Ye Olde King's Head

Even in a city crawling with U.K. expatriates, Santa Monica’s Ye Olde King’s Head is an impressive achievement — a bar, restaurant and gift shop that duplicates exactly the experience of drinking, dining and carousing in Merrie Olde England. Founded by English couple Phil and Ruth Elwell in 1974, and patronized by English emigrants and American Anglophiles alike ever since, Ye Olde King’s head serves English pub food, beer, cider and spirits in a cluttered but comfortable library-like space spread out across five rooms: The Crown Room, replete with portraits of Britain’s most famous kings; the Bulldog Bar, bedecked with pictures and effigies of English bulldogs; the Churchill Room, whose central subject will never surrender; the main dining hall (where fish and chips go for $12.95 to $15.95 and Cornish pasties can be had for $12.95); and the front bar, where darts enthusiasts drink $6 imperial pints of Guinness. It’s indubitably authentic.