Inn of the Seventh Ray

I wanted a brunch to celebrate my husbands 40th birthday with family. I thought Inn at the seventh ray would be perfect, how wrong I was. It was a disaster! We booked a prepaid buffet (25$/person plus 200$area fee and 100$ waitress fee and 20% gratuity included) for 22 guests (8of them children). When I arrived I started to get nervous as I saw there was so little food for my guests. The bagels were quartered(not halved) and barely filled 1/3 of basket. Lox and fruit was sliced so thin on tiny plates....enough to feed 5 people. As you can imagine there was not enough food for my family. I was so humiliated when family members got up to buffet and rolled eyes because there was no food. I prepaid in good faith and thought we would be taken care of. When I spoke to manager she was very condescending and not helpful at all. I planed event through the Inn's party planer Angelica Weihs. When I tried to contact her after event to tell her upset I was she did not even try to reach me to go over issues. Event was $!200 and felt not only was I taken advantage of but a very special day was taken from us. If you book a party here ONLY go with inner buffet at 37$/person which would likely be similar to what you will pay for set menu or private buffet after all the extra fees. What a terrible disappointment. more

We were married in November 2010 at the Inn of the Seventh Ray, and have only the most positive things to say about Wedding Coordinator Kelly Hancock and the entire staff of the Inn. We had an incredible experience there and recommend the Inn very highly. Both our wedding ceremony and reception were held at the Inn. From the very start, it was apparently that Kelly was entirely organized and on top of her game. Both before we booked the Inn and after, she returned emails and phone calls promptly, and was always available for questions, no matter how small. The pricing breakdown for the Inn was sent to us in a clear and concise spreadsheet that was much more detailed than many other venues that we looked at. Budget discussions were met with a can-do attitude, without any judgment. Kelly clearly wanted us to have the best day possible, and did everything she could do make it happen within our means without pressuring us to spend more than we were able. The Inn has a unique, magical feel to it, and Kelly took the time to make sure that each wedding was a unique arrangement. Her suggestions were very helpful but never pressing, and she was open to any ideas or requests that we had. Kelly provided recommendations for many vendors who worked with the Inn in the past in various different price ranges, all of whom we were thrilled to work with, and will provide separate reviews for them. On the day of the rehearsal, with our wedding party in from out of town, and all of us excited and nervous about the upcoming celebrations, we were all very distracted, but Kelly kept us all focused in a very friendly, gentle way, and was kind and courteous to our parents and family. We could tell that she?d worked with many wedding parties before. On that afternoon, we brought Kelly boxes of things for the following day (i.e. our programs, seating cards, favors, iPod for DJ, etc), and she took care of everything. The wedding went beautifully, and Kelly and the amazing staff at the Inn took care of everything perfectly. They were available for our requests and needs at a moment?s notice, and our guests felt well taken care of in all regards. Absolutely everything was wonderful, and we couldn?t have been happier. We were truly in good hands, and would highly recommend working with Kelly Hancock and the Inn of the Seventh Ray. Please feel free to contact us if you have any further questions, we?d be happy to chat. more

We came here for a Saturday brunch. Buffet food didn't look attractive. We ordered food from the menu. It took them almost and hour to bring our food after couple of remainders. And we didn't order anything fancy. Just a simple Scramble with lox, scallions, goat cheese and Grilled Mahi-Mahi sandwich. BTW, both are very overpriced. Before I even got a bite of my food I noticed long dark hear across my plate . That was a last straw. I paid for our drinks and we left. \r I will share my experience every time when I get a chance. This place should be put out of business. Cons: Poor Service, Ordinary Food, Expensive more

Okay, this is gonna hurt, but I'm going to be brutally honest here... My husband and I got married at the Inn and up until now, things had been quite wonderful. But this year when we went to celebrate our wedding anniversary, our impression of the Inn changed and I think it's for good this time... #1. We ordered a six course meal thinking it would be wonderful but unfortunately, the waitstaff managed to foul it up famously. With the Inn's six course meal, you get a wine pairing; that in mind, TIMING is EVERYTHING. During the appetizer portion of the meal, they brought our scallops before the wine.. So we begin to eat the scallops, thinking they'll be bringing out the wine any minute and then they don't deliver the darn wine until after the scallops had been eaten.. It would have been nice to taste that wine WITH THE SCALLOPS, so THANK YOU for that. This happened throughout the entire process... either the wine or the food was always late and to be honest, they weren't even that busy for a Saturday evening. Hmmmm... #2. There were smudge marks ALL over the glasses esp at the lip of my glass. I mean really, when you're paying six course meal prices, you at least expect the stemware to be spotless! Overall, what bothered me the most was the complete lack of attention to detail, particularly with the meal. Our server was trying to keep it so casual that she ended up appearing incompetent. And the stemware, I mean, the buser (again, a nice woman) was so concerned about filling up water glasses when she should have been paying attention equally to the cleanliness of the tableware. We might go back next year for brunch one casual Sunday morning, but never again for dinner. Too bad... I think this place has rested on its laurels long enough. Pros: Food, beautiful atmosphere Cons: Smudges On Glasses, Inconsistent Wait Staff, Overpriced more

On Saturday, February 6, my daughter Anna was married in a\r ceremony at your restaurant. Anna has only lived in California for a short time. Her new husband and his family are from Germany. I live in Iowa. So none of us are very familiar with the area and we had to rely on you and on your wedding planner, Kelly Hancock for most of the details. I am happy to tell you that the event could not have been more perfect.\r We were ABSOLUTELY THRILLED WITH EVERYTHING: the food, the cake, the flowers, the set-up and most of all, the friendly, helpful, courteous and prompted help we received from you entire staff.\r My experiences with most businesses today have led me to believe that the concept of customer service is passé. What a delight to find it is still alive and well and thriving at you Inn.\r \r I would like to also say that Kelly Hancock is a joy. She is organized, friendly, helpful, talented and extremely prompt. I can’t imaging with a she does is stress free, but she is calm, calming and in my view, a miracle worker! Please give here the kudos she deserves.\r Thank you so much for making my daughter’s wedding such a happy, beautiful, warm and wonderful evening. We will remember this evening a as one of the happiest in our lives.\r Pros: Amazing Atmosphere more

I sat by a bubbling brook having a Sunday brunch here. THE perfect place to impress someone, bring your mom... more

I sat by a bubbling brook having a Sunday brunch here. THE perfect place to impress someone, bring your mom for a special brunch, or propose.Food w... more

My wife, a friend, and I decided to go there for Sunday brunch. Big mistake. First we waited 30 minutes to be seated. Then the waiters refused to take our order. My wife asked to order three times. After waiting and waiting we finally left without ordering. Other guests who seemed to know the wait-staff were able to order. So unless they know you there, don't bother. I have had brunch there on other occasions. All I can say is that $36 for a brunch buffet that features mediocre, warmed over food is just not worth it. The outdoor setting is nice, but I could do without the nasty attitude, indifferent service, and the rickety cast iron chairs. Cons: Poor Service, Ordinary Food, Expensive more

For prices like this, I'd expect the food to 'wow' me. At least a little. And it doesn't at all. Underseasoned, overcooked, bland bland bland. They seem to focus more on the food's woo-woo-magic than its taste. A quote from their website-- ""We, at the Inn, believe in giving you the purest of Nature’s foods, energized as a gift from the sun with a dash of esoteric food knowledge and ancient mystery school wisdom tossed in for your seasoning and pleasure. It may just raise your body’s light vibration and the extra work may cost you a few pennies more, but we believe in the long run, this way of living and eating may prove less expensive."" Well, I've tried spending those few extra pennies, er, *twenty dollar bills*, but I guess those light vibrations don't add anything in the way of flavor. I cannot recommend this place for a meal, but go for just dessert and enjoy the outdoor setting. You'll have a better time that way. Pros: Pretty outdoor atmosphere Cons: Insane prices for mediocre food more

My boyfriend brought me here for a little ""getaway"" one weekend. We went for their brunch and I must say brunch was a great experience. Except for the bugs, which i know kinda comes with the package. There were a lot of bees. It didn't seem to be bothering other diners but I seemed to be drawing every bee from the restaurant to my plate. not to me, but my plate of food. Being allergic, i realized probably not the best idea for me. Pros: beautiful outdoor atmosphere Cons: bugs (a lot of them), barely there service more

This place is a Topanga Cyn legend. It's been here for decades, nestled into one of the loveliest little spots in the hills. But that's where the magic ends. I am definitely a foodie but I only expect a few things when I go out to eat. Namely - good food and good service. Price is negotiable, depending on the level of the food and the service. Ambiance is last on my list. The Inn of the Seventh Ray offers extremely overpriced food served in unimpressive fashion. My wife had a miniscule piece of overcooked salmon for $25 and I had the rib eye cap for $29. It was about the size of a can of tuna, and was nearly 1/3 fat. Not a nicely marbled piece of meat, but chunks of fat you would never eat in your life. It was served over a handful of sliced potatoes and topped with a creamy-ish concoction and a few fresh greens. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind paying for a quality steak, or a quality anything for that matter, and I understand the importance of a nice location in which to eat dinner. But if you're gonna overcharge me for a tiny piece of fatty beef because your restaurant is in a charming spot, at least have a solid wait staff. Our waitress was very nice, but considering our party's bill was $400 for 8 people (2 kids), I was underwhelmed, to say the least. I know we'll never go back there and recommend you go anywhere else for dinner as well. Pros: Ambiance Cons: Overpriced mediocre food and not so great service more

A little disappointed by the reviews I've read because I thought this would be a great place for our wedding ceremony & reception... but now - I am HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS about it. From the Health Dept. closure & bad service & food to the ""crashed in side of the car"" of the couple who attended a wedding there, combined with management's subsequent lack of responsibility for the damage, I won't EVEN risk it. NO WAY! This place sounds like a disaster. I would die if one of my guests car's were ruined by the valet. The only thing I personally have to go on in regards to a personal experience with them is that I emailed the Inn asking about dates available. My email was answered with with a couple dates and I was to look over the estimate for 60 guests. The estimate was not attached for me to review, and when I requested it again, I never got a response. Nice. These reviews made this an easy one to cross off my list - like the hostess did to the wise couple who decided to leave on Valentine's Day after what seemed like a total fiasco. Ironically, the dates the lady offered me are the Fr. & Sat. of the Valentine's Day weekend. HA! No thanks. So glad I read these reviews. I hope she never responds. Pros: Setting Cons: Um, everything else? more

Excellent place to take a date. Very romantic. I am a wine enthusiast and was happy to see that the wine list was superb. Kudos to the wine director. Food was also good. I recommend it highly. Pros: Top-notch Wine List, great setting more

I went to dinner at the Inn of the Seventh Ray with a good friend of mine that I hadn't seen in quite some time. I specifically wanted to eat somewhere that would be not only tasty, but lovely and charming to make our reunion more special. The Inn was the perfect place. Its' beautiful, peaceful surroundings were wonderfully matched by an award-winning wine list that I was suprised to find. (the selections were unique and top quality, not easy to find sometimes in this town) The food was incredibly fresh and the server was extremely helpful and knowledgable. Needless to say, we had a wonderful time. I would recommend this restaurant to all. Pros: Perfect wine list, amazing ambiance, great food more

My husband and I were thrilled to be a part of a HUGE wedding hosted at the Inn -- a place we've been to many times over the past 20 years. Since virtually everyone arrived at the same time, there was a line of cars for the valet. We turned our car over. About 6 hours later we went to get our car and, strangely, the valet pulled the car past us and opened the passenger door from the inside. I didn't notice why he made that move until we got home. The ENTIRE RIGHT QUARTER PANEL of my car was smashed. We contacted the Inn the next day. They listened to our story and we followed up with the appropriate estimate for repair. Then all of our subsequent calls and emails were ignored. After months of effort, we were finally able to speak to the owner who declared that this had never happened before, so it couldn't have happened now. That was the last we have ever heard. Considering the size of the wedding and the amount of money they made, one would have thought they would accept the responsibility and use their insurance to cover the damage done by their valet. So, after 20 years of going to the Inn, we will now never return. We'll be too busy spending $1,100 to repair the car. Oh, and by the way: The Inn of the 7th ray was closed down by the health dept on Thursday July 25 2008 for unsanitary conditions (an infestation of r oaches). You can confirm this with the Los Angeles County Health dept or The Topanga Messenger. * Pros: very high prices * Cons: unsanitary conditions Pros: Very pretty and the worst service across the board! Cons: Lack of integrity and responsibility of the owner more

Stay Away! We went there Friday night (3-13-09) to check it out as a possible place to host our wedding reception. At first the setting was great, great outdoor atmosphere, etc., but we quickly found out why only about 10% of the restaurant occupied at 8pm on a Friday night! It took about 15 minutes to be greeted by our waitress (who claimed to have been working there for 15 years!), and we saw her only 3 times after that. The service was just terrible, the food, not much better. We had a beet salad which was good, I order the Sea Bass, and my finance ordered a meat dish. The fish was $38 bucks, and severely overcooked. I wanted to complain, but could not find ANY staff around, so I sucked it up and ate it. We poured our own wine all night, had to ask for bread and empty plates piled up on our table until we ended up stacking them ourselves. During the meal, I went looking for the restroom. With nobody to ask I wandered aimlessly until I ran into a woman to ask. Her reply was: That?s what I?m looking for! This stranger and I sent on a quest which finally ended when we found them back up the larger stairway to the front door, totally removed from the restaurant. We elected to pass on dessert and go somewhere else, waited another 15 minutes for our check, finally gave the credit card to another waiter, and never once saw our veteran waitress again. Pros: setting was good wit a great outdoor atmosphere Cons: The service was just terrible, the food, not much better more

Having read great things online, we were considering the Inn as a wedding venue and decided to check it out over Valentine's dinner. \r \r We arrived about 5 minutes early for our 9:30 reservation (the earliest we were able to get with two weeks notice) and we instantly knew something was wrong. The restaurant was disastrously overbooked. There was a terrible back-up for the valet and the crowd packed into the foyer poured into parking lot. While we shivered in the cold and waited to talk to the hostess, we overheard the loud complaints of others who had been waiting 30-45 minutes past their reservation time to get a table. The hostess had long since given into frustration and couldn't muster even a glimmer of courtesy. It was an exceptionally cold night and the restaurant seemed to be experiencing a shortage of heat lamps to complement the dearth of service. While we waited in the chill, breathing the nauseatingly heavily perfumed air and exhaling frosty white clouds, we came to our decision. When we were finally able to speak to the hostess, we told her we would prefer to cancel our reservation rather than endure the up to an hour wait for a table. She brusquely crossed our names off the list.\r \r We overheard more horror stories as we waited in valet line to retrieve our car. They had lost our keys and, though the valets working were generally kind and concerned, the extremely long line was growing agitated and there was little they could do to help us. We stood in the parking lot for half an hour nagging every valet who passed with questions about where our car or keys could be. Eventually, they found our car and discovered that the keys had been left inside. The valet who found it kindly declined the tip we offered with his apologies and we were only too happy to leave the Inn of the Seventh Ray having only lost an hour of our time. \r Pros: Kindly valet staff, even when overbooked Cons: Horrifically bad management, poor service, overly perfumed air more

I had the worst experience on Valentine's Day 09 at this restaurant. The waitress forgot to bring my wine, the valet parker almost blew up my car, almost everything we ordered and asked for was either wrong or forgotten to be brought to the table. The hostess did not welcome people. I will never go back to this restaurant again and do not recommend it to anyone. Very overpriced and the food was not good at all. Pros: The restaurant looks very nice. Cons: Service is horrible and food is not that great. more

Oh boy, went here on Vday and it was a DISASTER. Obviously overbooked, overpriced, and understaffed, this place is an embarrassment... A brief description of our first and last venture to this horrible restaurant:\r \r 1 - Our reservation was at 9:15, we were seated at 10:15. There is no bar to wait at; there is a bookstore that was crammed wall-to-wall to everyone else who was waiting for their table as well.\r \r 2 - There was a CONSTANT LOUD BANGING NOISE. I'm assuming this was coming from the kitchen... but could have been some kind of garbage shoot? I really have no idea....\r \r 3 - We had to send back our soup because it was room temperature (i'm not an expert, but I assume soup is either SUPPOSED to be cold or hot, this was neither) When we got it back, it wasn't much warmer.\r \r 4 - My boyfriend's chair BROKE! He literally fell to the ground. There was no waiter anywhere in the vicinity to help us, so he got on his knees, fixed the chair, and sat back down. The second time it broke, he got up and swapped the chair with an empty one on the other side of the room. This whole time there was not a single restaurant employee anywhere near us. Where were they?!?! When we finally caught the eye of a waiter, we explained what happened, he apologized and took away the broken chair...\r \r 5 - The fish appetizer tasted bad to me, I took one bite and refused to eat the rest of it. My boyfriend did eat it and he's been sick to his stomach all day... Maybe it's just a coincidence, but I wouldn't eat there again.\r \r 6 - Broken-chair and all, our bill was close to 300 dollars for 2 people.\r \r To be fair - the staff is well-meaning, but just horribly managed and obviously over-extended. \r \r For a place that sells books about Karma, you think the mgmt would actually care about treating people decently...\r \r Pros: A friendly hostess who was obviously getting yelled at all night, friendly wait-staff Cons: Mediocre food at ""Fine-Dining"" prices, horribly managed and understaffed. more

I was so excited when we pulled up to the restaurant because I have been wanting to eat there for 3 years. However, by the time our soup came out I was ready to go home. On Valentines Day, the busiest day of the year, the restaurant was probably under-staffed about 10 waiters... and the staff they had were completely incompetent. We were seated for almost 2 hours before we got our entree and we had to BEG for everything we got. I had to ask for my wine 4 times before it actually came, it took our waiter a half hour even to show up at the table, and after speaking to the manager 3 times about the delays, it didn't help anything go faster. And you think the manager would have taken at least a glass of wine of our $300 bill....no way! The place is so beautiful, it's such a shame that the unbelievably HORRIBLE service ruined our whole experience. I have worked at 100's of restaurants, and I know that when a place gets that busy and is that understaffed, the managers go and put on an apron and play waiter for the night. This was inexcusable. I would never go back. I would not recommend going during any busy night or any night between the months of October-March. It gets pretty cold outside and the outside is the place to sit. Pros: great ambience Cons: HORRIBLE SERVICE more