Paul Martin's American Grill Menu

Paul Martin's American Grill Restaurant Review:

About the restaurant: The ubiquitous rallying cry of “local, seasonal, organic” is a mantra at this American mini-chain. Servers at the Westlake Village location talk farms and sustainability as they recite the day’s specials --- think all-natural prime rib or buttermilk-fried, free-range chicken from Pitman Family Farms. Brick and wood and polished concrete floors lend the room a handsome masculinity.

Food: To be sure, there is a formula at work here: a contemporary Californian take on the American bistro. There’s also some good food, like an entrée of grilled polenta with seasonal vegetables atop a bright tomato cream sauce. That all-natural prime rib, on the other hand, failed to offer the deep brown crust carnivores crave; a marinated hanger steak with chimichurri fell even shorter, lacking flavor in spite of the normally piquant sauce. Tasty interlopers such as Maine lobster and Idaho trout blunt the fiercely local marketing spin. Co-founded by Paul Fleming, who put the P.F. in P.F. Chang’s, the eatery is perhaps too chain-slick, although there are only four locations. This one, with a large patio on the prominent corner of Thousand Oaks and Westlake Boulevards, attracts a happy hour crowd.