Five55 is a new bar and restaurant located inside the new Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Monterey Park (right off the 10 freeway across from Atlantic Times Square). Several coworkers (myself included) expressed excitement for their $5.55 happy hour menu, and we decided to stop by for some food and drinks. Right now, happy hour is only Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 4PM - 6PM. The dining area is fairly large with spread out tables, seats at the bar, even a smaller enclosed room. A good amount of TVs throughout the restaurant.
Because the restaurant just opened, they're still in their soft opening and working out the kinks of running the restaurant. We arrived midway into happy hour on a weekday, and there seemed to be just one server taking the orders for all the guests. Had some trouble flagging down people and asking about dishes and we weren't able to order all that we wanted due to limited staff, but overall - it was a pretty satisfying happy hour.
All the items on their happy hour menu are $5.55 (reflecting the address of the hotel), but you're also able to order from the soft opening menu.
For the drinks, I recommend the Japanese Old Fashioned. They don't skimp on alcohol, and the drink was pretty strong in my opinion. Super smooth and not entirely bitter. The champagne spritzer was alright. If you like sweeter, more syrupy drinks, I think you'll enjoy this. I thought it was too heavy on the strawberry coulis. Would definitely get a margarita next time.
We tried all the items from the small plates - would highly recommend the truffle mac & cheese and the cheeseburger. I don't normally enjoy mac and cheese, but the 3-cheese blend that Five55 uses is more elevated than the normal American cheese. Was super rich and had roasted mushrooms and bread crumbs and wasn't overtly cheesy. For their cheeseburger, we originally thought there were 2 small cheeseburgers, but it's actually one burger with 2 patties along with cheese, pickles, onions, lettuce, and sauce. It's not super special, but I did enjoy the potato bun that came with the burger.
The house salad was alright. I really love gorgonzola cheese, so those cheese pieces along with the craisins and pecans were super tasty. But I felt that the salad was overdressed. Having super wet arugula isn't the tastiest thing, so unfortunately didn't enjoy this too much. The wagyu hot dog was interesting. If I didn't know that it was made of wagyu beef, I probably would have assumed it was a regular hot dog. Nothing special about it - we felt like the polish hot dog from Costco was tastier (and cheaper).
The appetizers - highly recommend the truffle and sweet potato fries. I enjoyed the sweet potato fries more, just because they were cut thinner so the fries were a little crispier and had that candied taste from the truffle honey. Truffle fries were pretty good, too. There wasn't too much parmesan and truffle zest to cover all the fries, but who doesn't love potatoes that are fried?
Crispy cauliflower was a miss for me. If you enjoy eating orange chicken, I would say that this was a healthy version of that dish. When this was brought out to us, the server announced that it was chicken, which made us all shake our heads because none of us had ordered chicken. She clarified with another worker - turns out it was the cauliflower. I didn't enjoy the sauce and the outside breading tasted kind of strange - almost stale as if it had come from the freezer. Overall wasn't a fan and wouldn't order this again.
And of course, we had to get a dessert to try. The chocolate lava cake sounded pretty delicious. More of a mini lava cake fit for one person. Don't think the name "lava" is appropriate as nothing flowed out once we cut into it. And when another friend visited another day, the same thing happened with her cake. The chocolate cake is super rich and more on the decadent side. Eating a bite of the cake with the mascarpone whip cream helped to add some sweetness.
tl;dr - Overall, felt like Five55's happy hour was a good deal. Definitely a nice place to relax with some drinks and enjoy some food while catching up with a friend. And because they just opened, everything still has that newness tint to it. I've heard their mushroom flatbread is pretty good, so will likely return to try some other items in the near future.
There's a small parking lot located alongside the left of the hotel as well as street parking or the garage across the street. read more