Pacific Palms Resort, L.A.’s Secret Hilltop Hideaway
Hidden in the middle of the city, a verdant poolside garden, a view, and delicious food.
Dining in L.A. can be a sport, an adventurous search across the hills and valleys of the city for that hidden spot that serves up something special. Good thing the City of Industry has a secret, and it wants to let you in on it. Nestled in its rolling hills is L.A. County’s only full-service golf resort, the Pacific Palms Resort, a haven for spa-seekers, golfers, conference meetings, stay-cationers and those with a taste for elegant dining and an unparalleled vista at Red Restaurant and Bar. It’s a reminder that L.A.’s culinary spectacles are indeed far reaching, but the pursuit is well worth it.
Executive Chef George Aguilar, who hails from Pampanga, the culinary capital of the Philippines, combines his own Filipino Chinese heritage with years of culinary training in French technique and Asian cuisines. The result is a menu of elevated, heart-warming dishes, composed with artful, and delicious, details. Everything in the Red kitchen is house-made and fresh, a source of pride for Chef Aguilar and Pacific Palms.
“I create dishes of comfort-style food. The elegance is there, but when you eat it it’s very comforting,” Chef Aguilar says. “You need to put love in your dish, you need to put time in it.”
And the menu is as dynamic as L. A’s international dining scene. Crispy carnitas spring rolls with aioli (a nod to Filipino lumpia) speak to the neighborhoods of the San Gabriel Valley, while spicy tuna poke glisten in house-made wontons chips, punctuated with avocado mousse and spicy yuzu aioli. “I adapt the L.A. cuisines [that I’ve cooked with]،” Aguilar says.
Aguilar’s love of food can be traced back to his own childhood, where he began cooking at twelve. As the youngest in his family growing up, his mother towed him along to the market where he learned to appreciate the sweet and savory ingredients of Filipino cooking. His culinary tutelage — from spending years learning to master rice in a traditional sushi restaurant to graduating from the Cordon Bleu —has served him well, and even now, he’s always seeking inspiration in the restaurants and cultures of Los Angeles. At Red, he puts his own craft-oriented spin on homegrown classics (like chilaquiles, kimchi rice, or a triple-stacked turkey club) while maintaining their nostalgia-factor. Multi-cultural food in a hillside destination — How Angeleno is that?
About that view — it’s hard to take your eyes off it: hills that actually do seem to roll, the silhouette of a mountain skyline and a valley that twinkles as the sun sets across the Pacific Palms Resort. Red Restaurant combines the mahogany paneled indoor dining room with a dynamic outdoor patio experience, with secluded areas around the stone fire pit and trellis that can also be rented out for private events. As the weather warms, the season calls for cocktails and snacks poolside. For special occasions, the patio can be transformed into a festive brunch, with a smorgasbord of offerings for celebrating families to feast on — from omelettes to dumplings to a carving station.
The Pacific Palms Resort has lit up the screen on more than one occasion, directors borrowing its unique view for film and television projects. With the calm that seems to settle as you enter the serene villa of the Pacific Palms, leaving the rush of the freeway and city life far behind, it’s easy set this hilltop hideaway as the backdrop for your own cinematic night.
