili Stew
Amazing. The stew is loaded with good things, and it comes with some of the best tortillas around. Build yourself a stew burrito with those tortillas and reconsider your priorities in life, because that combination is the move.
Beef Ribeye (32oz)
A great steak, cooked exactly right: salty, a nice char, perfectly medium rare. It did not take the top spot tonight, and the reason was the cut itself, not the kitchen. It was not marbled enough, a little fatty on one side, a little gristly, without enough fat running all the way through. Order it again, and hope for a better cut.
Carolina Gold Rice
Basically a risotto, built on shrimp butter, and a very good one: creamy, shrimp turning up throughout, solid consistency, great flavor. It plays a support role but it is not an afterthought.
Hand-Churned Ice Cream (Cookies and Cream)
Good, not awe-inspiring. The Oreo flavor came through clearly, but it did not punch hard enough to make a real impression, especially sitting next to the sticky date pudding on the same table.
Sticky Date Pudding
One of the best desserts around, and it is not close. A near-perfect balance of salty and sweet, with vanilla ice cream doing the literal icing-on-the-cake work on top of a soft, moist cake drenched in toffee sauce. Decadent, obviously, but it earns every bit of that.
Forks Given Score Breakdown
| Category | Score (1–5) | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Food Quality | 4.5 | 40% |
| Value | 4.0 | 20% |
| Service & Experience | 4.0 | 15% |
| Ambiance & Environment | 4.0 | 10% |
| Execution vs Intent | 4.0 | 10% |
| Return Factor | 5.0 | 5% |
Final Forks Given Score: 4.25 / 5.0
The Quirks
The tuna toast and the sticky date pudding are the two dishes doing the most work here, and neither is a fluke: they showed up the same way on this visit as they have before. The ribeye is the one dish that is only as good as the specific cut you get.
The Wine and Cocktail Gap
Here is the one real caveat in an otherwise glowing review: Dunsmoor is a wine list first. If you are a wine person, it is damn near perfect. If you are a cocktail person, there is no getting around it, you will need to settle for a nearby bar before or after dinner.
Pro tip: Head to Capri Club (4604 Eagle Rock Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90041) for a cocktail before dinner. Amazing martinis and negronis, and service to match.
The Verdict
Dunsmoor is one of the best restaurants in LA, and this was an outstanding meal from start to finish. The tuna toast alone is worth the trip, the cornbread earns a walked-back opinion, the stew and its tortillas are a genuine event, and the sticky date pudding closes the meal as well as any dessert in the city. The market tomatoes are the one plate that is just fine, the ribeye needs a better cut to be great instead of just good, and cocktail drinkers should plan a stop at Capri Club first. None of that changes the headline. This is visit number four since October 2024.
