SAS Serves Satay

SAS has a rockin’ bar menu.

Here’s something you didn’t know. Jimmy Sklaventis, a former owner of the very-good Universe Café, one of Hollywood Boulevard’s chiller establishments, is now the dude running the SAS Martini Lounge on Harrison Street. SAS is chic and reliably packed — reserving a table wouldn’t be a bad idea — and it has, predictably, some really wonderful martinis on offer. But the shocking thing is the food, which is so much more interesting than almost any other barfood in creation that somebody ought to develop a new term for it. Sea bass satay, a prosciutto and arugula pizza, mango sorbet — this is not your (drunken floozy) grandma’s barfood. And weirdest of all, most of the people crammed into the joint don’t even look at the food menu — their minds are on wetter things. Take advantage of their oversight: Order everything in stock.

— Brandon Thorp