HIT SINGLES

Where to find the best Belgian waffle? A magnificent mole verde? To-die-for dim sum? Times restaurant reviewers Linda Burum, Michelle Huneven, Jonathan Gold, Max Jacobson and S. Irene Virbila give their favorite platters a spin.

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Machaca is generally a sorry thing in restaurants, watery shreds of stewed beef with maybe some bell pepper thrown in, a burrito filling fried hard with eggs and too much oil. But when done well, machaca, in its correct form essentially fried beef jerky, is a great dish of the dry Mexican West, all salt and smoke and heat. The superb Sinaloan-style restaurant El Sitio serves the best machaca in Los Angeles--a red-brown heap of spicy dried beef, grilled, pounded into shreds in a mortar and fried to a crisp frizzle with bits of onion and sweet peppers.

El Sitio, 3466 E. Florence Ave., Huntington Park, (213) 584-8491. Machaca, $8.50.