The 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles, now in its 13th edition, is a guide to excellence but also an annual cultural snapshot. Names of familiar taquerias or fine-dining temples may appear, but the worlds in and around them are always changing.
Food columnist Jenn Harris joins me for the second year as co-author. Her hometown camaraderie was essential after I spent months journeying the state to write The Times’ inaugural 101 Best Restaurants in California, published in June.
We can all use more fellowship right now. In an already challenging decade for Los Angeles, the fires and immigration raids we witnessed in 2025 stretched the imagination in their horrors. Every major calamity affects the restaurant industry, deepening uncertainty and triggering closures. Yet Jenn and I noticed something specific over weeks and weeks of recent dining. Some restaurants understandably buckled down and stayed their creative courses. At others, though, chefs inspiringly leaned in, tapping into higher realms of inventiveness or joyful quirkiness. In those places, creativity felt like an act of resistance. It helped us, and no doubt other diners, feel hopeful.
The best places to have a cocktail or coffee in Los Angeles, from matcha to margaritas.
In that spirit, we’ve included 31 fresh entrants this year. Among them: a charismatic supper club in South-Central Los Angeles where live jazz plays nightly; a hidden downtown restaurant serving singular Turkish dishes; a weekend taco stand with one of the city’s most distinct regional Mexican salsas (hint: there’s mustard); new neighborhood mainstays in Montrose, Westchester and Hermosa Beach; and a 10-seat counter in Little Tokyo pushing the definitions of modern Korean cooking.
The newcomer to the No. 1 ranking is an icon that synthesizes community values and notions of deliciousness so vital right now.
A single inductee ascends to the Hall of Fame this year. If you’ve been dining out in L.A. over the past dozen years, you know its name. We also highlight seven new favorite drinking destinations — mostly bars and restaurants that lead a recent next-level cocktail boom, but also two standout options for coffee and Japanese tea (yes, matcha, but much more too).
Our celebration, amid difficulties, also affirms the city’s tenacity. We want the guide to be useful. Enjoy debating our choices. What’s the 102nd best restaurant? It’s your favorite we left off. Maybe head there this week, or book it for an approaching special occasion. I imagine the staff will be really happy to see you.
— Bill Addison
These restaurants are so defining of what it means to eat and live in Southern California — that they’ve earned a place of honor for all time.
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Panda Inn
Pasadena Chinese American $$
Founders Andrew Cherng and his father, chef Ming-Tsai Cherng, may have made the greatest contributions to Chinese American cuisine in the last century. The two opened the original Panda Inn in Pasadena in 1973. Andrew and his wife Peggy would later introduce the first Panda Express at the Glendale Galleria food court a decade later. The restaurants are widely credited with the invention of orange chicken, and dishes like beef and broccoli and General Tso’s chicken became a part of the greater American culinary vernacular in the woks of the Panda restaurants. The original Panda Inn reopened in late 2024 after two years and a complete overhaul, with new dishes introduced by executive chef Aiguo Yang. The braised lion’s head meatballs are a regional specialty of the Yangzhou province, where both Yang and Ming-Tsai are from. They’re soft and supple like giant orbs of dumpling filling, submerged in a rich, brown gravy. Yang also tweaked the recipes for some of the restaurant’s most recognizable dishes, including bumping up the citrus in the orange chicken. The nuggets of fried chicken are crisp under the familiar glaze, with a sun-ripened citrus flavor. It’s the same Panda Inn that earned legions of loyal fans, with a much swankier dining room, a few new regional specialties and orange chicken that’s better than ever.
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Tun Lahmajo
Burbank Armenian $$
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
The primary draw at Tun Lahmajo, a restaurant in Burbank lined with grainy woods to resemble a summer cabin, is right there in the name. A mottled, golden-edged lahmajo lands on nearly every table — or maybe three or four of them, for every person in a group. Cooks here stretch the flatbread nearly as thin as a water cracker, though the flavor has far more char and tang. A silky-rough mixture of seasoned beef and tomato paste is smeared right to the brim, which often handsomely buckles in the heat of baking. This signature, consistent and excellent, has already been embraced by L.A.’s Armenian community. Keep scanning the menu, though. Very few local places delve so deeply into the regionally specific Armenian repertoire. Among khashlama, a category of brothy stews, the generously sized fish version is a particular joy, brought out in a pot with hunks of trout (watch for bones), peeled potatoes and whole peppers, and heaped with dill, parsley and other feathery herbs. Aveolouk (greens with walnut and pomegranate) and strained yogurt, mulchy with herbs, make for substantial sides. Circling back to breads: I prefer the lahmajo plain, and for hedonism order the puffed Megrelakan khachapuri rich in eggs, butter and grated sulguni cheese. Servers carry it wobbling through the dining room, deflating like a souffle. As the speckled pie cools and its ingredients settle and condense, an appealing salty-sharpness becomes more overt.
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Soowon Galbi
Koreatown Korean Barbecue $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The best Korean barbecue restaurants don’t crowd your table-top grill with every cut of steak and pork. Purists know that you seek out specific cuts at different restaurants, your pursuit of bulgogi taking you to one shopping center while the finest slabs of pork belly can be found in another. For the marinated short ribs known as galbi, there is only Soowon Galbi. The restaurant marinates flat, wide strips of short rib in a sweet and savory elixir of soy, garlic, ginger and other aromatics for 48 hours. The meat curtains are splayed over the grill, then monitored by the watchful eye of your server, who will seem to appear out of nowhere to flip or cut the meat at just the right moment. The heavily marbled ribs baste in their own fat, and the sugar in the marinade creates crispy, curling edges. The dduk galbi uses the same marinade to flavor minced short rib formed into a tire-sized patty on the grill. Though the galbi is the thing to order, this place is much more than a one-hit restaurant. Don’t miss the perilla seed stew, with a rich and earthy broth and chewy hand-torn noodles.
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Kang Kang Food Court
Alhambra Chinese $
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
When friends ask to go on a dumpling crawl, I build an itinerary that involves an array of styles. Hui Tou Xiang for the blintz-shaped pockets of juicy pork and beef. Shanghai Dumpling House for the salted egg xiao long bao so heavy with soup they seem to droop. I always end the crawl at Kang Kang Food Court. The sheng jian bao, listed as small pan-fried bao on the menu, are always everyone’s favorite. Each has a crispy bottom, a soft, fluffy yeasted bun in the middle, a thin, chewy top and a juicy pork filling. This textural paradox creates the sensation of three dumplings in one. For more than two decades, the sheng jian bao at Kang Kang Food Court have been the gold standard, served with sweet vinegar for dipping. It may be tempting to take a big bite as soon as they hit the table, but it’s a mistake you make only once. Co-owner John Chin Yu Yeh created a poem to keep diners from sending hot filling across the table: Take a small bite, “blow up” on the dumpling, then slowly sip the juicy filling from the small hole. It’s posted on the wall in case you forget.
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El Bacano
North Hollywood Dominican $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Siblings Deany Santana and Jonathan Santana worked together years ago in their family-run Dominican restaurant in Anchorage; in summer 2023 they reunited to serve their mother’s and grandmother’s recipes from a 16-seat storefront in a North Hollywood strip mall. Deany often can be seen through the kitchen window tending pots of various meats infused with lime juice, onions, garlic, oregano and other spices. The first one to try: Santana’s chicken, Jonathan’s renaming of the classic Dominican pollo guisado. The bird, richly browned, simmers with thinly sliced peppers in liquid that becomes a brothy, intense gravy. El Bacano unlocks its doors at noon, but a quintessential Dominican breakfast plate awaits any time of day: mangú (mashed plantains) with los tres golpes, or “the three hits” — two fried eggs, slabs of griddled salami and thin rectangles of queso frito. A staffer will ask if you prefer the plantains green or ripe, and my answer is the one the Santanas recommend: a smooth yet textured mixture of the two. As a side order, the queso frito also makes a munchy, salty midday snack. So does a hot empanada, its half-moon shape shattering to unloose a magma flow of stretchy yellow cheese and diced salami.
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Surawon Tofu House
Koreatown Korean
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
There are likely hundreds of restaurants offering soondubu jjigae in Koreatown, but I don’t know that you’ll find a version more satisfying than the mini cauldrons served in the modest dining room of Surawon Tofu House. The soup is roiling when it hits the table, a raging inferno of exploding bubbles. The broth tastes long-simmered, kissed with heat and tinged red with gochugaru. Each bowl is crowded with boulders of trembling tofu made by owner Sun Los Lee. She prepares yellow soy bean and black soy bean tofu daily. Both are silky, soft and supple as custard, though the black soy beans contribute an earthy richness with nutty, sesame-like undertones. Her bowl of soondubu jjigae is a one-pot meal you can lose yourself in. The temperature of the soup requires that you take your time consuming, or risk scalding the inside of your mouth. Perhaps order a leek and vegetable pancake, or a plate of glass noodles to enjoy while you wait for the soup to cool down. Never one for patience, the slight burn is more than worth it.
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M Joy
San Gabriel Valley Halal $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Lamb shank, lamb ribs, lamb skewers, lamb bone soup, rice glossy from rich lamb stock: That’s basically the menu at M Joy in San Gabriel, the second U.S. location (after first opening in Anaheim) of a fast-casual chain based in Hangzhou, China. Even if lamb is not your jam, this could be the place that flips your opinion. The restaurant imports lean, grass-fed lamb from New Zealand, and the shank in particular, served over rice flecked with soft bits of carrot, is the mildest, most lulling possible presentation of the meat. Condiments — burgundy-red chile oil, pickled onion spears, shredded carrot salad for crisp contrast — introduce vivid dimensions. Fundamentally, the dish is a deconstructed riff on lamb pilaf traditions closely associated with the Uyghur people of China’s Xinjiang province, once the easternmost terminus on the ancient trade routes that stretched to what became Istanbul and Italy. For more direct spice, order the grilled ribs crusted with cumin and chile flakes, quelling the heat with sips of salted milk tea and yogurt studded with raisins for dessert.
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Rajdhani
Artesia Indian $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The strip malls of Artesia along Pioneer Boulevard, particularly between 183rd Street and Park Avenue, are home to our richest density of regionally specific Indian restaurants. Where to plunge in first? Consider the place where decisions are easiest. Traffic crawls along maddeningly through these blocks, but Rajdhani sits on the second floor of a parking structure where a few spots can be found even on the most crowded weekends. The restaurant serves only a Gujarati-style vegetarian thali in two formats: a single serving, or all you can eat. Choose the latter, and servers place a silver tray in front of you and begin calmly swarming. They deliver mixed vegetable pakoras with chutneys and dhokla (a savory-sweet, canary-yellow cake made with chickpea flour) as opening snacks, followed by griddled roti, puffed puri, kadhi (warmed spiced yogurt), rice if you ask and, finally, a variation on dal and two sabzi (cooked vegetable dishes) that change daily. A Wednesday might bring turiya patra — an earthy combination of juicy-crisp ridge gourd and soft rolled taro leaves with a rustling texture, often served at weddings in Gujarat — and the next day will be undhiyu, a mix of winter vegetables sparked with green chiles and dusted with grated coconut. The meal includes dessert: I suggest silky, warm carrot halva, or shrikhand, thickened yogurt perfumed with saffron and cardamom.
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Macheen
Boyle Heights Mexican $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The stellar breakfast burritos at siblings Ana and Jonathan Perez’s restaurant inside Milpa Kitchen in Boyle Heights start in a single pan on the stove. It’s a medium-sized skillet similar to the one I favor at home, its handle and sides just as weathered. I watch as the cook uses the spatula to fold the eggs over low heat, the pillow-like texture visible from across the room. There’s a flurry of cheese, then the eggs are whisked from the heat at the exact moment the two fuse into a single, perfect cloud. The eggs are tumbled onto a fresh tortilla along with chile-dusted tater tots and your choice of meat. I’m partial to the way the strands of birria intertwine with the cheesy eggs, creating a series of cohesive bites infused with fruity guajillos, garlic and bay leaf. The tortillas are stuffed until nearly bursting, the egg, potato and meat bulging and visible through the surface of the burrito. For lunch, there are a handful of tacos built on blue corn tortillas, reminiscent of the masterful creations Jonathan first presented years ago while operating a roaming taqueria. Mushrooms are marinated in al pastor-style spices and kissed with smoke on the grill. A smear of choribeans supplies a soft landing for ropes of brisket and a salsa de aguacate that pulses with brilliant acidity. These are tacos — and burritos — as art. The kind you can consider, admire, then consume in 90 seconds.
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Sincerely Syria
Sherman Oaks Syrian $
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Adham Kamal, raised in As-Suwayda (sometimes also spelled Sweida) in southwestern Syria, brings to Los Angeles the finely shaved, deep-down-marinated shawarma he learned to make as a teenager. He operates locations in Sherman Oaks, Pasadena, Anaheim and the first local stand he ran near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, then called Hollywood Shawarma. Choices at each storefront come down to two menu options: spiced lamb and beef, referred to as lahme (meat) in Arabic, or lemony chicken, called djej. Each has a traditional sauce: tahini-based tarator for lahme, toum (whipped garlic paste) for djej. The hardest decisions concern size and form. Do you want a one-handed classic stuffed pita, or a 12-inch version, made using extra-thin flour tortillas, that comes as a plate with fries? Think smaller is my suggestion, and ask for the wrap to be rolled using only one round side of a pita, a common request among regulars. It’s about proportions. A shawarma wrap is not a burrito. It is meant to be compact and intense. The winning touch: Kamal and his staff finish the packet on the griddle, searing until every angle is browned and crackling.
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Mario’s Butcher Shop
Newport Beach Butcher Shop Sandwich Shop $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Imagine a perfectly seasoned steak with a deep mahogany crust and a ruby center. The kind of steak you spring for on a special occasion. A centerpiece at the best steakhouse in town. That’s the steak Mario Llamas is using for his paper-wrapped sandwiches, sliced and piled onto a crusty roll dripping with chimichurri. Llamas, who used to be the chef at an Argentine steakhouse, runs Mario’s Butcher Shop in Newport Beach. He recently remodeled the space to include an expanded area for merchandise, a longer butcher case and more room for waiting customers. And there are many, with weekend crowds dressed in college sweatshirts, surfer gear and soccer uniforms. Llamas is a master at stuff between bread, smoking his own pastrami and curing a variety of deli meats. His smashburgers aren’t squashed into oblivion, the patties retaining prized meat juices despite their crispy halos. The sandwich that always leaves me a little breathless is the smoked bologna, heaped onto a soft roll slathered with yellow mustard. The last time I ordered it, the person at the register said, “It really tastes like a hot dog today.” It did. Like the best hot dog in the universe.
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Backbone
Glendale Eclectic $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Nathan McCall and Karen Yoo opened Backbone restaurant in north Glendale in late 2024, just south of Montrose. It’s an area that feels like an actual small town, nestled into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The location alone makes Backbone somewhat of a hidden gem, along with an ambitious menu that traverses the globe. The national dish of Monaco makes an appearance as a trio of barbajuan, the deep-fried pockets of pastry stuffed with velvety potato, Comté and leeks. Uni tongues are draped over a short stack of waffles dressed with nori honey butter and a sharp yuzu whipped cream. McCall and Yoo previously ran butcher shop McCall’s Meat & Fish Co., which they sold in 2021. At Backbone, McCall is demonstrating a similarly flawless command of proteins from both land and sea, including steaks that achieve the perfect synergy of salt, fat and heat. Yoo is making desserts you’ll want to leave room for, like her sphere of Key lime custard encased in a speculoos cookie crust. Backbone is very much a neighborhood restaurant, with McCall and Yoo emerging from the kitchen to offer warm greetings to diners throughout the evening. And when each table gets an order of Yoo’s hot, perfect madeleines to finish the meal? Everyone feels like a regular.
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Perle
Pasadena French $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Is there such a thing as a necessary indulgence? I contemplate this question as I near the end of each meal at Perle. Owners Dean Yasharian and Pauline Zee opened Perle in Old Pasadena in the summer of 2020, naming the restaurant after their eldest daughter. Yasharian cooked for more than a decade at Restaurant Daniel in New York City, and the menu at Perle leans classic French. The pâté campagne will transport you to a chic charcuterie in Montmartre, with its rustic texture and robust porky flavors. The Dover sole meunière is supple and tender, bathed in a heavenly brown butter sauce. And most of Yasharian’s traditional bistro fare, including the escargots, salade lyonnaise and caviar blini, have a vegetarian counterpart on the menu. Even as I finish the last dredges of every dish on the table, Yasharian’s variation on a tarte tatin beckons. The apples soften in the oven, their juices running into an amber caramel beneath. A layer of puff pastry bakes over the top, the buttery dough fusing to the apples and caramel before he flips the tart out of the pan. Each spoonful offers a satisfying crack of lacquered pastry and tender fruit. It’s better than the eight versions I recently ate in Paris, and the definition of a necessary indulgence.
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Bistro Na’s
Temple City Chinese $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Do you follow Bistro Na’s on Instagram? It’s the best way to learn about executive chef Tian Yong’s seasonal menus at the Temple City restaurant. I frequent Bistro Na’s – known for its Chinese imperial-inspired cuisine – for the crispy shrimp, fried and lacquered in a sweet and sticky hawthorn glaze. The Peking duck, available by advanced reservation and in limited quantities, involves a three-day preparation that results in the most lavish, mind-bogglingly delicious presentation of meat and crispy skin. But the seasonal menus are where Yong is most ambitious, and sometimes, deeply personal. He recently transported diners back to his childhood in Xidan, Beijing, to the hutong where he lived near a restaurant that specialized in Yanji noodles. It’s a dish from the city in northeast China’s Jilin province, near the North Korean border. Similar to Korean naengmyeon, TYong’s Yanji noodles were served as a tangle of springy buckwheat noodles in an ice-cold broth suspended in perfect equilibrium, just sweet enough with an earthy, meaty backbone. Kimchi, watermelon, shredded cucumber, pickled radish, boiled egg, beef shank and chile sauce were all arranged over the top like a color wheel. I miss the cold noodles, but I’m looking forward to whatever TYong creates next.
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Las Segovias
Huntington Park Nicaraguan $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Indio viejo is a hearty stew with strands of beef nestled in a masa-thickened, velvety gravy that will cling to your spoon and most likely your ribs. “It’s so good, right?” My server beams with pride as he watches me scrape the edges of the bowl. “This dish is very special to me.” That pride radiates from every wall mural and flag in the dining room and from the small marketplace at the rear that advertises snacks and clothing in the official blue and white colors of Nicaragua. The restaurant offers an expansive menu of dishes specific to the Central American country. The nacatamal is custard-like in the center, every bite a surprise of bone-in pork ribs, tomato, rice and potato tinged with sour orange. The carne asada platter is enough for two, with a handsome cut of marinated beef, a triangle of fried cheese, gallo pinto and crispy or soft plantains. Quesillos are served in plastic bags that barely contain the thick corn tortillas, crema and caramelized onion. Even if you experience a fullness not previously imaginable, find room for the buñuelos de yuca y queso. The pucks of cassava and cheese are fried until crisp and served in a cinnamon-and-clove syrup that tastes like the holidays.
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Lalibela
Little Ethiopia Ethiopian $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Terrific Ethiopian restaurants thrive throughout Los Angeles: Aunt Yvette’s Kitchen in Eagle Rock and Queen of Sheba in Inglewood are two neighborhood favorites. But the block of buildings on Fairfax Avenue between Olympic Boulevard and Whitworth Drive, designated Little Ethiopia by the City Council in 2002, is our treasure trove for the cuisine. Tenagne Belachew worked in several of the area’s restaurants before opening her own place with her seven children in 2015. For overall consistency, with a menu available for lunch or dinner that’s broader than most of its counterparts, Lalibela stands apart. Build any meal around the 11-dish “veggie utopia,” elegant in its chromatic wheel of salads, simmered vegetables and profoundly spiced lentil purees spread over injera. On the opposite end of the food chain, I’m especially keen on beef in traditional, barely cooked forms. “Special kitfo” is beef tartare glossed in butter infused with mitmita (a rounded, cardamom-forward spice blend) and matched with fluffy curds of fresh cheese and pureed collards. Roughly chopped onion and jalapeño give crunch to a Somali version of kitfo. Gored gored, not often seen on local menus, varnishes cubed beef with mitmita and a second, intensely chile-forward spice paste called awaze. To drink? Tej (honey wine) or a bracing cup of Ethiopian coffee, sugar optional.
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Phởholic
Garden Grove Vietnamese $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Food obsessives love to fight over pho, and the Little Saigon community in Orange County gives us limitless points for debate. Jenn and I agree on our top choice: Phởholic, Gordon Pham’s venture that began in 2015. He adapted the restaurant’s broth recipe from the pho shops his family ran in Vietnam, and it lands in the sweet spots: beefy yet bright, rich but not oily, and with warm, complex spices rippling through each spoonful without bulldozing over subtler flavors. Fans like to point out the rare (and sporadically available) addition of citrusy-musky ngò ôm among the usual herb garnishes. I come with someone willing to share and order two bowls: the No. 8, with two cuts of flank steak (I sometimes ask for meatballs for more texture), and the blowout No. 16 with deliciously Jurassic hunks of beef shank and oxtail. Outposts exist in Costa Mesa and Stanton, but head first to the original restaurant in Westminster, where the energy is always high and, even when crowded, the turnover is fast. Not sure who needs to hear this, but we can vouch that the Westminster location also sells several plush Labubu figures at the register.
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Lum-Ka-Naad
Northridge Thai $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Researching a recent guide to the best Thai restaurants across Los Angeles led me to a first meal at Lum-Ka-Naad, a treasure that operates locations (with some slight variations in the name’s spelling) in Encino and Woodland Hills. Only its 21-year-old Northridge flagship, though, consistently has matriarch Ratri Sonbalee and her signature dish, kuah gling krah dook moo. A dryish curry, somewhere between a paste and a sauce, clings to meaty pork spare rib nubs. The flavors stack like harmonies: citrusy high notes from makrut lime leaves, bass tones from earthen turmeric root. Sonbalee grew up in Krabi, a beach town on the western coast of southern Thailand, but she married into a family with roots in the north and the strongest sections of the menu — the ones detailing northern and southern specialties — reflect the union. From the south, look for kanom jeen tai pla, a deliciously potent and herbal soup highlighting smoked and fermented fish. We asked our server to suggest a northern-style noodle dish. He pointed out kang ho, a pan-fried assembly of vermicelli and vegetables, seasoned with Thai-Burmese curry powder, that was originally conceived as a way to use leftovers. Everything tasted impeccably fresh in this version, and popped even more with the addition of shrimp.
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Casa Gish Bac
Pico-Union Oaxacan $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Earlier this year, David and Maria Ramos closed the original, 15-year-old location of their Oaxacan restaurant to focus on the new, much larger Casa Gish Bac in Pico Union. Set in a former banquet hall with a full liquor license, the space has a rainbow ceiling covered in papel picado. The menu should be familiar to longtime fans of the Ramos’ Valles Centrales cuisine. Tlayudas blanketed in refried beans, quesillo and cabbage. Chicken buried under mole negro. Enchiladas filled and folded into triangles and doused in a red mole with a deep, almost bitter roasted chile flavor. Go with a group and order generously. And plan to visit on a weekend if you want a taste of the barbacoa blanca; pit-roasted with avocado leaves, it’s tender and succulent, with subtle notes of garlic, cumin and anise. Maria, a third-generation barbacoa specialist, offers her barbacoa roja daily, redolent of tomato and dried chiles. The new Casa Gish Bac is just as charming as the original, only now you can order a cold beer to sip while you demolish that tlayuda.
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Tomat
Westchester Californian $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Harry Posner and Natalie Dial swapped careers in medicine and public health, respectively, to devote themselves to an all-day restaurant with a dining room, event space and rooftop terrace in Westchester, where Dial’s family has roots going back four generations. Posner’s ambitious menus catalyze his heritages (including Iranian, most essentially conveyed through crusty-plush barbari bread served with roasted tomato butter); his experiences baking in Italy and cooking on the line in Tokyo; and the very Californian lens through which he marries produce from a nearby garden with a global pantry of seasonings. There’s a lot going on, but one key fact unlocks the secret to the most pleasure-filled meals at Tomat: Posner grew up in England. Follow the lead to a starter of Welsh rarebit, which for the unindoctrinated is smooth, cheddary cheese sauce spread across toast. Tempura broccoli or other seasonal vegetables replace potatoes in a brainy riff on fish and chips. Follow lamb, properly accompanied by mint jelly, with the pure succor of sticky toffee pudding. For a year I’ve been thinking about the stargazy pie, his spin on a savory Cornish seafood pastry, full of smoked trout and with decorative prawn tails poking out from the puffy crust. May it return as a special this winter. If you’re just coming off a daytime flight, swing by for a Scotch egg, its jammy yolk hidden by a crust of black sausage. I know. I’m recommending British fare five minutes from LAX. Welcome, once again, to the delicious enigmas of Los Angeles.
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Petit Trois
Hollywood French $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
At face value, the two locations of Petit Trois — the first off Melrose and Highland, with mostly covered-outdoor seating, and its roomier Sherman Oaks sibling — have become pleasant destinations for bistro classics: onion soup under its molten cap of Gruyère and Emmentaler, salade Lyonnaise riddled with bacon, proper plates of trout almondine and filet au poivre, silken chocolate mousse offset with toasted hazelnuts. These days it’s a little harder, but not impossible, to detect the subversive streak that propelled chef-owner Ludovic Lefebvre’s career. Blurring classical technique with avant-garde imagination, his cooking this last decade, first via pop-ups and then his gone-too-soon tasting-menu boîte Trois Mec, stretched the city’s culinary boundaries into outsized new forms. When the original Petit Trois debuted in 2014 as a tiny bar, Lefebvre revealed a Frenchman’s affection and rebellion toward his mother cuisine in equal parts, while also poking fun at American excess. His cheekiness is enshrined in the cumulus omelet filled smirkingly with Boursin and the double cheeseburger swept downstream in Bordelaise sauce, and flickers anew in a recently conceived veal chop stuffed Cordon Bleu-style with ham, prosciutto and gushing Fontal. Lately he’s leaned into the limitless potato variations in the French canon: pommes paille (needle-thin straws) under tuna tartare; pommes paillasson (crisped, hashed pancake) that match the comforts of roast chicken; extra-savory pommes Sarladaise (sliced and sautéed in duck fat) to reinforce duck leg confit. Zero in on the menu’s seditious-traditionalist extremes, and Lefebvre’s greatest talents remain unmistakable.
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Somerville
View Park-Windsor Hills New American Southern $$$
The sounds of live jazz music float through the dining room from the four-piece band. The clank of ice sloshing around a shaker is audible from the bar. The party at a booth in the back erupts in a chorus of laughter. An evening at Somerville feels like a big, collective sigh, with lighting that looks like an IRL filter and the immaculate vibes of a private music club. South Los Angeles natives Yonnie Hagos and Ajay Relan opened the restaurant in late 2024 in the same View Park-Windsor Hills retail complex as the original Hilltop Coffee + Kitchen they founded. It’s named for Hotel Somerville, which later became the Dunbar Hotel, a refuge for Black artists who frequented and performed in Central Avenue’s storied bars and clubs. These musicians helped the area flourish in the early to mid-20th century, at a time when Black artists were not welcome in the city’s white-owned nightlife venues. Somerville cocktails like the Dolemite and Trouble Man are homages to icons of Black culture. Your dinner spread will likely be an eclectic mix of fried chicken sliders lavished with Petrossian caviar crème fraîche; lasagna layered with braised collard greens and béchamel; and a crisp-skinned salmon in a coconut and lemongrass curry. Every evening is dinner and a show, and everyone is welcome.
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Barsha
Hermosa Beach Middle Eastern cuisine $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Always high on my wish list for Los Angeles: more restaurants bringing the cuisines of North Africa to the forefront. Chef Lenora Marouani does her part by incorporating the flavors of Tunisia she’s learned from her wine expert husband, Adnen, and his family. The couple run two wine bar-shop hybrids, in Manhattan Beach and El Segundo, but at their Hermosa Beach restaurant the Cal-Med menu most directly expresses Tunisian cooking, generous in spice, garlic and olive oil. At Barsha, the street-food sandwich of oil-cured tuna, hard-boiled eggs and potatoes, stained vermilion with harissa, becomes bruschetta: Preserved lemon and harissa light up sous-vide tuna conserva, spread over crusty bread with mashed chickpeas and a jammy egg. Beef cheek, collapsing like the best pot roast, nearly vanishes into a tomato stew over couscous, crowned with butternut squash and shishitos. Even buttermilk-soaked fried chicken, available only during Sunday brunch, reveals hints of tabil, the spice blend abundant in coriander and caraway. Star-shaped pendant lamps cast patterned shadows across the dining room in the evenings, setting the mood for a mellow cocktail of three vermouths and sherry called — what else? — A Night in Tunisia.
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Found Oyster
East Hollywood Seafood $$
Last Word Hospitality is behind some of the most sought-after restaurants in Los Angeles, with venues that feel like instant, indispensable neighborhood staples. Found Oyster, Ari Kolender’s cozy seafood restaurant, is the group’s shining star, a catalyst for what is now a bustling block of Fountain Avenue in East Hollywood. Since opening in 2019, it’s been a destination for anyone in search of the freshest raw bar selection and a concise menu of seafood classics. There’s New England-style chowder, a wedge salad with smoky bacon, and a fried cod sandwich. The sliced raw scallops over a crunchy tostada with yuzu kosho, apple and fragrant basil may be the most compelling example of Kolender’s consistently flawless execution of anything culled from the sea. The atmosphere often feels like a boisterous, tiny house party, with patrons elbow to elbow at the counter, slurping oysters, peeling Old Bay-coated prawns and sipping Champagne. Look to the chalkboard menus found both outside and above the counter for daily specials. Depending on the season, there may be a hot, soft-shell crab sando with fennel slaw. If you spy razor clams, cooked on the plancha in smoky Espelette butter, order them.
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Los Sabrosos Al Horno
Cudahy Mexican $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Most weekends on an industrial block of Cudahy, in view of the 710 Freeway following the course of the Los Angeles River, David Delfín sets up a simple stand among other street vendors. (Check the weekly schedule on Facebook or Instagram.) His whole roasted suckling pig tacos, a style regionally specific to Nayarit, are like nothing else I know in Southern California. A taquero will chop one of two combinations — a mix of yielding cuts of meat and crackling skin, or pure pork belly — and pile it on two small corn tortillas with sliced cabbage and a duo of thin salsas, one spicier than the other and both twanging with mustard. Try one of each, and be sure to give them a bracing squeeze of lime. At first the salsa flavors slice like Bertman Original on a ballpark hot dog, but soon they mellow and meld with the pork. (My Southern roots compel me to mention the chance similarity between Delfín’s masterpiece and South Carolina whole-hog barbecue, also traditionally served with mustard-based sauce.) He doesn’t make any other kind of taco. He doesn’t need to.
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Pine & Crane
Downtown L.A. Taiwanese $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
In the evenings, the downtown branch of Vivian Ku’s Taiwanese restaurant has a line running out to the sidewalk and a dining room buzzing with diners passing popcorn chicken, pan-fried pork buns and fiery mapo tofu across the tables. Breakfast at the restaurant can feel more like a sacred affair. Ku’s congee is warm and comforting, with a texture that celebrates each grain of koshihikari rice. Crowned with bits of soft yam and a slab of pork belly, the humble bowl of porridge is transformed into something extravagant. It’s served as a set alongside a pan-fried omelet with salted turnips; a handful of peanuts tossed with tiny, salty anchovies; crunchy cucumber salad; and fermented tofu that has the funk and creaminess of your favorite aged cheese. Ku’s thousand-layer pancake has become my favorite version of a breakfast wrap, with the flaky pastry folded around soft eggs, melted cheese, Thai basil and a mild chile sauce. Her savory soy milk is like a bowl of warm tofu custard, studded with bits of pork floss, crispy youtiao and preserved greens. With a warm cup of black sesame soy milk, breakfast at Pine & Crane is easily the most important meal of the day.
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Tacos Los Cholos
Huntington Park Mexican $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Tacos Los Cholos is a place for carne asada lovers. For the people who require nothing more than salt and a hot grill. It’s a temple of meat of the highest order, where the intoxicating perfume of the mesquite grill and a cloud of smoke greet you as you enter. What began as an Anaheim pop-up in 2019 has grown to encompass a handful of locations across Southern California, including this two-story restaurant in downtown Huntington Park. The Santa Maria-style grill is directly opposite the door, hissing and crowded with beautifully marbled slabs of meat over hot, glowing coals. The menu boasts more than a dozen fillings for tacos, burritos and even baked potatoes. There’s a lot to consider, but direct your attention to the “prime” section of the menu. The rib-eye taco plops what could be half of a steak onto a pair of corn tortillas. It’s enough filling that when you attempt to fold it, half the contents spill from the back. The asada has not been hacked with a cleaver into oblivion, and it’s cooked exactly to your desired doneness. The mesquite smoke clings to the meat, permeating the bite-sized pieces and the bits of char that cling to the edges. A bite of taco. A bite of chile güero. This taco may be why humans discovered fire.
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Budonoki
East Hollywood Japanese Bar Bites $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Two-year-old Budonoki is where club meets pub, a bumping, welcoming scene that never loses sight of its essence as a Virgil Village neighborhood restaurant. The vibe: paper lanterns across the ceiling, fluorescent purple and reddish-pink lighting that recalls the curated glow of “Blade Runner 2049,” a playlist that spans the evolutions of R&B and hip-hop through the last 40 years. Founders Eric Bedroussian, Josh Hartley and chef Dan Rabilwongse model menus loosely around izakaya, with Thai and Vietnamese flavors informing Japanese-inspired drinking foods. A few sips into a citrusy martini variation using sake and shochu, and I’m ready to tear into the restaurant’s take on curry pan, flaking apart to reveal a lining of stretchy mozzarella and ground Wagyu beef simmered in sweet Japanese curry. Swipes through smooth aji verde bring cooling herbal contrast. Servers will give instructions on building naem (Thai pork sausage with crisped rice balls and slaw) into one-bite wonders. Be attentive to the slip of paper that lists the night’s specials. The best of them tend to graduate to the main menu. This includes the kitchen’s great underdog, sweet potato cooked in embers, slathered with miso butter and showered with chives. Might a recent run of yellowtail ribs, encased in curried batter as suave fish sticks, be next?
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Bar Amá
Downtown L.A. Tex-Mex $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
I want to live in Takoría, Josef Centeno’s self-described “bizarro” take on a taqueria. It’s a land where the Slayer is a massive calzone bursting with four cheeses and Italian duck sausage. Where golden queso cascades down a tower of fresh tortilla chips during Super Nacho Hour. The birria is a chile-laced vegetable stew crowded with mushrooms, chickpeas and baby turnips. A seasonal salad consists of caramelized figs tangled with bits of fried panela cheese, torn potato croquetas and salsa macha. The Negroni is made with mezcal. And where Dos Caras are two-faced tacos with a cheese-encrusted shell on one side and a perfect, mottled flour tortilla on the other. The tacos share a name with Dos Caras, a decorated luchador popular in the 1970s and ‘80s. Was this intentional? I hope so. Earlier this year, Centeno reimagined the restaurant, keeping with the San Antonio-inspired Tex-Mex throughline but side stepping to something a little off kilter, and undeniably delicious. You can still ask for his signature puffy taco, the airy fried shell filled with a variety of toppings. Only now, you can order a giant fried tortilla pocket stuffed with duck guisados smothered in queso called the quesorritto, too.
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Hakata Izakaya Hero
West Los Angeles Japanese $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Pull open the door to Hiroki Chiya’s 6-year-old izakaya, unassuming onamong a stretch of Westwood lined with Iranian restaurants and groceries, and step into a clamor that’s impressive given the restaurant’s tiny size. Rather than a Japanese California interpretation of izakaya, Chiya hews more closely to the modern concept of the genre in Japan: casual and amiably rowdy, a place to gather after work for eating and drinking in groups. That said, reserving a table here by phone, even a day or two ahead, is imperative. The pub’s name refers to the Hakata central district in Fukuoka, the sixth-largest city in Japan, built on the northern shore of Kyushu island. Its repertoire includes tonkotsu ramen. Chiya often fashions an extra-intense, and sometimes spicy, version made from pork head and knee simmered over 24 hours, which appears frequently on his handwritten list of specials. Much of the lineup flows with the micro-seasons of Japanese seafood. Tempura will encase small fish such as kibinago (a silvery swimmer in the herring family) that runs in the springtime; ayu (sweetfish) shows up in the fall, grilled and needing nothing more than a squeeze of lemon. Ask one of the composed, fast-moving servers about seasonal sake selections, though plenty of revelers stick to pitchers of Sapporo on draft.
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Osteria Mozza
Hancock Park Italian $$$
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Nearing its 20th anniversary in 2027, Osteria Mozza is comfortably ensconced as the city’s gran dama of Italian restaurants. When Nancy Silverton embarked on its opening, in tandem with Pizzeria Mozza next door, she entered the third act of an extraordinary career as chef and restaurateur, building her brand as a global culinary ambassador while continually overseeing new projects in Los Angeles — most recently among them the Larchmont diner Max and Helen’s in partnership with Phil Rosenthal. The heart of the osteria has always been the mozzarella bar, where variations from the trembliest burrata to smoked bulbs made from buffalo milk seem to defy nature’s laws in their suspension between cream and cheese. Mixed and matched with, say, mild dried cruschi peppers and garlic toast, or set over braised leeks punched with mustard vinaigrette and breadcrumbs, they remain the meal’s highlight. Mozza’s cultivated sense of timelessness — ricotta raviolo bleeding its heart of runny yolk, the rosemary olive oil cakes and lemony torta della nonna for dessert, the Italian wine list of biblical proportions — has long kept it germane in L.A.’s overdrive dining culture.
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Biriyani Kabob House
Koreatown Halal Indian Pakistani $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani Foods” reads the sign above the entrance to Enam Karim’s cramped location in a Koreatown strip mall. He opened his restaurant in 2014, devising a huge menu meant to connect the common cuisines of those three subcontinent nations. Plenty of the standard dishes — saucy chicken tikka masala, dark-green saag paneer, samosas grabbed from the hot box near the counter — are good enough. But what registers as outstanding? His Hyderabadi-style lamb biryani, and the specials that hew most closely to the cooking of Pakistan, Karim’s home country. The biryani is torrid with spice, the shank meat pulled effortlessly from the bone and the grains fluffy yet sticky from a masala of ginger, garlic, cardamom and a dozen other seasonings. Karim is mum on the recipe, but there’s a floral pheromone in there that must be kewra, a South Asian ingredient used similarly to rose water. His version of haleem, the fragrant beef and lentil porridge, is so fused in texture and flavor it translates as savory custard. For something brighter, try hariyali chicken immersed in a sauce of mint, cilantro, yogurt and ground cashews. Such specials tend to be advertised on paper taped to the wall, but Karim is an ebullient host: Just ask him what he’s made off-menu any given day.
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Darkroom
Santa Ana Eclectic $$$
Dinner at Darkroom is an invitation to leap into another dimension by way of a dimly lighted restaurant in a Santa Ana industrial complex. Chef-owner Zach Scherer crafts a menu that zigzags among Asian, Mediterranean and Latin influences, and it will likely change with each visit. Dinner may include calamari over braised cabbage cooked like sweet and slack caramelized onions. Or a Nashville swordfish brushed with a smoky, musty sauce of Calabrian chiles, red wine vinegar, butter and cayenne pepper. A slab of zucchini bread is presented as a riff on both Spanish torrijas and jambon au beurre, seared in a cast-iron skillet with copious amounts of koji butter and ribbons of Spanish ham over the top. Scherer and chef-partner Drew Adams also offer an eight-course tasting menu Thursday through Saturday evenings. Regardless of the format, it’s unlikely you’ll find a similar dinner experience in Orange County, and possibly elsewhere in the universe. BarBeverage director Gianna Marcario is a drinks whiz behind the bar, with small-batch infused vermouth highlighted in many of the low ABV cocktails. If you’re experiencing menu fatigue with the same gem lettuce salad and crudo at every other place in town, Darkroom is the answer.
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Pizzeria Bianco
Downtown L.A. Pizza $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The first time I tried the pollo Francese at Chris Bianco’s Arts District pizzeria, our party greedily finished the plate of chicken cutlets, then promptly ordered another. It was an off-menu special, and for weeks (really months) afterward, I dreamed of the chicken. The breasts were pounded thin, coated in panko breadcrumbs, cooked to a golden brown and served in a light lemon sauce that hummed with citrus. Now on the permanent menu, it’s a shining example of what Bianco does best, whether we’re talking about his pizza or hyper-seasonal antipasto plates. He once told me that after sourcing the best ingredients, “you just need to not screw it up.” His pies tend to be minimal, selecting a handful of flavors that deliver maximum effect. The Rosa is a favorite, scantily clad in shaved red onion, a sprinkling of Parmigiano-Reggiano, rosemary and Santa Barbara pistachios. I used to fly to Phoenix to eat Bianco’s pizza (and to visit a dear friend who lived there) at the pizzeria he opened out of a grocery store in 1988. It was the only crust I ever wanted to eat plain, the dough crisp and airy rather than bready, and with a slight but addictive tang. To have Bianco’s pizza in my hometown still feels like such a win. And I still never leave the crust behind.
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Delmy’s Pupusas
Atwater Village Salvadoran $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Patience is a virtue when you’re sitting under the tarp of Delmy’s Pupusas at the Silver Lake farmers market, waiting for your food to reach a temperature that won’t burn your tongue. The walls of the pupusa look like they’re ready to collapse, with bits of cheese and loroco already seeping out the seams. One bite and the pupusa gushes with a molten, gooey mess of cheese and the bitter flower buds native to Central America. You tear away big pieces of the masa, like soft corn cake with crispy brown bits strewn across the surface. With a scoop of curtido and a drizzle of red salsa, it’s pure pupusa nirvana. Ruth Sandoval’s pupusas can be found at numerous weekly farmers markets around Los Angeles, including Atwater Village and Echo Park to name a few. When she started popping up at farmers markets in 2007, Los Angeles was already a city rich with El Salvador’s national dish. Sandoval’s stand apart from the rest, filled with ingredients she often plucks from a surrounding market. And though often brimming with vegetables, chicharron or whatever else is on offer, the ratio never overwhelms the delicate flavor and texture of the masa.
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Borit Gogae
Koreatown Korean Barbecue $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“Set menu with barley rice,” reads the humble description for the kaleidoscopic meals served at 4-year-old Borit Gogae, one of Koreatown’s frontrunner restaurants of the decade. For $35 per person, the staff delivers a flood of dishes to the table. Soups, mild pumpkin porridge, salad with bouncy cubes of acorn jelly and a few crunchy mung bean pancakes precede a spread of banchan-style seasoned vegetables (among them, tea leaf, wild greens, eggplant, various mushrooms and a crucial, evolving selection of kimchi) arrayed on a woven basket. Bowls of barley rice also arrive, in which you assemble your lunch or dinner from the many elements to your taste, similarly to bibimbap, finishing with drizzles of sesame oil and staining flicks of gochujang. The family-style setup is informal and communal. Everyone winds up with the nourishing meal they want. For omnivorous gilding, you can order extra group-sized options such as deeply savory grilled short rib patties or bowls filled with raw marinated crab. Artwork by one of the six sibling owners lines the walls, and there’s a table of stacked kitchen wares for sale in one corner. The vibe is upliftingly chaotic, like a busy household — a fitting scenario for the homey style of cooking.
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Lorenzo California
Beverly Hills Sandwich Shop $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
It doesn’t matter what you pile into the middle of a sandwich. It can be pastrami, sprouts or last night’s dinner. If the bread is good, you’re more than halfway to greatness. You could close your eyes and jab a finger at any sandwich on the Lorenzo California menu and be elated at the selection. They’re all served on puffy, rectangular rolls baked each morning. The bread has the flavor of good extra-virgin olive oil, but it’s thinner and lighter than your average focaccia, with a crust that cracks and collapses into a soft and airy middle. Longtime restaurant manager Renato Araujo and his wife, Cynthia Raslan, took the money they were saving for a house and opened a small sandwich shop in Beverly Hills instead. To make the namesake Lorenzo, Araujo combines a Parmigiano sauce, roasted red peppers, toasted pistachios and a heap of shaved mortadella. It’s pure, porky bliss. He’s making more than a dozen sandwiches to order, plus a short menu of pastas. There’s barely space to make a U-turn in the shop, but do your best to grab a seat and properly tuck into a bowl of the gnocchi. The dumplings are pillowy soft in a rich lamb ragu. And if the tables are full, your sandwich, and your pasta, will be equally satisfying in the car.
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Stir Crazy
Hollywood Wine Bars $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Leek toast should unseat avocado toast as the official stuff-on-toast dish of Los Angeles. Have one meal at Stir Crazy, Macklin Casntoff, Mackenzie Hoffman and Harley Wertheimer’s teeny-tiny Melrose Avenue restaurant, and I’m confident you’ll see things my way. The leek toast is built on a brick of Bub and Grandma’s bread. It’s spread with Blakesville Creamery chèvre, a little tangy and very buttery. Soft leeks are arranged over the top in an overlapping pattern of pale green. It’s finished with a generous drizzle of kombu oil that saturates the toast in a concentrated, deep marine umami. Within the confines of the 500-square-foot room, chef Caroline Leff makes waves that resonate throughout the city. I fully expect to see leek toast at a cafe near you. I can say the same for her celery salad, dressed with squares of aged Gouda, walnuts and raisins. The wine program, led by Hoffman, is just as impactful. She or your server will be quick to appear with a few wines to try, but look out for the restaurant’s first house wine, a Stir Crazy Estate Pinot Noir from an organic vineyard in Carmel. It’s a Burgundian expression of the grape that sips well with everything on the menu.
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Dolan’s Uyghur Cuisine
Alhambra Uyghur
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Among the cuisines that light up the San Gabriel Valley’s constellation of restaurants, Bugra Arkin’s two lodestars in Alhambra and Rowland Heights, with a third location in Irvine, illuminate a culture specific to the autonomous Xinjiang territory in northwest China. The cooking of the Uyghurs, the region’s Turkic-speaking Muslims, culls centuries of spice trade influences, including from modern-day India, Tibet, Afghanistan and Iran. Kick off with the signature “big plate chicken” heaped with potatoes, chopped red and green peppers, slivers of garlic and dried chiles. Wide hand-pulled noodles peek out underneath. Currents of Sichuan peppercorns and star anise jolt the broth. It’s terrific, as are manta (plump pleated dumplings) filled with earthy diced pumpkin and minced onion, and laghman, long noodles nearly as thick as taffy, buried under stir-fried vegetables and tender beef strips. For fun, throw in the “tower kebab,” with marinated lamb visibly speckled with spices draped over a tabletop metal contraption. With murals of Uyghur life and details at the Alhambra flagship like globe-shaped glass lamps patterned in starbursts and other geometries, Arkin evokes his culture as much in the dining room’s aesthetics as in the food he serves.
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Kuya Lord
East Hollywood Filipino $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Lord Maynard Llera went from serving spirals of crackly-skinned, Filipino-style pork belly from his La Cañada Flintridge backyard during the pandemic to winning the James Beard Foundation award for best chef in California in about three years. The praise for his interpretation of modern Filipino cuisine was swift and enthusiastic, and the effect he had on the genre in Los Angeles, and beyond, indelibly impactful. He garnered loyal fans with his crispy pork, in the form of twice-fried lechon kawali and “lucenachon,” the name he coined for those spirals of crispy pork belly made in a similar fashion to Italian porchetta. But I find myself returning to his Melrose Hill restaurant most for the hiramasa collars. Back in his hometown of Lucena City, about 80 miles south of Manila, Llera prepared his daing, or dried fish marinade, with a combination of soy, garlic and calamansi, then let the fish sun-dry for a week. At the restaurant, he uses the same umami-rich marinade, but allows the hiramasa collars to air-dry for just four hours before cooking them on the grill. Despite the shortened marination, the fish falls effortlessly from the collar, perfumed with almond wood, buttery and concentrated with citrus and soy. He serves the fish with a side of chile oil, a sandy paste full of chiles, fried garlic and fermented anchovies. There are jars of the stuff for sale near the register. Don’t leave without one.
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Heritage Barbecue
San Juan Capistrano Barbecue $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The main attraction in San Juan Capistrano is no longer the 249-year-old mission in the heart of the city. It’s a walk-up window serving Texas-style barbecue that draws hours-long crowds every weekend. Pitmaster Daniel Castillo, his wife Brenda and executive chef Nicholas Echaore have created a loyal following with their brisket, the deep, mahogany bark heavily crusted and tinged with smoke. The meat beneath is marbled with enough fat and juice to render it wobbly. The barbecue holds the spirit of Texas, but with the borderless soul of Southern California. Slabs of pork belly are brushed with a char siu glaze. Tender, mottled Sonoran flour tortillas hold pulled pork and Santa Maria tri-tip. Build a tray of smoked meats but pay close attention to the specials listed on the chalkboard menu on the sidewalk. This is where you’ll find a list of sandwiches, burritos and limited sides depending on the day. Keep a close eye out for the Birria Capo Dip. The sandwich is built on a bed of melted Oaxacan cheese, with shredded brisket birria, chopped white onion, cilantro, salsa verde and crema. The mess of meat and cheese gets folded and nestled into a soft hoagie roll, a skirt of cheese spilling from the seams and a handful of escabeche onions like a lightning bolt of acid down the middle. The sandwich alone is a triumph, but it comes with a cup of consommé for dipping. A cross between a birria queso taco and a torta, it may be the most L.A. sandwich in California.
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Cosetta
Santa Monica Italian $$
Zach Pollack recently closed his two East-Central L.A. restaurants — experimental, pasta-leaning Alimento in Silver Lake and pizzeria Cosa Buona in Echo Park — decamping to the opposite side of the city to try his hand with a different crowd. So far, so good in Santa Monica: Cosetta’s small, peachy-colored dining room and sprawling heated patio has appealed equally to families, raucous groups of friends and couples in their date-night bubbles. Credit the persuasive powers of pizza, the menu’s nucleus. The kitchen crew bakes pies formed with thick, bready rims. They excel at transforming chain staples like the Hawaiian or supreme pizza into sophisticated pleasures using higher-brow toppings. Longtime Pollack fans will recognize some greatest hits. Cosa Buona’s exceptional smoked mozzarella sticks reappear, as stretchy and crunchy as ever. I note his Caesar incorporating chicory lettuces, as is the fashion, and then remember he served them that way at Alimento for a decade. One new favorite from the raw bar: sliced scallops, each dotted with a Marcona almond that resembles a cyclops’ unblinking eye. Among the small selection of mains, look for sand dabs fried Milanese-style over a generous splotch of caper-olive tartar sauce. For Pollack, Cosetta has turned out to be a wise, reenergizing move.
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Bar Etoile
East Hollywood French Wine Bars $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Jill Bernheimer, who opened vital wine shop Domaine L.A. in 2009, and hospitality ace Julian Kurland have created a Melrose Hill haven that cleanly splices the definitions of “wine bar” and “restaurant” for Angelenos. Looking to swing by somewhere informal but sleek for a drink or two? Behold the silvery zinc bar that dominates the room, with seating for 22 around its mod oval contours. The by-the-glass list leans French and Italian, with a couple of nonalcoholic wine and beer options among them. Kurland is the coolest, most approachable guide through the bottle list: Engage him and he will invest to find something in your price and taste to make you happy. Chef Travis Hayden understands the assignment: His cooking mirrors the prominently featured wine regions (European, with a smattering of California) and is varied, substantial and accomplished enough to make Bar Etoile a true dinner destination. Given the innate affinity between wine and cheese, a sly dairy theme runs through the menu. A custardy dense cheese tart made with nutty Pleasant Ridge Reserve and dusted with chive powder is the can’t-miss dish. Match it with buttermilk-poached trout rillettes scooped using handsomely rumpled house-made chips and a seasonal salad like peaches and tomatoes covered in curls of Prairie Breeze cheddar. An entree of rotisserie chicken pairs equally with a geeky oxidized Jura or a juicy Pinot Noir from Oregon.
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Majordomo
Chinatown American $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Part of David Chang’s Momofuku group of restaurants, Majordomo has been a destination near the edge of Chinatown since it opened in a sprawling warehouse in early 2018. And it’s ascending to new heights under the leadership of executive chef James Bailey. Longtime favorites like the pot of mushroom crispy rice, whole plate short ribs and the boiled chicken are flawless. A tomato salad is a tomato salad, until you’ve tried the one at Majordomo. Only available when in season, your bowl may be filled with tiny sweet orange or cherry tomatoes interspersed with wedges of big, juicy heirlooms. They lounge in a sherry vinaigrette that’s both sweet and tangy, rounded out by warm sesame oil and a little soy. My most recent bowl featured peak-season stone fruit and plenty of minty shiso. The platter of boiled chicken has become my go-to comfort food, served in two parts during the meal. The first is a plate of chicken rice bolder and punchier than what you might find elsewhere, with both fiery domojang (chile garlic condiment) and a ginger scallion sauce spooned over the top. The second is a soul-nourishing bowl of soup made from the bones. It will likely provide leftovers for a week.
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Henry’s Cuisine
Alhambra Cantonese $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The dining room at Henry’s is dominated by large circular tables. The kind of seating you want when the meal is a family affair, with platters of tiger prawns over glass noodles, whole lobster under a mound of crispy garlic and Vietnamese-style cubed filet mignon being passed across and rotated around the lazy Susan. Rather than focusing on a specific region of China, founders Henry Tu and Henry Chau embrace a swath of culinary traditions from throughout Asia. Sichuan fried chicken is buried under a deluge of dried chiles. Vietnamese-style black pepper fried fish is shellacked in a light, sweet glaze hot with black pepper. The steamed pork and salted fish patty reminds my Cantonese mother of the one her grandmother learned to make in Guangzhou. The variety is more comforting than overwhelming. And despite the sizable menu, the same dishes seem to find their way onto every table. Honey garlic pork chops are speckled in bits of fried garlic as sweet as candy. Deep-fried salted pigs feet are cloaked in tiles of crispy skin that shatter like glass. There may be an order of pigs feet on each table, but unless you want to fight like family, I’ll be ordering two.
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Dulan’s on Crenshaw
Hyde Park Southern $$
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
Dulan’s on Crenshaw is a name synonymous with Los Angeles, a destination for anyone looking for a taste of soul food. Owner Greg Dulan takes immense pride in not only the food he serves, but in the restaurant as a third space for community gatherings. He likes to believe that his grandmother Zady, featured in a picture surrounded by chickens on the family farm, was on her way to fry some chickens. “This is a way to showcase African American history in this country through the lens of a single family,” he says during a recent visit. That history is also told in the classic soul food dishes he and his brother, Terry Dulan (who runs Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen), have been serving for decades. I don’t know that you’ll find a better macaroni and cheese anywhere, the noodles tender, the cheese sauce abundant and the edges crusty. The fried chicken is prepared the same way Dulan’s grandmother, and father, the late Adolf Dulan, made it, dredged in a mix of flour and spices shaken in a brown paper bag. A meal at Dulan’s comes with a little piece of history, and a lot of heart.
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Alto
Studio City Argentinian Uruguayan $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Alto is one of the most ambitious restaurants to open in the San Fernando Valley in recent memory, with a menu that spans the Rio de la Plata region of South America. Co-founders and chefs Juana Castellanos and Esteban Klenzi celebrate the open-fire cooking of the Pampas, with inspiration from their combined Uruguayan and Argentine backgrounds. Most everything is cooked on the wood-fired grill, the flames providing a warm glow throughout the dining room. Pan criollo is as soft as milk bread, with layers you pull away like a good biscuit. Puffs of chipa are chewy and cheesy. There’s chimichurri butter alongside the classic Uruguayan pan marsellés. The asado banderita is the restaurant’s star meat, a dry-aged short rib full of flavor with a grassy, mineral tang. The steamed corn cakes known as humitas are reimagined as a sweet corn stew, like an ultra-luxurious creamed corn dressed with garlic chile oil and a provolone crisp as big and wide as the serving bowl. If you’re lucky, there will be a torta rogel under a glass dome for dessert. The popular Argentine birthday cake involves layers of smooth caramel between wafer-like pastry and a crown of stiff, glossy meringue. It’s as heavenly as it sounds.
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Bridgetown Roti
East Hollywood Caribbean $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
I have never made it home with one of the patties from Bridgetown Roti. I eat the yellow-tinged pockets straight from their paper sleeves, scalding hot while the pastry breaks into shards all over my lap. I time my bites to the stoplights, careful not to endanger those around me with my momentary lapses in attention. But the sensation of the crisp, flaky crust collapsing into the warmly spiced paste of braised oxtail curry is too difficult to resist. They’re a staple at Rashida Holmes’ East Hollywood restaurant, where the food is an expression of the chef’s Barbadian heritage. When she started her pop-up, she helped introduce and propagate an appreciation for Caribbean flavors in L.A.. Her patties are nonnegotiable, even after finishing a curry shrimp roti, the plump shrimp and potato tucked into a buttery, flaky paratha roti with slaw. Or following a wedge of her macaroni and cheese pie, the noodles and cheese kissed with curry powder and the edges crusty. And alongside an order of jerk chicken, the dark, spice-rubbed meat singing with pepper and allspice. Holmes’ permanent location on Western Avenue, which marked its first anniversary this summer, is definitely something to celebrate. Patties forever!
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Evil Cooks
El Sereno Mexican $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Husband-and-wife team Alex “Pobre Diablo” Garcia and Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta moved their black-metal-inspired pop-up into a permanent space in El Sereno late last year. Their love of this extreme subgenre of music is evident in the restaurant’s black walls, black skulls and black angel fountain that cries red tears. It’s also palpable in their rebellious, maximalist menu of tacos, burritos and tortas. Huerta’s recado negro is the dark heart of the menu, dubbing the Yucatan-inspired marinade his “black magic.” He burns chiles secos, cacao, tortillas, onion and a handful of spices. The charred pile of ingredients is ground into an ink-black paste that’s smoky and sweet with a murmur of heat. To make his octopus al pastor, he rubs the marinade onto the whole mollusk, then layers the octopus onto the trompo. The visual effect is striking, with torch flames licking the dark sea creatures as they hungrily consume the spit. Called the Poseidon, Huerta piles the chopped octopus onto a fresh corn tortilla with guacamole, pineapple and purple onions pickled Yucatan-style with citrus. It’s the metal music equivalent of a taco, the volume dialed all the way up, with the jolt of the recado negro mimicking a frenetic tempo and shrieking vocals.
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Si! Mon
Venice Panamanian $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
In Venice, Panamanian chef José Olmedo Carles Rojas pulls off the rare-for-L.A. feat of reimagined Central American flavors in a finer-dining setting. What does that look like exactly? Translucent snapper carpaccio, splayed over a terra-cotta plate to resemble a jagged continent as seen from space. Warm salt cod fritters with dots of red pepper aioli speckling its pale landscape. Surf clam ceviche arrives in the mollusk’s shell, doused in leche de tigre green with extra-citrusy culantro and lined with ruler-straight plantain chips. Steamed kanpachi filet nestles in a banana leaf, adding deeper herbal qualities to the paste of makrut lime leaf, Thai basil and culantro smeared over the fish’s custardy surface. In dish after dish, flavors register as potent and elegant. Same with drinks. High on my list of L.A. cocktails is the Ninth Parallel, a blood-red Zombie variation involving Oaxacan, Haitian and Nicaraguan rums, absinthe, cherry, lime, passion fruit and espresso from Menotti’s. (The last ingredient is a nod to Si! Mon partners Louie and Netty Ryan, who also own the nearby coffee shop.) Given how the concoction can be guzzled with dangerous ease, the restaurant specifies a maximum of two per person. Prudent, and all the more reason to return soon.
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Baby Bistro
Chinatown Californian $$
A tiny single-story, 1890s-era Victorian house in Alpine Courtyard — the same Victor Heights complex, developed by architect Jingbo Lou, where Perilla LA resides — is the new home of Miles Thompson, a chef of provocative talents who had a memorable run last decade shaking up Michael’s, the California cuisine progenitor in Santa Monica, with a rush of modernist energy. His menu at Baby Bistro conveys disarming ambiguity: six primary dishes, most of them in flux with the seasons, designed to be ordered in their entirety and shared as a family-style prix fixe. “Spaghetti squash, passionfruit,” read one sparse description in October. What arrived was a layered landscape of the imagination. Chopped dates hid among the lacy squash. Also in the mix: caramelized milk powder, fried rosemary leaves, passion fruit seeds for crunch and a final mantle of goat’s milk Gouda shaved into bouncy curls. Its collisions of sweet and savory tasted like a Thanksgiving casserole passed down the table via a parallel universe. Thompson culls many influences in his cuisine; ultimately, it’s most reflective of his own borderless intellect. He has just the right partner in co-owner Andy Schwartz, who steers a concise, complementary program of natural wines, including a list with often cheeky tasting notes. Baby Bistro is definitely for the experimentally inclined. But in an era when corporate blandness takes up too much real estate in Los Angeles, this restaurant is an alternative and an antidote.
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Somni
West Hollywood Spanish $$$$
The curving counter emulating auditorium seating. The ballet of 20-plus small courses, beginning and ending with trompe l’oeil “one-bites” resembling almonds, feathers, sprinkle doughnuts and berries. The blur of dishes, geometric and sculptural, that evoke the flavors of Spain, or the pluralism of California, or pure realms of imagination. It took Aitor Zabala nearly five years to relaunch Somni from its hidden location in the back of José Andrés’ Bazaar in the SLS Beverly Hills to a freestanding space on a quiet street in West Hollywood. Somni is as much performance as it is dinner. Evenings begin with opening rounds of fanciful canapés in a calm courtyard, and then move inside where the team of chefs and captains glide through the room, placing and presenting dishes in synchronized motions and adding occasional sides. Says Zabala when his most famous dish, a slice of “pizza” with meringue crust, arrives: “It’s gluten-free. Perfect for Los Angeles.” The theater comes at a staggering price: A minimum, with mandatory beverage pairings that begin with a nonalcoholic option, of $745 per person before tax and tip. Somni 2.0 received three Michelin stars mere months into its existence. It’s a place for the super-wealthy to use their black-card concierge services to help score reservations. Otherwise, expect bookings to be nearly impossible for the foreseeable future.
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Cafe 2001
Downtown L.A. French Californian Japanese $$
(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)
If the algorithms did their job this summer, you saw a slice of Cafe 2001’s watermelon cake on the socials: mostly fresh fruit, encased between simple sponge cake and smooth whipped cream. A breath of menthol coolness came from an invisible dusting of Fox’s Glacier Mints, a 107-year-old English candy, grated over the top before serving. That kind of sly genius is a trademark of Giles Clark, who grew up in England. He took over the scrappy back corner space of the massive Arts District building mostly occupied by Yess, where he was previously sous chef. The vibe is coffee shop meets concrete bunker, and Clark works out his own permissive definition of daytime cafe cooking. Breakfast plates knowingly mix sweet and savory (lamb hash with applesauce, smoked trout with huckleberry jam), and the lunch staple is a pork tenderloin katsu sandwich that squishes and zings in every right way. One ever-changing lunchtime meat or seafood entree hints at the whimsy and technique Clark has in his reserves. Pastry chef Kota Kawamura makes brilliant fruit tarts, and Clark has mastered brioche doughnuts filled with vanilla custard or strawberry jam. Cafe 2001 is a peculiar little place, enticingly so. Its eccentricity feels like a welcome refuge.
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Rustic Canyon
Santa Monica American $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
No matter what time of year you might be reading this, set a reminder on your calendar app to make a reservation for Rustic Canyon in late August or early September. Year-round, the restaurant’s menu changes almost daily, fluctuating with the moment’s bounty from the twice-weekly Santa Monica Farmers Market a mile away. In high summer, though, the cooking — guided by chef-owner Jeremy Fox and chef de cuisine Elijah DeLeon — particularly exhilarates, when the given greatness of the raw product inspires quick-witted flavor combinations. This year DeLeon filled halved greengage plums from Andy’s Orchard with a cherry paste that cleverly pays homage to Mexican chamoy candy. Charcoal-grilled Jimmy Nardello peppers were paired with hunks of ripe white peach and dusted with fennel pollen, a garnish that can seem precious but here added the right licorice nip. White cheddar blanketed earthy-sweet corn kernels and snipped shishito peppers, a feel-good riff that fell somewhere between Midwestern creamed corn and Korean corn cheese. Two weeks later those dishes were gone, and scanning the newest menu online I wished I could plunge into just-arrived Mirabelle plums scented with basil and vanilla bean, followed by a pork chop surrounded by figs and purslane.
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Yang’s Kitchen
Alhambra Chinese $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The restaurant feels like the nucleus of downtown Alhambra’s Main Street, with families on the patio entertaining young children, parties in the evening sharing bottles of wine and a boisterous brunch service. The cornmeal mochi pancakes with their lacy edges are reason enough to visit the restaurant that chef and co-owner Chris Yang opened in the summer of 2019. But I was recently reminded of the prowess of the kitchen under Yang and chef de cuisine Elaine Chang at dinner as I marveled at a bowl of tofu caprese. A mass of tofu as soft and plush as a blob of burrata rested in a bracing brown rice vinaigrette with charred Jimmy Nardello peppers and torn shiso. “Secret” Weiser Farms potatoes were pure magic, smashed, fried and dressed in a chile cumin butter crowned with plenty of Yang’s signature chilie crisp. Dry-aged sea bass was grilled and splayed over a bed of chicken fat rice like Hainan chicken. The restaurant spoons black sesame crunch butter onto swirls of soft serve and makes a black sesame cake that resembles the best sticky toffee pudding. If I had the time, and the budget, you’d find me at Yang’s Kitchen twice a week.
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Mini Kabob
Glendale Armenian $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Mini Kabob is the little shop that could, a tiny storefront surrounded by auto repair shops in Glendale where people travel from all over the world for a pair of beef cutlets. The Martirosyan family has been serving the city’s most sought-after grilled meats for nearly 40 years. It’s quite the feat when referring to an area that’s home to the largest diaspora of Armenian people in the country, where restaurants pushing kebabs occupy nearly every corner. The decades are a testament to the dedication and skill of proprietors Ovakim, Alvard and their son Armen. Under their watchful eyes, lamb chops are imbued with spice and plucked from the grill at the exact moment the fat caramelizes and the meat reaches optimal tenderness. The marinade and cook time are so precise, cutlery and condiments are rendered irrelevant. Earlier this year, Armen sent Los Angeles food obsessives into a frenzy when he introduced a grilled chicken thigh “Cesar” wrap (that’s not a typo) teeming with chicken, falafel croutons and Caesar dressing all wrapped up in a griddled Mejorado tortilla. It’s available in limited quantities during the week for pre-order. Ask for an extra cup of the Aleppo pepper toum for dipping. It’s a garlicky wonder condiment, the color of a tropical sunset, that will inject life into anything in your fridge.
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Mae Malai
Los Feliz Thai $
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
This slender restaurant is home to my favorite bowl of noodles and my least favorite parking lot in Thai Town. Find solace from the honking and jostling at a counter seat with a cold, cloudy green tea and as many bowls of noodles as you can squeeze into the space before you. Former massage therapist Malai Data’s boat noodles drew crowds when she started popping up in front of Silom Supermarket a few years ago. In late 2023, she found a permanent home in the shopping center at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue. Here, you can nibble on Isaan and Northern-style sausages while you wait for your bowls of noodles. And there will be many, with portions and prices designed to allow diners to toggle between boat, tom yum and wonton to their heart’s content. Data’s boat noodles are the gold standard, with your choice of beef or pork, each protein marinated and stewed. The meat bobs in the ruddy broth alongside bits of pork cracklings, meatballs, green onion and bean sprouts. The flavors ricochet between sour and sweet, spicy and bitter. I like to get at least one bowl dry; the absence of broth accentuates the chew of the rice noodles and the sweetness of the dark soy sauce. You may be tempted to ask for your noodles “Thai spicy,” but you have not seen real tears until you’ve watched them stream down the red, puffy face of someone foolish enough to request it. Go for the medium and treat yourself to cooling bowls of steamed pandan and coconut custard for dessert. It will all cost less than what you paid last night for valet parking.
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Alta Adams
West Adams Breakfast/Brunch Soul Food $$
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Keith Corbin’s California Soul is a personal style of cooking that meanders into the South, mines the Levant and Japan, then swerves back to Los Angeles. Beets and labneh are sprinkled with a hazelnut dukkah, the coarse nut, seed and spice condiment accentuating the beets’ earthy contours. His smoked, slow-cooked Wagyu is fortified with brown butter and soy sauce. He uses miso in the braising liquid to supercharge his oxtails with umami. Then there are the Southern classics, a genre in which Corbin reigns supreme. The fried chicken, on its own or alongside a buttermilk waffle, is encased in the lightest, crunchiest coating. Collard greens are bolstered with smoked oil, vinegar and chile. Rich gumbo is crowded with smoked chicken and sausage. And Corbin prepares my favorite cornmeal pancakes in the city, big, fluffy rounds with lacy edges that hang over the plate. The brown butter maple caramel sauce pooling from the middle makes brunch here the most important meal of the day.
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Ammatolí
Long Beach Middle Eastern $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The sun-drenched all-day restaurant in downtown Long Beach, run by chef Dima Habibeh and her family, has grown impressively in dimensions and ambitions since its 2018 opening. Habibeh — born to a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother and raised in Jordan — poignantly evinces her origins in her cooking. Shakshouka, its lacy poached eggs nearly submerged in fragrant tomato stew, arrives with sourdough toast from nearby star bakery Gusto Bread for sopping. Solo diners will be happy at the plant-draped bar, rapt by garlic-lemon rotisserie chicken at lunch or sea bass over spiced rice with caramelized onions and nuts at dinner, with perhaps a glass of white wine from Lebanon’s Bekka Valley. Even better is gathering a crowd for a spread that begins with too much mezze: hummus with pine nuts, yielding grape leaves, labneh dyed fuchsia from pureed beets, fried kibbeh stuffed with ground beef or spinach, fattoush sharpened with sumac, a mix of the savory hand pies called fatayer. Saucy moussaka or a platter of kebabs might arrive next, followed by crunchy-cheesy knafeh scented with orange blossom syrup and date cake baked by Habibeh’s daughter Masah. There is no more gracious setting for consummate Levantine cooking in Southern California.
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Fat + Flour
Culver City Bakery $$
If a slice of beautifully made pie gives your soul ease, as it does mine, beeline to Fat + Flour. No matter how many videos I watch of chef-owner Nicole Rucker tucking and pleating dough in a pie pan, or the number of brilliantly nonchalant flavoring tips (lavender sugar paired with blueberry!) I glean from her recently published book, “Fat + Flour: The Art of a Simple Bake,” my efforts are never the same: The beauties that Rucker and her longtime right-hand baker Krystle Shelton craft will always be superior. Crusts flake and shatter and promptly melt into a memory of butter. Flavors change with the calendar and in fits of imagination. Summer’s “stone fruit party pie,” intensified by bourbon and vanilla bean paste, segues to autumn’s buttermilk chess with a silky-dense layer of apple butter, or pecan flickering with hot honey. At the Culver City flagship, precede dessert with an herbed omelet sandwich or curried chicken salad, scented with Persian lime, on plush milk bread from Jyan Isaac. Those of us on the other side of town can swing by the Fat + Flour stand inside Grand Central Market for a butterscotch chocolate chip cookie and a slice of Rucker’s famously not-too-sweet Key lime pie.
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Moo’s Craft Barbecue
Lincoln Heights Barbecue $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Splicing Mexican flavors into central Texas’ beefy traditions, Andrew and Michelle Muñoz lead the school of thought around modern Los Angeles barbecue. Andrew’s brisket, perfumed by smoldering California white oak and slowly rendered to an ideal trembling texture, sets the local standard. Michelle’s sausages, particularly the one speckled green from roasted poblanos and oozing queso Oaxaca, follow closely. Street-corn-style esquites and mac and cheese are each creamy and punchy. Four years have flown by since the couple opened Moo’s in Lincoln Heights, and I come as often to share a tray of meats and sides with a group as I do for a solo meal at the bar, choosing perhaps a triple IPA among over a dozen styles of beer on draft. Alone, I’m fixating on the burger, a blend of smoked brisket, short rib and other cuts ground and formed into thick patties crusted with crushed black pepper. The classic version sports a crunching slice of white onion and melting American cheese; the “Rampart” arrives with cumin-scented chili and diced onions sliding down its deliciously wobbly circumference. Either one requires fries.
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Chi Spacca
Hancock Park Italian $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Nancy Silverton’s Osteria Mozza and Pizzeria Mozza rule the southwestern corner of Highland and Melrose, but I recommend Chi Spacca, her third restaurant there, most often. At 12 years old, the tiny place still bounces with a mutability that’s less predictable than its older siblings. Silverton’s pastry-god stature also strongly manifests here in savory contexts. I will always follow a predictably gorgeous salad with focaccia di Recco, a crackery, stretchy-cheesy flatbread with Ligurian origins that she obsessed over for years to perfect. Savory pies — chicken pot pie, lamb shepherd’s pie and a hearty marrow-laced variation featuring beef cheek and mushrooms — dip into British traditions, most of them flaunting bronzed, flaky dream crusts. Meat cookery, until recently overseen by Armen Ayvazyan and now under executive chef Alisa Vannah, remains the menu’s nucleus. At my most recent dinner, the menu highlighted a whole oxtail: tapered, riddled with meat, smeared with coarse chermoula and served with pickled shallots to slice through all the unctuousness. It was magnificent, as was a custardy slice of blueberry-brown-butter tart for dessert.
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Sora Craft Kitchen
Downtown L.A. Turkish $$
Okay Inak’s cooking career has included fine-dining temples on both coasts — Eleven Madison Park and Per Se in Manhattan, Mélisse in Santa Monica — but his first solo restaurant resides at the edge of downtown’s Fashion District on a fairly desolate, well-lighted block with plenty of parking. Step inside the tiny dining room facing the open kitchen and you’ll feel Turkish ground beneath your feet. Among intricately dressed salads and elegant kebabs, look for two dishes that define Inak’s worldview. The first is kitel, a large oval dumpling filled with spiced beef and set over thickened yogurt with drizzles of dill-scented herb oil, butter sparked with Aleppo pepper and a finishing tablespoon of meat sauce intensified with chile oil. Next is corti taplamasi, a cloudy, red-orange soup made from cabbage fermented for three weeks. The small, soft, hand-rolled balls knocking around in the broth? Leftover bulgur dough from making kitel. These are regional Turkish dishes you can’t find anywhere else in Los Angeles, by a chef who also has a modernist knack and a roaming imagination. His command extends to dessert. In Sora’s first year, he has served a variation on his father’s specialty called kirecte kabak, soaking chunks of butternut squash in limewater overnight so that, when cooked, their exterior retains a thin, crackling shell while the inside melts to cream. Sweetened with simple syrup, splattered with tahini and flecked with crushed pistachios, it was delicious and a little otherworldly.
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RVR
Venice Japanese American $$
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
MTN (pronounced “mountain”) closed five years ago and, with a few pivotal modifications, has now returned as RVR (yes, pronounced “river”). That’s the very condensed story behind the California izakaya run by Travis Lett. Its second life turns out to be shockingly good, thanks especially to the brilliance with vegetables that Lett refined as the founding chef of Gjusta and Gjelina. He, executive chef-partner Ian Robinson and their team can tease the Technicolor out of winter: They’ll layer, for example, near-ripe Fuyu persimmons in pinwheel patterns under rounds of lilac-purple daikon with crunchy furikake and torn shiso. In the holy season of summer, apricot replaces the usual cucumber in a take on sunomono, stung with tosazu (vinegar-based dressing smoky with katsuobushi) and aromatic accents of pickled Fresno chiles, ginger and crushed Marcona almonds. I also keep coming back for fluffy duck meatball tsukune served with head-clearing hot mustard; hand rolls brimming with kanpachi and avocado; and pan-fried pork and cabbage gyoza crowned with a crackling, lacy dumpling “skirt.” Brunch has a similar menu to dinner, though also throws in a tamagoyaki omelet rolled with Comte and mochi beignets.
However broadly the idea of an izakaya may be translated, the drinking component is crucial. RVR provides with fresh-fruit shochu highballs, plum-accented negronis, sakes in several styles and wine director Maggie Glasheen’s bottle list that’s strong on off-dry Rieslings and rich, slightly oxidized whites. Even the selection of hot and iced Japanese teas feels closely considered.
However broadly the idea of an izakaya may be translated, the drinking component is crucial. RVR provides with fresh-fruit shochu highballs, plum-accented negronis, sakes in several styles and wine director Maggie Glasheen’s bottle list that’s strong on off-dry Rieslings and rich, slightly oxidized whites. Even the selection of hot and iced Japanese teas feels closely considered.
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Tsubaki
Echo Park Japanese $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Under the tutelage of Courtney Kaplan and Charles Namba, this Echo Park izakaya, and sister bar Ototo, are two of the best places to drink sake in the city. Kaplan’s grasp on the spirit is unmatched, with seasonal offerings and a talent for steering even the geekiest enthusiasts toward something fresh and exciting. While Namba established a steady fanbase with his ability to harness the best local produce with Japanese flavors and technique, it’s chef de cuisine Klementine Song helming the kitchen. Her kyabetsu miso-kushiyaki is the most notable cabbage glow-up in town. The leaves are cut into precise squares, packed tightly onto skewers and grilled on the hottest part of the hibachi for maximum char. Some parts are thick and crunchy, while others are wilted and nearly creamy, the edges black, frizzled and tasting faintly of smoke. Seasonal crudo is consistently flawless. Whatever the market tempura, order it. Recently, there were long strands of dragon tongue beans sheathed in a light, delicate batter. Served like a mountain of gargantuan French fries, they were just the sort of thing you want to be eating with a glass of something cold and bracing. The staff has plenty of recommendations.
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Pizzeria Sei
Pico-Robertson Pizza $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
A South Korea-born chef achieving global praise for his perfectionistic take on Japanese-Neapolitan pizza at a minimalist 18-seat restaurant in Pico-Robertson? Pizzeria Sei is the promise of Los Angeles fulfilled. William Joo, who runs the business with his wife, Jennifer So, brings an ever-questioning obsessiveness to his style of crust. Baked in an oven smoldering with almond wood, his puffed, starburst-shaped pies have always achieved smoky char, but after nearly four years in business the texture is airier, and more satisfyingly chewy with slight crispness. This base can support ingredients as simple as fior di latte perfumed with preserved lemon and basil, or as complex as lamb sausage blitzed with crème fraîche, smoked provolone, bell peppers, shallots, cherry tomatoes popped from heat and a lashing of spice that includes tingling Sichuan peppercorn. There’s a clear winner, though: the Margherita Special painted with acidic-sweet tomato sauce and dotted with imported buffalo mozzarella, a masterwork of simplicity. Its supremacy alone is likely why the Italy-based Top 50 Pizza organization ranks Sei as the No. 2 pizzeria in the United States and No. 9 in the world. We think the place is pretty great too. That said: reservations are hell, and walk-in space is very limited.
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Knife Pleat
Costa Mesa French $$$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
What do we really mean when we talk about fine dining? At Yassmin Sarmadi and Tony Esnault’s Costa Mesa restaurant, it’s a state of mind ingrained in every facet of the experience, from the elegant dining room to the way the components on each plate resemble the finest edible art. Precise, tiny squares of Weiser melon swim in a Champagne foam. Generous hunks of succulent lobster are surrounded by dollops of a sauce made from Brentwood corn, its sweetness all-encompassing, then fleeting. One glance into the open kitchen and the space is as immaculate as the plates before me, a serene calm enveloping the chefs as they work. Knife Pleat can be experienced as a longer or abbreviated tasting menu for dinner, a three-course prix fixe or tasting menu for lunch, as Saturday afternoon tea service or an à la carte menu at the bar. It’s celebratory at any hour, with a variety of caviar on offer and a beverage program updated nearly as often as the menu. Available for both lunch and dinner, Esnault’s Sistine Chapel is his legumes de saison, an elaborate presentation of seasonal vegetables, their varying colors and shapes all huddled together in the center of a stark white plate. The baby corn, squash, asparagus, radish, tomato and half a dozen other vegetables are all prepared to accentuate their individual flavors. Summer is encapsulated in the sweetness of a tomato. The snap of the green bean boasting the vitality of the vegetable at this precise moment. It is maximum pleasure on a plate, at a restaurant that epitomizes whatever your definition may be of fine dining.
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Pasjoli
Santa Monica French $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Can a restaurant with a well-known chef at the helm completely reinvent itself after half a decade? In a town as fickle and unforgiving as Los Angeles? Dave Beran and his team at Pasjoli proved that the impossible can be achieved, and in the span of just two weeks. When the restaurant opened in the fall of 2019, Beran introduced Los Angeles to a new wave of French dining fueled by smart, reimagined classics. And he wowed diners with his whole pressed duck, a presentation that involves cramming the carcass into a gleaming contraption and using the cartilage, bones and tissue to create a luxurious gravy. In its six years, the restaurant underwent a series of changes to its menu and format in a never-ending attempt to embody the spirit of the sort of neighborhood French bistro Beran always imagined. Earlier this year, he temporarily closed the Santa Monica bistro to revamp the dining room and introduce a new menu with fun in mind. At the new Pasjoli, a limited number of customers can still order the duck, complete with the table-side presentation. But most of the new menu skews more casual, with mini bowls of soup dubbed French onion souplettes; the bar snack of your dreams in the form of fried maitake mushrooms; a burger dripping with marrow aioli; and crepes swimming in beurre blanc studded with caviar. And with an expanded beverage program — including mini martinis and bespoke cocktails — the bar is a destination for pre- and post-dinner drinks too. The new Pasjoli is more approachable, just as delicious, and yes, even more fun.
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Vespertine
Culver City American $$$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Vespertine isn’t a restaurant. And dinner, experienced throughout multiple levels of the Eric Owen Moss building known as the Waffle, isn’t a meal. What transpires over a dozen or so courses in nearly three hours becomes a journey through a dream realm Jordan Kahn and his team have painstakingly created, a restaurant as a means of expression. Here, the ideas of luxury and sustenance are contorted and challenged, each diner left to interpret Kahn’s world however they choose. An early course involves the interior of a vessel resembling a dinosaur egg, painted in a rainbow of flowers from the restaurant garden. Imagine the immense beauty, vitality and urgency of the entire summer season focused in a single bowl. A dish titled Deep Ocean consists of sweet prawns lounging in a pink nectarine vinaigrette studded with red currants and perfect squares of chile gelée. The prawns are caught off the coast of Kauai by a father-and-son duo, who fish at a depth of at least 2,500 feet. They are unlike any prawns I’ve tasted, with a marine sweetness that permeates the flesh, heightened to a sublime level by the stone fruit. The courses can feel like modernist cuisine pushed to the extreme, but always grounded in something recognizably pleasurable. Dinner finishes with Kahn’s interpretation of an entremet, deep lavender circles of butterfly pea flower-dusted meringue with frozen sheep’s milk and black raspberry. It’s presented in circles with shrinking circumferences that descend to the bottom of the bowl, giving the illusion of staring into a black hole. Strip away the abstract plating, and it’s a raspberry layer cake from the finest patisserie. Allow yourself to fully succumb to Kahn’s vision, and dinner at Vespertine can be whatever you want it to be.
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Al Baraka Restaurant
Anaheim Palestinian $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
For the most rewarding concentration of restaurants spotlighting the culinary scope of the Arab world, head to Little Arabia, the district in West Anaheim granted an official designation by the City Council in 2022. Shops selling falafel stained spring-green with parsley and cilantro; Lebanese and Syrian destinations serving mezze spreads of cool dips and hot, lemony chicken wings; bakeries fragrant with za’atar-scented flatbread or crackling, cheesy-stretchy knafeh: That’s only a beginning. Chef Magida Shatarah and her husband Aref Shatarah distinguish Al Baraka with a repertoire of Palestinian dishes more commonly seen in home kitchens than on restaurant menus. Whatever else you may order in their calm dining room — tabbouleh that tastes as bright as it looks, molokhia (a soothing soup of pureed jute mallow), kubba laban (beef and bulgur croquettes in satiny yogurt sauce), pan-shaped beef kufta in tahini sauce with fries — be sure to scan the list of daily specials. Mondays mean maqluba, the rice dish presented upside-down and arranged with chicken and geometries of cauliflower, eggplant and potatoes. Thursdays are for sheikh el mahshi, squash meticulously stuffed with a spiced ground-beef filling and simmered in yogurt. Saturdays bring a weekend crowd favorite: msakhan, in which roast chicken is piled on flatbread with onions stained purple from sumac.
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Vin Folk
Hermosa Beach Eclectic Wine Bars $$
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
All eyes are on the mussels tart as it makes its way from the open kitchen to the dining room at Vin Folk. It’s both precious and picturesque, the love child of mussels in escabeche and pot pie. Mussels are painstakingly arranged in rows over a smoked fennel cream in the center of a diamond of puff pastry built to resemble an open steel tin. The shards of flaky pastry sink into the cream and mussels. The effect is at once rich and acidic. The tart, like everything else on the menu, was inspired by chef-owner Kevin de los Santos’ and chef-partner Katya Shastova’s backgrounds and travels, each dish attached to specific memories. The headcheese toast is a fun, loose interpretation of the patty melt from Langer’s Deli. Beef tongue is an homage to Shastova’s childhood in rural southern Russia. An evening will likely weave from Taiwanese popcorn chicken to breakfast cereal in the Philippines. Partner and beverage director Christina Montoya and sommelier-in-training Idean Hashemian will find the perfect wine to complement it all. It’s the most ambitious restaurant to open in the South Bay in recent memory, and a shining example of destination neighborhood dining.
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Sushi Inaba
Torrance Japanese $$$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Yasuhiro Hirano, whose family owned a sushi restaurant and fish market in Japan’s eastern Chiba prefecture while he was growing up, operates a six-seat counter inside I-naba, a restaurant in Torrance, specializing in tempura and soba. Its size — and the truth that, in a region that has become nearly glutted with high-end omakase options, Hirano distinguishes himself as one of the top three finest practitioners — makes reservations extremely competitive. Score a seat, and at 7 p.m. the evening’s group will be led into a small, simple room. Attention rests on Hirano’s seamless craft, and the exquisiteness of the micro-seasonal seafood around which he composes a meal. Dinner typically begins with chawanmushi; gently smoky, electric-orange ikura, tied to the year’s salmon run through Japanese waters, recently crowned the custard. A few more small plates and Hirano segues into nigiri, the fish often aged for more concentrated, buttery textures and each variety prepared in ways to tease out its individual characteristics. Scored, charred barracuda, for example, registered as somehow fluffy on the palate. Rice crucially receives equal consideration. He achieves pleasing sourness with shari by blending two kinds of akazu, the red vinegar made from sake lees that has its roots in sushi’s Tokyo origins. Hirano also has a sense of humor: For those of us recording every detail of dinner with our phone cameras, he’ll smirk and point to a basket in the corner containing portable LED lights to borrow. Funny, and also thoughtful.
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Two Hommés
Inglewood West African Southern $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
On a recent Friday evening, the dining room at Abdoulaye Balde and Marcus Yaw Johnson’s Inglewood restaurant is gripped in communal exuberance. Diners are dressed for the occasion and the newly renovated space feels like a party I very much want to be at. Late in 2024, Two Hommés reopened after a remodel by cookbook author, designer and pop-up chef Kiano Moju, who transformed the dining room into a romantic, elegant space with light fixtures imported from Ghana and West African art on the walls. Balde and Johnson are still channeling West Africa through a Southern California lens, with plates like the eight-hour braised short ribs or fried catfish filets draped over mounds of jollof rice. The za’atar zucchini on a bed of cream spiked with shito, the Ghanaian hot pepper sauce, is just as revelatory the fifth time I eat it. And with the new digs came an expanded crop of dishes to crave. A salad of crab meat cascades over a plate of panko-crusted fried plantains, the crab’s cool temperature and marine sweetness contrasting beautifully with the warm, boorish starch of the fruit. Crumbles of spiced lamb sit atop a velvety white bean hummus punctuated with swirls of shito and yassa, a sweet, tangy onion sauce that’s a staple in West African cuisine. The accompanying flatbread is puffy and striped with smoky tracks from the grill. But the menu additions I’m most excited about arrive at the end of the meal. A sweet potato churro curls into itself over a bed of candied sweet potato. And a sticky toffee cake is reimagined with plantains, a heavy drizzle of bourbon sauce and a smattering of plantain chips. I told you it felt like a party.
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Saffy’s
East Hollywood Middle Eastern $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
I’ve watched the daytime operation at Saffy’s blossom from a few of Genevieve Gergis’ pastries to a full-on breakfast and lunch destination. Gergis and her husband, chef Ori Menashe, have created a sidewalk oasis on their corner of Fountain Avenue in East Hollywood. The patio swells with diners dressed in scrubs from the nearby hospital, students on laptops and men in suits. Before them are spreads of housemade yogurt swirled with honey and freckled with pine nuts, and slabs of challah French toast basking in a pool of maple syrup and butter. Hot, puffy pitas are split and stuffed with beef and lamb brisket, chicken shashlik or vibrant green falafel. Gergis’ pastries disappear quickly from the display case. A recent apple fritter reminded me of pull-apart monkey bread, cocooned in icing and glutted with apple. In the evenings, Saffy’s is still the place to be for impeccable beef, lamb, chicken and pork kebabs, layered onto shining skewers as long as swords. The shawarma rotates on a spit in the open kitchen, glistening and basting in its own juices. It’s difficult to train my attention on anything else. But the restaurant thrives in the sunlight, an intimate respite from the rest of the city, with doughnuts, coffee and a lunch that will leave your co-workers green with envy.
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Kismet
Los Feliz Californian Mediterranean $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson excel at the sort of vegetable-forward cooking that prompts people to move west, start a love affair with our farmers markets and boast about the spoils of year-round produce. The cabbage steak is a prime example, served as a huge wedge on its side, like a giant wheel of cruciferous. The leaves come away in big petals, their edges frizzled and caramelized. The middle is tender enough to split with your fork. Tucked into each layer are pieces of grilled Jimmy Nardello peppers. You can mark the end of summer by the appearance and frequency of these sweet peppers on Los Angeles menus. The cabbage sits in a pool of red pepper sauce spiked with allspice, star anise and the tang of preserved lemon. But the duo never take themselves too seriously, reeling you in with playful dishes intended for maximum pleasure. Earlier this year, there was a pickle cheesy greens dip that was as pickley and cheesy as advertised. Recently, spinach dip fritters were served as battered and fried orbs of the ubiquitous dip, molten and cheesy in the middle. Count on surprise, delight and at least one plate of vegetables that will have you contemplating becoming a vegetarian.
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Sonoratown
Mid-Wilshire Sonoran $
(Silvia Razgova / For The Times)
The single food item I consume most frequently in Los Angeles? Sonoratown’s Burrito 2.0, a sum fashioned from the greatest parts. As with most everything served at Teodoro Díaz Rodriguez Jr. and Jennifer Feltham’s outstanding taquerias in downtown, Mid-City and Long Beach, the excellence begins with the flour tortillas. Master tortillera Julia Guerrero oversees production of gold-standard exemplars, made using Sonoran wheat and pork lard for maximum flakiness and pliability. I jump between four meat options: costilla (a mix of boneless short rib and chuck) or chicken grilled over billowing mesquite, chile-stained chorizo from the Chori-Man in San Pedro and occasionally tender-ropy cabeza braised with cloves and other spices. Melting pintos, slicks of Monterey Jack, roasted poblano (optional but wonderful) and flickers of guac and smooth chiltepin salsa complete the smoky, mingled bundle. If I’m feeling extra-hungry, or greedy, I’ll throw in a chivichanga, mini packages of chicken or beef guisados, laced with cheese, that in bulk are perfect party food. For lingering, head to the Mid-City location: it’s the only Sonoratown outpost with a bar for limey, spicy micheladas and Modelo on tap.
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Orsa & Winston
Downtown L.A. Italian Japanese $$$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Since 2013, the 4th Street flank of the Farmers and Merchants Bank Building in downtown Los Angeles has housed a 35-seat restaurant so calm inside that diners with reservations sometimes miss the entrance. All the way back, in full view of the handsomely minimalist dining room, Josef Centeno quietly commands the open kitchen. Without ever sidestepping the premise of Orsa & Winston, which aims to weave together the cuisines of Japan and Italy, Centeno uses the structure as a flexible framework for his global-minded imagination. Lately the menu is five courses, shaped around seafood and vegetables for $150 per person, including several small extras (a cup of chawanmushi typically kicks off the meal) and an optional add-on, the citrusy rice porridge steeped in Parmesan cream and lately gilded with grilled prawns, uni and caviar. Your meal won’t look like mine, but through plates of sharply seasoned crudo, small bowls of rich pasta and elaborately sauced fishes, you’ll catch the same creative throughlines that have kept Centeno — and those of us lucky enough to know his cooking — engaged for the last dozen years. Count on longtime server and sommelier Romain Racary to share in-the-know stories about the wines he’s pouring in his melodic Parisian accent.
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Sushi Kaneyoshi
Downtown L.A. Japanese $$$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
An evening at Kaneyoshi begins long before you’re seated for dinner. Find the restaurant deep in the basement of an office building in the heart of Little Tokyo. Give the host your name and make your way through a hallway to a back room where a long, L-shaped sushi counter is lighted like a stage. Then allow yourself to be fully immersed in Yoshiyuki Inoue’s wood-paneled world. Before the cavalcade of Edomae-inspired nigiri, Inoue and his skilled retinue begin with a series of small starters. A grouper tempura is cloaked in shavings of salted egg. A Japanese sardine roll packed with ginger and cucumber resembles a pane of stained glass. While slices of prepared ankimo can be found at just about any sushi bar in the city, Inoue makes his own. His monkfish liver has the uneven texture of nduja and an umami-rich sweetness enhanced by slivers of cooked apple splayed over the top. An air of anticipation builds as Inoue methodically forms his nigiri. I’m mesmerized by the way the charcoal-seared toro melts like butter. And at the soft slackness and vinegar tang of the weeklong-marinated kohada. I grasp the fried greeneye fish mere seconds after it’s folded into a taut sheet of seaweed, its tempura shell hot and jagged against the rice. At the end of the evening, there’s delight and contentment, mixed with a nagging sense of longing. Can we please rewind and do it all over again?
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Mélisse
Santa Monica American $$$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The Mélisse kitchen acts as a proscenium stage, with every table in the dining room facing forward. It’s hidden in a corner of Josiah Citrin and chef-partner Ken Takayama’s restaurant Citrin, accessible through a door that looks like it might lead to an underground rave. Throughout the course of the evening, you’ll likely hear the entirety of a Rolling Stones album. Citrin and Takayama let the seasons guide them through the menu, but almost never take themselves too seriously. The most emblematic dish may be the two-part dirty quail, a take on the dirty chicken Citrin introduced next door and later spun off into a fast-casual restaurant called Augie’s on Main. First is a breast rubbed in tamarind and miso, coated in a crunchy panko crust with Meyer lemon and sweet roasted garlic. It sits in both an orange curry and a black olive caramel. A years-long study may not reveal how the chefs were able to coax that much depth and sweetness from a black olive. The second part involves a perfect tempura-battered quail leg. Even after 26 years (in restaurant years that’s more like 52), Mélisse continues to be whimsical, downright delicious and worthy of any special occasion.
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République
Hancock Park American $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
“Where should I go for incredible pastries?” “Is there a very good place for lunch that will make people with very different tastes happy?” “Where can I take out-of-town friends for a special-occasion dinner that also feels super L.A.?” Walter and Margarita Manzke’s all-day modern California restaurant is the answer to many of the questions people ask about restaurants in Los Angeles. The married chefs are equally adept talents who gave themselves the format — a bakery plus an all-day restaurant in a spectacular Spanish-Gothic building in Hancock Park — to succeed at what each of them does best. Every morning Margarita and her team fill the front counter with eye-catching geometries of sweet and savory pies, cakes, canelés, fruit-filled tarts and croissants. At night the space transitions elegantly to formal dinner service, bolstered by a deep, Euro-centric cellar overseen by wine director Sarah Clarke. Walter’s salads and tarts and meticulously cooked meats reveal technique grounded in French tradition, yet crucially steered by a vast network of Golden State farmers. Sunday brunch, always mobbed, is when coconut-rich chia pudding covered in fruit and textbook Croque Madame might grace the table with a wobbling block of French toast or a frittata baked with both green and white asparagus. Notice the crowd, one of the most racially diverse mix of people you’ll likely see in a Los Angeles restaurant. Many, many of us pass through République. It is a cornerstone of our dining lives, a part of our village.
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Damian
Downtown L.A. Mexican $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Angelenos often talk of the synergy between Mexico City and Los Angeles. A shared vibrancy and appreciation for our people and cultures. That connection is ever palpable in the dining room at Damian, the sprawling downtown restaurant opened by Mexico City’s acclaimed Pujol chef Enrique Olvera. During a recent dinner, my server explained that the carrot aguachile is an homage to the fruit cups sold by street vendors all over both cities. Gossamer ribbons of carrot, pickled pineapple and jicama are layered to create a mountain of sweet fruit on the plate. Hidden like buried treasure are pieces of shrimp and scallop sourced from Sinaloa, dressed in a mandarin kosho with splotches of habanero oil. There’s a wallop of acid and a rumble of heat, each spoonful balanced with the sweetness of the fruit. The street-food reference clicks and I’m reminded of the countless cups doused with fresh lime and Tajín purchased over the years. There seems to be an “ah-ha” moment with many of chef de cuisine Jesus “Chuy” Cervantes’ dishes, the yin-yang of flavors and textures sparking memories of thick, oblong huaraches in an outdoor market in Mexico City alongside visions of the ones I love best in South Gate. Damian is the best of both worlds, in a converted warehouse in the Arts District with valet parking.
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Camélia
Downtown L.A. French Japanese $$$
Courtney Kaplan and Charles Namba — the couple who built Tsubaki, their tiny Echo Park izakaya, and next-door sake bar Ototo into community sanctuaries — have created a superb Japanese-French bistro in downtown’s Arts District as their most ambitious project to date. Frosted pendant globe fixtures, lots of knotty wood paneling, red leather booths and pale green banquettes stamp the lofty space with an overt Midcentury Modern vibe. Menu-wise, precise grafting of cultures is the sum of its owners’ lives, professional and personal. It’s no exaggeration to say Kaplan rewired L.A.’s understanding of sake, and here too a conversation with her could soon have you sipping something herbal, or effervescent, or otherwise mind-opening. Camélia also affords Kaplan the chance to re-center her wine knowledge; her list condenses a tour of France into classic styles and up-and-coming producers. As for the cooking: Namba and his team are hand-stitching two cuisines like master tailors. Every dish, whether a salad of tomatoes matched with burrata and ponzu jelly, or a gushing Croque Madame hiding a clever layer of ham katsu, or sweet potato gratin heightened with thyme and miso butter, feels considered in its own context. Does an abalone and bay scallop pot pie color too far outside the bistro lines? When a chef touches on the sublime, labels mean nothing. We know that in Los Angeles.
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Funke
Beverly Hills Italian $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
In mid-August, a small fire in the ventilation duct system closed Evan Funke’s eponymous Beverly Hills Italian restaurant for six weeks. Its shuttering, however mercifully short and temporary, was a stark reminder of its significance. The chef is attached to two other local restaurants — Felix Trattoria in Venice and Mother Wolf in Hollywood — but Funke is where he spends most of his time. He darts in and out of the semi-open kitchen, greeting guests in the posh main room where overhead globe lighting, doubled in the reflection of the restaurant’s glassed-in pasta “laboratory,” appears to rain down Champagne bubbles in defiance of gravity. The menu culls his obsessions, beginning with sfincione, his ballooned version of Sicilian pizza painted in tomato and onion sauce and showered with a firm cow’s-milk cheese called Ragusano. Don’t fill up too fast: Delicate arancini, tiny minted artichokes and seasonal salads await. Pastas are extraordinary. Maybe $50 for a bowl of tagliatelle sounds obscene, but the labor is palpable: The feathery texture of the strands sauced in just enough ragù Bolognese is like nothing else in Southern California. Shannon Swindle, among the region’s finest pastry chefs, brings an evening home with ethereal Neapolitan-style sugar doughnuts and gorgeous, ever-changing fruit crostatas.
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Perilla L.A.
Chinatown Korean $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
At Jihee Kim’s tiny converted garage in Victor Heights, banchan isn’t the whirlwind of bowls that accompany a spread of Korean barbecue. It’s the star of a meal anchored by dishes that closely track the harvest times in California. Squares of fermented cucumber and melon sting with heat and offer a satisfying crunch. Green beans are laden with a savory, nutty sesame sauce. Collard greens prove a suitable match for an onslaught of gochugaru, the heat accompanied by the welcome flood of fish sauce, ginger and garlic used to make the kimchi. Two banchan are a snack. Three are a meal. Then there’s the avocado and mentaiko rice, with ripe avocado dressed in a creamy mentaiko sauce with salty pops of roe. The doenjang-smeared cod is soft as butter, served over rice with a sampling of the day’s banchan. I love the way the miniature squeeze bottle of hot mustard sauce that accompanies the gimbap makes my nose tingle. The yolks of the smoked eggs are a reliable cross between a decadent custard and a jelly. I show no restraint at the counter. My overzealous ordering is rewarded with a week’s worth of leftovers.
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Barbacoa Ramirez
Arleta Mexican $
(Andrea D’Agosto / For The Times)
Lamb barbacoa — when cooked traditionally for hours to buttery-ropy tenderness — is such a painstaking art that most of Southern California’s true practitioners sell it on weekends only. In the Los Angeles area, conversations around sublime lamb barbacoa should start at the stand that Gonzalo Ramirez sets up on Saturday and Sunday mornings near the Arleta DMV. You’ll see him and his family wearing red T-shirts that say “Atotonilco El Grande Hidalgo” to honor their hometown in central-eastern Mexico. Ramirez tends and butchers lambs in the Central Valley. The meat slow-roasts in a pit overnight and, cradled in plush made-to-order tortillas, the tacos come in three forms: smoky, molten-textured barbacoa barely hinting of garlic; a pancita variation stained with chiles that goes fast; and incredible moronga, a nubbly, herbaceous sausage made with lamb’s blood. Plenty of customers pick up food to go. There’s a wonderful communion, though, to finding seats at the long table set up under a blue tarp and downing a few tacos dotted with red or green salsa while sipping a cup of lamb consommé bobbing with chickpeas.
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Bavel
Downtown L.A. Middle Eastern $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
As dependable as your oldest friend, Bavel, Genevieve Gergis and Ori Menashe’s Levant-leaning Arts District restaurant, never ceases to deliver for out-of-town friends, celebrations or any Thursday-night dinner. You can count on the pita to be blistered and puffy, a flawless vessel for silky hummus or smokey baba ghanoush. The oyster mushroom kebabs are as meaty as steak, zapped with Meyer lemon and sumac. The slow-roasted lamb neck shawarma is still the platter on nearly every table, the meat slipping from the bone like a fine silk dress, the laffa underneath saturated with juice and spice. The bite-size wraps you make from the torn pieces of bread, lamb, pickled vegetables and ajika might be the finest you’ve ever had. Though my order rarely changes, I found myself adding the grilled kohlrabi during a recent visit. The brassica is sliced impossibly thin, cooked until nearly translucent. Each piece of the kohlrabi absorbs the smoke from the grill, like a dozen tiles of sweet and smoky candy punctuated with brown butter and burnt harissa powder. Now I can’t imagine dinner at Bavel without it.
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Quarter Sheets
Echo Park Pizza Bakery $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
As a reminder that splendors can flower in the darkest times, some of the decade’s most inspired restaurants were conceived in the early pandemic months when unemployed chefs started pop-ups as a means of survival. Exhibit A: Quarter Sheets, the tiny Echo Park sensation born from Aaron Lindell’s pivot to crackly edged, Detroitish-style pizzas and Hannah Ziskin’s intuitive genius with layer cakes. Their pizzeria-that’s-more-than-a-pizzeria does big takeout business. To experience the fullest gamut of their talents, though, score a dine-in reservation. The aesthetic is early-’80s rec room, complete with charmingly wonky art (parrots are a theme) and both record and cassette players. On Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays Lindell throws round, thin, charry-edged bar pizzas into the mix. Start with a warm, brothy gigante bean salad or downy meatballs in red sauce. Ziskin continues to serve her now-famous spin on princess cake, but she also makes seasonal fruit pies — late summer brought a strawberry-pluot oat crumble variation with bay leaf ice cream — and is returning to the plated desserts of her days in upscale restaurants. One never knows what’s next from them; it’s safe to expect greatness.
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Destroyer
Culver City Breakfast/Lunch $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Jordan Kahn opened his daytime Culver City restaurant nearly a decade ago, serving intricately layered breakfast and lunch dishes as pleasurable to eat as they are astonishingly beautiful. The arrival of Kahn’s nearby tasting-menu opus Vespertine in 2017 overtook the conversation around him, though it isn’t as if Destroyer fell into secrecy: It’s always busy, a mainstay of the Hayden Tract community and the tech companies that fill its Eric Owen Moss-designed buildings. You can swing by to pick up a pain au chocolat or a handsome mini sesame-carrot bundt cake (Kahn began his career as a pastry chef and his chops are on fine display here) with a sparkling espresso or sweet potato latte. The composed plates are a window into Kahn’s virtuosity for a fraction of the cost of Vespertine. A sweet potato waffle slips into new dimensions with orbiting garnishes of smoked prosciutto, pepper jelly, goat cheese and other savory-sweet elements. Smoked fish arrives in a ceramic bowl, obscured under whipped yogurt, pickled celery root, dill and savory onion granola. It sounds wild and weird until your brain signals “everything bagel with lox,” but with more entertainment for the teeth. There’s nothing else like it in California. Maybe anywhere.
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Seline
Santa Monica Californian $$$$
Dinner at Dave Beran’s year-old fine dining restaurant invites diners to explore where seasonality and surrealism collide. The flavors of roasted banana and eucalyptus on a recent autumn menu, for instance, are unlikely bedfellows under a braised and charred leek as decadent as a piece of Wagyu. In the middle of dinner, you venture into the kitchen to watch the chef dip a fresh mustard green into passion fruit, then flash freeze the two. The fruit creates a delicate sheen of ice that cracks, then melts, meant to mimic the frozen dew on a forest leaf. It’s a course that envelops you in a crisp, cool fall morning. Braised short rib in a mushroom and prune ragout echoes the prized, sticky bits of charred pot roast at the bottom of a pot, accented with the peppery bite of roasted calendulas. It’s an homage to comforting moments Beran spent with his grandmother. The last bites of her roast. Her fondness of potpourri. It’s a cohesive and playful journey, with courses as crave-able as your own childhood favorites. Beverage director Matthew Brodbine’s wine and nonalcoholic pairings keep pace with the menu beautifully. I’m looking forward to experiencing all of the upcoming seasons through Beran’s point of view.
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Azizam
Silver Lake Persian $
(Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)
Our restaurant critic is an enthusiast of Iranian cuisine, a venerable authority on the subject in Los Angeles and beyond. So when he sang the praises of Cody Ma and Misha Sesar’s pop-up-turned-restaurant Azizam, I took notice. The name translates to “my dear,” a term of endearment in Farsi. The pair forgo the more ubiquitous kebabs in favor of a menu that bridges the gap between homestyle Persian cuisine and stalwarts you’re likely to find at your neighborhood Iranian restaurant. It’s hard not to fall for the kofteh Tabrizi, a gargantuan meatball of beef and rice crowded with fresh herbs and crowned with barberries. Ensconced like hidden jewels in the center are morsels of sweet dried fruit and walnuts. A thick slab of kuku sabzi, the labor-intensive frittata made from a garden’s worth of chopped herbs and greens, is nestled between two slices of seed-flecked barbari bread. It’s cuisine meant to be shared and lingered over, with a mazeh plate acting as a flawless overture to an afternoon spent on the sunlit patio. A seasonal vegetable yogurt is hot pink with beets. The shirazi salad a medley of crunchy cucumbers, tomato and onion. The mazeh I return to most on the table is the zeytoon parvardeh, a wonderfully tangy jumble of smashed green olives, pomegranate molasses, walnut and mint oil you can eat with a spoon.
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n/naka
Palms Japanese $$$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The dining room at n/naka offers a profound sense of intimacy absent from even the smallest chef counters in town. And it has little to do with its size. Chefs and co-owners Niki and Carole Iida-Nakayama manage to create the feeling of being invited into their home, with dinner presented as a uniquely personal snapshot of dining in Los Angeles at this exact moment in time. The two still grow what they can for the restaurant in their front yard. Their zensai course, one of the highlights of the kaiseki experience, involves small, hyper-seasonal dishes prepared to honor the individual ingredients. Recently, watermelon mochi was presented as a giant raindrop. Tomatoes from the chefs’ garden were taut and sweet. That evening’s mushimono, or steamed course, took the form of a soft, luscious dumpling in a tomato dashi with Dungeness crab and basil. Diners can commit to a full beverage pairing, though servers are adept at making smart recommendations for single glasses of sake or wine. Both the food and beverage offerings change regularly, but the spaghetti tangled in creamy mentaiko sauce with abalone is one dish you can always count on. “Or people would protest,” says our server. I would be one of them.
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Anajak Thai
Sherman Oaks Thai $$$
Halfway through the decade, I’m already certain we’ll look back over the 2020s and cite Anajak as one of the feel-good triumphs of the era. Second-generation owner Justin Pichetrungsi left a thriving career as an art director at Walt Disney Imagineering to take over leadership of the Sherman Oaks restaurant founded by his parents, Ricky and Rattikorn, in 1981. Justin uses Ricky’s recipes, merging his Thai upbringing and Cantonese heritage, as a blueprint, resketching sauces for river prawns and soft-shell crabs and barbecued pork collars to his own definitions. More vegetables populate the menu, without crowding out favorites like wok-smoky noodles supreme and the balanced earthy sweetness of Massaman beef with sweet potatoes. His Thai Taco Tuesday phenomenon, where fish tacos lit up by chili crisp and limey nam jim crisscross with wok-fragrant drunken noodles and Dungeness crab fried rice, galvanized the community when it was held outdoors during the pandemic, and its magnetism continues. He occasionally hosts omakases driven by the question, “What if this ritualized format had been codified in Thailand rather than Japan?” And his exuberance for wine literally spilled into the dining room, filling a long central console and every other free nook. A swift, handsome renovation this summer produced kitchen upgrades, a more open flow and a new second dining area featuring art by Justin’s grandfather. Wine director Ian Krupp has more storage space, too, but the bottle overflow can still cut into diners’ elbow room. It’s hard now to imagine the scene any other way.
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Restaurant Ki
Downtown L.A. Korean $$$$
“Is this Koreatown upstart the future of fine dining in L.A.?” read the headline for a review I wrote in 2023 of Kinn, a tiny tasting-menu restaurant where Kiyong “Ki” Kim presented his California produce-driven vision of modern Korean cooking in five assured courses. Kinn closed suddenly later that year and Kim regrouped. In January, he introduced 10-seat Restaurant Ki in a Little Tokyo office building, hidden in the same subterranean warren as Sushi Kaneyoshi. At Ki, the future has indeed arrived. With a longer, more meticulous menu glinting with luxury ingredients, Kim bridges the traditional and casual Korean cooking that has defined the cuisine in Los Angeles for decades with the higher-end modern movement booming in places like Seoul and New York. In a dozen or so courses, Kim and his team prepare dinner for guests seated at a long counter. The tone zigzags between hypnotic pleasers and easy-to-love experimentalism. A warming bowl of noodles in seafood broth, laced with eel and Dungeness crab meat, might be followed by grilled lobster tail served in beurre blanc deepened with doenjang (fermented soybean paste) and dusted, playfully and winningly, with dried raspberry powder. Kim’s love of wine shows through in the tightly harmonized beverage pairing. The soundtrack of 1980s-era soft R&B hits strikes a wonderfully dissonant nostalgia in this Gen-Xer, and emphasizes the unstuffy mood to the whole experience. Ki is the year’s highest-ranking debut, a heartening reemergence of one of our freshest culinary voices.
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Antico Nuovo
Larchmont Italian $$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
What makes Antico Nuovo the finest Italian restaurant in Los Angeles? Chef and owner Chad Colby puts in the research to master lesser-seen dishes, and he adapts more standard ideas in ways that renew their essence. In a summertime salad, marsala and basil exaggerate the honeyed qualities of ripe plums and nectarines. A crackling balloon of focaccia, airier and bouncier than any other in town, is a vehicle for swiping through squiggles of whipped ricotta speckled with pistachio pesto, anchovies set over a stinging green sauce and piped Normandy butter buried under shaved bottarga. The focus is wider than any one region of Italy, but chef de cuisine Arturo Rojas and his team oversee a unifying sort of farm cooking where every cut of animal shows recognized value. That’s especially true of the centerpiece pastas: foglie d’ulivo (a shape that resembles olive-tree leaves, dyed appropriately with the juice of greens) with smoky flecks of roasted squab and halved olives; a ragù Bolognese of silky beef cheeks and veal tongue that entangles pappardelle in meaty depths; tiny, ridged plin dell’ Alta Langa sauced in meat drippings and spectacular with the optional addition of crisped sweetbreads. Let me not forget the ice creams: unusually silky and so complex they hit the palate like sophisticated sundaes. Antico also serves a cannoli that rivals the ones I crunched through in Sicily.
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Morihiro
Echo Park Japanese $$$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Omakase restaurants in Los Angeles have never been more prominent, nor greater in number or price. Morihiro Onodera’s 5-year-old sushi-ya reigns among them. Beginning in 2000, with the 11-year run of his debut restaurant, Mori Sushi in West L.A., Onodera helped codify the L.A. style of omakase in which small dishes — some of which reflect technique-focused kaiseki traditions (a zensai plate of tiny, seasonal bites) and some of which reflect his wit (big-eye tuna tartare balled into a chunky, unruly orb and heaped with caviar) — precede a parade of nigiri. A table at Morihiro is a good option, but if you can, indulge by booking a place at the sushi bar in front of the master himself. For the last five years, that meant a six-seat pale cedar counter in a small Atwater Village storefront. In October, the restaurant relocated to a larger space in the Elysian building in Echo Park. Onodera has been famously peripatetic during his long career. His new chapter for Morihiro centers a standalone cocktail bar that is the new domain of Han Suk Cho, fresh from her star-making turn crafting some of the city’s most poetic drinks (including nonalcoholic revelations) at Kato.
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Providence
Hollywood Seafood $$$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Michael Cimarusti, along with partners Cristina Echiverri and Donato Poto, were crucial in establishing Los Angeles as a world-renowned dining destination when the three opened their Melrose Avenue restaurant in 2005. A recipient this year of three Michelin stars and a spot on the first-ever North American World’s 50 Best, Cimarusti is quick to credit his stellar staff, which includes longtime chef de cuisine Tristan Aitchison, bar director Kim Stodel and wine director David Osenbach. You could say he’s spent the past 20 years leading a team of restaurant avengers, with Poto as the beating heart of the operation. Often the first and last face you see at Providence, Poto succeeds in orchestrating a level of hospitality unrivaled elsewhere in the city. He remembers where you like to sit, the name of your favorite football team and he won’t hesitate to invite a budding gourmand into the kitchen to meet the chefs. The city’s fine-dining scene has come a long way in the last two decades, but Providence is still a beacon of excellence. Cimarusti continues his devotion to sourcing sustainable seafood, preparing it in ways that both celebrate and accentuate whatever is on the plate. Recently, I was taken with a dry-aged Japanese kinki grilled over charcoal until the fish’s flesh was resplendent with its own juice and fat, hidden under a tile of crispy skin. Underneath were creamy cranberry and Romano beans drizzled with fig leaf oil made from trees just outside the restaurant. Despite all the accolades, the staff continues to push itself with a bean-to-bar chocolate program and the production of honey from a bee yard on the rooftop. “We don’t make money,” says Poto during a recent dinner, referencing the time and care it takes to manage the bees. “But it makes a difference, and we love it.”
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Hayato
Downtown L.A. Japanese $$$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
My most enduring recommendation for a once-in-a-lifetime indulgence in Los Angeles? The seven-seat sanctuary in Row DTLA where, for seven customers five nights a week, Brandon Hayato Go and his tiny crew choreograph three-hour meals. Modernizing two traditional forms of Japanese dining, kaiseki and kappo, Go stands at the counter’s center, wielding knives and chopsticks to assemble small dishes of seafood, much of it direct from Japan’s waters, in practiced, poetic flow. Go, who began working at his father’s sushi restaurant in Seal Beach when he was 15, carries himself with disarming charm. Diners’ shoulders relax in front of him. He stays on course, pausing to describe clusters of corn tempura, or simmered abalone, or cloudless soup showcasing an orb of crab meat, but he’s also happy to veer off. He’ll riff on L.A.’s dining scene, his most recent travels through Japan, his obsessions with rare sake and Champagne (which translate into a mind-expanding beverage list). Go is at once superhuman master chef and the guy with good hair you chat with while in line for coffee. To experience his wondrous paradoxes, there are costs: The expense of perfect ingredients has driven the price of dinner per person up to $450, and reservations are nearly impossible. And still I say: Add your name to the monthly waitlist on Tock. Persevere. Jump when your chance arrives. It’s all worth it.
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Dunsmoor
Glassell Park American $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Brian Dunsmoor grew up in Georgia, and the ever-unfolding menu at his Glassell Park restaurant grafts his past and present. His cooking rolls with California’s growing calendar, yet the flavors he conveys are palpably Southern. In his dishes, you don’t just taste the seasons. You feel them. Summertime salads of peaches with farmers cheese and basil or silvers of smoked duck ham paired with aptly named Honeyloupe melon elicit picnic-outing joy. The subtle sharpness that cider, rosemary and black pepper bring to roasted quail with apple sauce mirror the shifting moods of fall. I can count on Dunsmoor’s slippery dumplings with pulled chicken to lift me from the lethargy of winter’s short days. Several comforts are evergreens: pork and green chile stew with supple tortillas; the restaurant’s famous chile-cheddar cornbread, baked in cast-iron skillets and literally dripping in butter, based on a recipe by chef and cookbook author Edna Lewis; and, for dessert, a yielding block of sticky date pudding. The dining room’s faded brick, ambered lighting and central burning hearth (from which most dishes emerge) reinforce the Southern charms. Wine director Sam Graves oversees an expanding, increasingly spectacular bottle list full of older French vintages. For last-minute Dunsmoor hankerings, swing by the adjoining wine bar for oysters and a hanger steak glossed with green peppercorn jus.
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Baroo
Downtown L.A. Korean $$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Modern language fails to grasp the otherworldliness of the food at Kwang Uh and Mina Park’s Arts District restaurant. It’s a tasting menu heavily rooted in Korean flavors and tradition, with the unwieldy spirit of fermentation at its core. And it is the vegetarian twist on that menu, available with advanced booking, that so thoroughly allows Uh to flex his culinary muscles. Grilled hearts of palm are tender with a slight crunch, suspended in a curry ssamjang that hums with heat and warm spices. Next is a bowl of buckwheat noodles sheathed in a delicate seaweed cracker, its surface a maze of braided fibers, rough and feathery as a sheet of deckle-edge paper. The climax of the meal arrives as a series of baroo bowls, the vessels Buddhist monks use to eat their meals. Rice, vegetables at various stages of freshness and fermentation and a bowl of radish leaf soup are all designed to nudge the diner toward mindful eating. Cauliflower sits in a vibrant pool of Green Goddess dressing. Triangles of perilla jeon are like perfect, bite-sized presents. Wedges of pickled cucumber melon are nestled into a macerated strawberry soy paste that’s hot, tart and sweet, with a deep strawberry flavor buoyed by the tang of vinegar. The food may be cerebral, but Uh is ever attuned to the pulse of the larger culinary conversation happening around the globe. Recently, he took poetic license with the Dubai chocolate bar, presenting a quenelle of strawberry sorbet with crumbles of bitter chocolate wafers over pistachio cream that so perfectly mimicked the texture of knafeh. The dessert equivalent of a wink, and a nod, at the end of a spectacular meal.
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Kato
Downtown L.A. Taiwanese $$$$
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The most exceptional fine-dining restaurant in Los Angeles, Kato excels in every aspect thanks to a Justice League assembly of talent. Jon Yao leads the team, transforming the Taiwanese dishes he grew up loving in the San Gabriel Valley into dishes of ultra-fresh seafood, spice-braised meats and intricate salads that are equally soulful and technically rigorous. Ryan Bailey, who co-owns the restaurant with Yao, has amassed a wine list of nearly 3,000 bottles; trust him, while popping a cork or describing a pairing, to impart his joy in the subject free of pretense. Bar director Austin Hennelly is a scholarly genius. His nonalcoholic program alone is moving the needle on zero-proof cocktails and dealcoholized wines on a national stage. Managing partner Nikki Reginaldo leads an ever-more-erudite staff. Collectively, they are unrelenting in their pursuit of excellence. For eating and for drinking, the experience grows more tremendous each year. The cost for the tasting menu is $325 per person, with an abbreviated version available at the bar, where a couple of seats a night are also available to sip Hennelly’s masterworks. In the works for Kato: a planned redesign in 2026 to make the restaurant’s space in Row DTLA both more intimate and interactive for guests. I can’t wait to see — and taste — what else comes next.
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Mercado La Paloma
Historic South-Central Mexican $
The line at Holbox during the midweek lunch hour has become a cultural sensation, a queue of locals and visitors trailing past the automatic doors and around the parking lot like devotees angling for the latest iPhone series or limited-release sneakers. Believe the lauds, including ours when we named Holbox as The Times’ 2023 Restaurant of the Year. Gilberto Cetina’s command of mariscos is unmatched in Southern California – his ceviches, aguachiles and tostadas revolutionary in their freshness and jigsaw-intricate flavors. The smoked kanpachi taco alone — clinched with queso Chihuahua and finished with salsa cruda, avocado and drizzles of peanut salsa macha — is one of the most sophisticated things to eat in Los Angeles.
Holbox could be considered for the top ranking on its own strength. But in a year when disasters tore at our city, honoring the power of community feels more urgent than ever. Cetina’s seafood counter doesn’t thrive in a vacuum. Holbox resides inside the Mercado La Paloma in South L.A. The mercado is the economic-development arm of the Esperanza Community Housing Corp., a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 that counts affordable housing and equitable healthcare among its core missions. When the mercado was in the incubation stage, Esperanza’s executive director Nancy Ibrahim interviewed would-be restaurateurs about their challenges and hopes in starting a business. Among the candidates was Cetina’s father, Gilberto Sr., who proposed a stall serving his family’s regionally specific dishes from the Yucatán. Their venture, Chichén Itzá, was among the eight startups when the mercado opened in a former garment factory nearly 25 years ago, in February 2001.
Step into the 35,000-square-foot market today, and the smell of corn warms the senses. Fátima Juárez chose masa as her medium when she began working with Cetina at Holbox in 2017. Komal, the venue she opened last year with her husband, Conrado Rivera, is the only molino in L.A. grinding and nixtamalizing heirloom corn varieties daily. Among her deceptively spare menu of mostly quesadillas and tacos, start with the extraordinary quesadilla de flor de calabaza, a creased blue corn tortilla, bound by melted quesillo, arrayed with squash blossoms radiating like sunbeams.
Wander farther, past the communal sea of tiled tables between Holbox and Komal, to find jewels that first-timers or even regular visitors might overlook.
Taqueria Vista Hermosa, run by Raul Morales and his family, is the other remaining original tenant. Order an al pastor taco, or Morales’ specialty of Michoacan-style fish empapelado smothered in vegetables and wrapped in banana leaf. The lush, orange-scented cochinita pibil is the obvious choice next door at still-flourishing Chichén Itzá, but don’t overlook crackling kibi and the brunchy huevos motuleños over ham and black bean puree. The weekends-only tacos de barbacoa de chivo are our favorites at the stand called Oaxacalifornia, though we swing through any time for the piloncillo-sweetened café de olla and a scoop of smoked milk ice cream from its sibling juice and snack bar in the market’s center. Looking for the comfort of noodles? Try the pad see ew at Thai Corner Food Express in the far back.
The everyday and the exquisite; the fast and the formal (just try to score a reservation for Holbox’s twice-a-week tasting menu); a food hall and sanctuary for us all. Mercado La Paloma embodies the Los Angeles we love.
Holbox could be considered for the top ranking on its own strength. But in a year when disasters tore at our city, honoring the power of community feels more urgent than ever. Cetina’s seafood counter doesn’t thrive in a vacuum. Holbox resides inside the Mercado La Paloma in South L.A. The mercado is the economic-development arm of the Esperanza Community Housing Corp., a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 that counts affordable housing and equitable healthcare among its core missions. When the mercado was in the incubation stage, Esperanza’s executive director Nancy Ibrahim interviewed would-be restaurateurs about their challenges and hopes in starting a business. Among the candidates was Cetina’s father, Gilberto Sr., who proposed a stall serving his family’s regionally specific dishes from the Yucatán. Their venture, Chichén Itzá, was among the eight startups when the mercado opened in a former garment factory nearly 25 years ago, in February 2001.
Step into the 35,000-square-foot market today, and the smell of corn warms the senses. Fátima Juárez chose masa as her medium when she began working with Cetina at Holbox in 2017. Komal, the venue she opened last year with her husband, Conrado Rivera, is the only molino in L.A. grinding and nixtamalizing heirloom corn varieties daily. Among her deceptively spare menu of mostly quesadillas and tacos, start with the extraordinary quesadilla de flor de calabaza, a creased blue corn tortilla, bound by melted quesillo, arrayed with squash blossoms radiating like sunbeams.
Wander farther, past the communal sea of tiled tables between Holbox and Komal, to find jewels that first-timers or even regular visitors might overlook.
Taqueria Vista Hermosa, run by Raul Morales and his family, is the other remaining original tenant. Order an al pastor taco, or Morales’ specialty of Michoacan-style fish empapelado smothered in vegetables and wrapped in banana leaf. The lush, orange-scented cochinita pibil is the obvious choice next door at still-flourishing Chichén Itzá, but don’t overlook crackling kibi and the brunchy huevos motuleños over ham and black bean puree. The weekends-only tacos de barbacoa de chivo are our favorites at the stand called Oaxacalifornia, though we swing through any time for the piloncillo-sweetened café de olla and a scoop of smoked milk ice cream from its sibling juice and snack bar in the market’s center. Looking for the comfort of noodles? Try the pad see ew at Thai Corner Food Express in the far back.
The everyday and the exquisite; the fast and the formal (just try to score a reservation for Holbox’s twice-a-week tasting menu); a food hall and sanctuary for us all. Mercado La Paloma embodies the Los Angeles we love.
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