Pleasure Med Restaurant

Pleasure Med, a West Hollywood cannabis complex on Santa Monica Boulevard, offers a luxurious experience connected to Pleasure Chest. The redesigned building features three areas: a ground-floor retail space, a second-floor lounge for consumption, and an outdoor restaurant and bar.

The retail and lounge areas draw inspiration from the “faded glory” of Havana, Cuba, combining aged textures with tropical luxury to create an atmosphere of abundance and ease. The retail floor evokes an old Havana apothecary with full-height wood shelving, glass cabinets, and detailed displays. Medium oak millwork with an aged finish is set against a diagonal checkerboard of tumbled black and white marble. A two-tiered, beaded chandelier is the focal point of the coffered ceiling. Fluted glass panels on the retail sections provide privacy from the stairs while allowing natural light from a central skylight.

A glass stairwell leads to the second-floor lounge, designed to feel like a sprawling colonial residence with hidden rooms and a central courtyard offering views of the Hollywood Hills. The “courtyard” features a marble-topped bar with copper accents, situated beneath a large, retractable skylight and flanked by six semicircular booths in warm walnut with caning and rust-colored upholstery. Pete glass orb pendants hang at varying heights among tropical plants, creating an intimate and delightful ambiance. Separate wings house a private dining room and a sala intended for conversation and relaxation, both enclosed by floor-to-ceiling decorative steel and obscured glass systems.

The private dining room accommodates 16 guests at inlaid walnut tables with rich green leather chairs. Above, elaborate cut-glass chandeliers with a floral motif contrast with ornate pink and deep scarlet wallpaper. The main lounge is the building’s most intimate and sophisticated space, a verdant oasis with rich parquet floors, brass-banded marble tabletops, and walls lined with a plush, emerald banquette featuring channel tufting and turned walnut legs. Geometric sconces in a metallic gold finish, mirrors, painted molding, and staghorn ferns decorate the walls.

Located between the kitchen and the main building, the bar/restaurant includes a small outdoor seating area shaded by a light-filtering trellis. The relaxed, plant-filled outdoor spaces feature white oak furniture paired with cement tabletops displaying a mint-based tropical design. Polished stone surfaces adorn the bar and high tables.

Design: Studio UNLTD
Photography: Ashley Randall