These are the 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles
There is no such thing as the quintessential Los Angeles restaurant.
That’s the soul-deep beauty of dining in our city. The street stand where burnt-orange birria juice drips onto your T-shirt from your third taco defines the L.A. experience as much as the holiest omakase counter, the scrappiest natural wine bar and the latest steakhouse-style burger sensation.
Some chefs arrange lettuces among summertime peaches so otherworldly in flavor they all but cross into science fiction. That describes our glory with salads — as do the stinging lime and crisped rice of nam khao tod, and the specific tang of dried mint and pomegranate molasses in fattoush made by careful, practiced hands.
It’s the collective greatness, the sum of our exquisite differences, that makes L.A. remarkable. Perhaps such a thought can comfort in dark times.
The 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles, now in its 12th year, is a guide to excellence but also the annual family photo:: The calendar flips and we don’t look quite the same as before.
Food columnist Jenn Harris joins me as co-author of this 2024 edition. After several cycles of tackling the 101 project solo, I’ve been traveling more to report on dining across California, so our two-person approach to surveying L.A.’s paragons made wonderful sense. We crisscrossed the region for months, checking in on stalwarts and swapping notes on potentially overlooked contenders. We agreed a lot and debated plenty (especially about pizza). We asked ourselves over and over: Which mix of restaurants tells the most compelling, complete and delicious story about Los Angeles? This is our answer.
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.
The lineup includes 27 new entrants. They’re bright lights, braving fresh perspectives, in a time of economic upset for the restaurant industry that has witnessed dozens of closings over the last year.
Among the newcomers: the Silver Lake cafe rewriting the Persian menu playbook with intricate stews and a giant meatball; the downtown Arts District bistro where Japanese and French flavors meet in a bowl of spaghetti or a billowing pot pie; and a stall at the Mercado La Paloma where masa made from heirloom Mexican corns receives its due as an art form.
Restaurant critic Bill Addison and columnist Jenn Harris share seven of their favorite spots to drink in Los Angeles, from cocktail and wine bars to Middle Eastern coffee.
Additionally, Jenn and I welcome five honorees to the 101’s Hall of Fame list. These are icons with names you’ll likely recognize, run by chefs who’ve fundamentally shaped L.A. dining. We also point out seven of our favorite new places for drinking — mostly wine and spirits, but including a Studio City shop serving Middle Eastern-inspired coffee brewed in sand.
If our dining culture defies easy categorization, at its finest it also embodies creative possibility and connection at the table. Our lives, it seems to me, could use these virtues more than ever.
— Bill Addison, restaurant critic
From Jonathan Gold to Bill Addison and Jenn Harris, the L.A. Times 101 Best L.A. Restaurants list is not just about splurge spots but all of the places that make Los Angeles an exciting place to live and eat.
Showing Places
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Locol
Watts Soul Food $
What is the purpose of a restaurant? Is it purely sustenance? Does it exist to serve the people of its neighborhood? These are questions I find myself pondering while digging into a piece of fried chicken at Keith Corbin and Daniel Patterson’s Watts restaurant. Patterson, who founded the Michelin-starred San Francisco restaurant Coi, and Roy Choi originally opened Locol in 2016 with a menu full of reimagined fast-food favorites and a mission to create employment opportunities for the surrounding community. It closed in 2018 but recently was reopened by Patterson and Corbin, a former Locol kitchen manager who is now the executive chef and co-owner with Patterson of Alta Adams. Locol operates under their nonprofit, Alta Community, and aims to employ Watts residents and trainees from a nearby youth center. This means that service is always youthful and friendly, and you’ll likely spy a patient manager training team members during your visit. The two chefs have commented that economic empowerment, not food, is the highest purpose of the business. But the new menu, which may not always reflect the day’s offerings (they may be out of a few things), still satisfies with smoked brisket and ribs, oxtails and fried chicken sandwiches. Corbin is making dishes inspired by the food he’s now known for at his California soul destination Alta Adams, but at a lower price point. The sentiment behind Locol can best be described in a quote featured above the front doorway: “We are here!” And that is a very good thing, since the foldies, the stuffed tortillas the original Locol was known for, are still griddled to toasty, cheesy perfection.
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Kang Kang Food Court
Alhambra Chinese $
When I wait in line to order at the Kang Kang Food Court in Alhambra, I like to chat up the people around me. Usually there’s someone who has driven from Westwood, Long Beach or maybe even Palos Verdes, willing to make the trek for a plate of Kang Kang’s sheng jian bao. The small pan-fried bao, as you’ll find the dumplings listed on the menu, are a popular street food in Shanghai. Part yeasted bun, part potsticker and a juicy pork dumpling all in one, they’re notoriously difficult to make, which may be why there are only a handful of versions around Los Angeles. The bao at Kang Kang are the gold standard, with crusty bottoms, thin chewy tops, fluffy midsections and a generous filling of juicy pork and hot soup. Each person at the table is given their own styrofoam ramekin of vinegar for dipping. Co-owner Chin Yu Yeh posted a poem on the dining room wall that includes instructions on how best to eat the dumplings. First, make a small bite. Then “blow up” the heat by blowing on the dumpling. Slowly sip the juice from the small hole, then enjoy. I once saw an impatient diner take a big bite and send hot juice flying across the table. Not me, though. It definitely wasn’t me.
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Mario's Butcher Shop
Newport Beach Butcher Shop Sandwich Shop $
The feelings I harbor for the sandwiches at Mario’s Butcher Shop in Newport Beach border on obsession. I can’t help but feel a certain way about a place that blasts Anita Baker and the Whispers and piles thick slices of smoked bologna onto a soft roll with an obscene amount of yellow mustard and white onion. Chef-owner Mario Llamas approaches your paper-wrapped lunchtime sandwich with the same bravado you’d expect from someone who cares about stars from that tire company, smoking his own pastrami and curing the various meats for his Italian sub. He prepares Niman Ranch steaks to your liking on a wood-burning grill for the “special” steak sandwich. Dressed with chimichurri and served on good, crusty bread, it’s an homage to the time the chef spent cooking at an Argentine steakhouse in Guadalajara. Mario’s is the busiest place in the Plaza Newport shopping center, with many people stopping in for a sandwich and supplies for dinner. There’s a refrigerator full of Wagyu Bolognese, fresh pasta, smoked salmon candy dip and other grab-and-go items next to vacuum-sealed packages of beef cheek, spleen and marrow bone. And I appreciate any place that prioritizes Have’A corn chips over those neon orange triangles
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Crossroads Kitchen
Beverly Grove Vegan $$
An enduring mystery of dining in Los Angeles: Why, with the state’s agricultural blessings, doesn’t the city have more vegan restaurants that focus on vegetables? Crossroads Kitchen certainly serves plenty of pasta dishes and Italian-leaning entrees that rely on meat substitutes. But crucially, chef-owner Tal Ronnen and his team also luxuriate in the seasons, arranging artful plates by which you can mark the calendar. Fried artichokes over saffron and lemon sabayon in the spring segue to summertime salads of tomatoes and stone fruit carved into half-moons and parsnips chiseled into bronze pegs with roasted grapes for fall. The restaurant has the in on next-level plant-based cheese, including Climax blue cheese, with just the right hit of funk, scattered over a riff on carpaccio made with pears. Crossroads now has locations in Calabasas and Las Vegas, but I’m forever loyal to the cozy, clubby Melrose Avenue original that’s long been an entertainment industry hangout.
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Surawon Tofu House
Koreatown Korean
Some restaurants we treasure for the mercurial talents and seasonality on display; others, like Surawon, we value for their comforting constancy in a precarious world. Sun Los Lee studied traditional tofu-making in Korea and found that using black soybeans imparts to the bean curd flavors hinting of sesame and peanut. Meals at her Koreatown stalwart center on soondubu jjigae, stews that arrive boiling like a lake of lava. Both classic white tofu and the black-soybean variation are made in-house, and the latter is my definite preference. It’s one of many customization options, including additions of kimchi, oysters, oxtail, vegetables, intestines and an assorted mix of pork or beef with seafood. Among levels of heat, which range from “plain” to “extra spicy,” I find “spicy” to release endorphins without feeling punishing. Lee’s tofu stew brings immense solace on rainy nights and tough days. Come with a group and, beyond individual soups, share the crisp-edged grilled mackerel, an even crunchier seafood-leek pancake and the bibimbap sizzling in a stone pot.
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Origin
Koreatown Korean Barbecue $$
If you’re serious about Korean barbecue, you likely have a favorite restaurant for specific cuts of meat. Soowon Galbi is the place for 48-hour-marinated short ribs. If you’re looking for the sweet soy char of bulgolgi, head to Gwang Yang BBQ. At Origin Korean BBQ, the cuts sizzling on every grill are the garlic-seasoned prime short rib and shaved pork belly. The short rib is moderately marbled and tender, fragrant with garlic and the smoke from the grill. The pork curls up as soon as it hits the heat, the thinness ensuring that each piece has just the right amount of fat with crispy edges. Each of the barbecue sets comes with a vat of brisket soybean paste stew crowded with bricks of tofu and ramen noodles. It’s reason enough to visit. Origin is part of the On6thAvenue group, which also runs Quarters BBQ across the Chapman Plaza. Perhaps it’s the newness of Origin that fills the dining room with a certain energy, attracting parties of mostly 20-somethings unbothered by the plumes of smoke from the tabletop grills and the decibel level. With soju and Terra beer flowing, there’s a celebration at every table.
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Nok's Kitchen
Westminster Laotian $$
Nokmaniphone Sayavong’s Laotian-style grilled sausages are brute links of pork with a pronounced texture, intense spice and sour zing. Each bite is its own adventure. One piece may surprise with a quarter clove of garlic while another might be embedded with a whole piece of diced scallion. The bitter, floral sharpness of lemongrass is ever-present. The former restaurant server started selling sausages during the pandemic and opened her small restaurant in a Westminster strip mall in 2022. She coarsely grinds pork butt and aromatics for the sausages, building on recipes her mother taught her when she was a child in Laos. Dishes spark with acid and heat, whether it be the fish sauce and Thai chiles in the larb rib-eye or the lime-and-chile-intensive dipping sauce that accompanies the skewers or bits of fried pork belly marinated in coconut milk and ginger. She makes a version of the crispy rice salad you can find at many Thai restaurants, served with nuggets of cured sour pork and peanuts. Only Sayavong’s rice is arranged in crunchy clumps that are soft in the middle and with a faint coconut flavor. It encourages an even more zealous appreciation for carbohydrate-intensive salads.
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Bistro Na's
Temple City Chinese $$$
Your meal at Bistro Na’s is meant to be regal, or as close to regal as one can come in a Temple City strip mall. This is food fit for an emperor, with a menu bound like an ancient text and dishes inspired by Chinese imperial kitchens. There are platters of pork feet jelly, golden soup teeming with the jewels of the sea. Shrimp are fried and lacquered with a sticky glaze made from sweet hawthorn and dried chiles. The Peking duck requires a table reservation and preordering one week in advance. Making the duck is a three-day process that involves marinating, scalding the skin and hanging and drying the bird multiple times before it’s roasted. The finished duck is presented whole to the table, impossibly plump with shiny skin the color of warm honey. Each crisp square of skin seems to shatter, then melt on the tongue. There are gossamer chun bing for wraps and a third course of soup or deep-fried bones. I prefer the soup, a calming respite between bites of lavish skin, shrimp and the rest of your royal feast.
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Las Segovias
South Gate Nicaraguan $
Brick-sized Nicaraguan tamales, known as nacatamal, are superior to just about every other steamed leaf- or husk-wrapped tamale. I’m confident that you’ll reach the same conclusion with your first bite of nacatamal at Las Segovias in Huntington Park. Green olives and raisins peek out from the masa filled with bone-in pork ribs or chops. Once you dig a little deeper into the center, there’s a lump of rice, potato and slivers of tomato. All the components, including the pork bones, take on a decadent, custardy texture and the bittersweet taste of sour orange. The quesillo is served in a plastic bag, similar to the way it’s sometimes packaged on the streets of Nicaragua. The corn tortilla is thick and almost cake-like, blistered and folded around a blob of soft, mild white cheese and crema that oozes out the back. There are bowls of indio viejo, with strands of shredded beef suspended in a thick, savory gravy, and big platters of grilled meats alongside mounds of gallo pinto and triangles of fried cheese. Everything is better with a spoonful or three of the house condiment, diced onions soaked in a vinegar chile sauce that tastes a lot like Tabasco. After you eat, you can browse the sandals, clothing and snacks in a small marketplace at the rear of the dining room. The refresco of choice is cacao, a tall glass of milk flooded with crushed, whole cacao beans that drinks like a slightly grainy chocolate milk. “It’s very nice,” my server says, handing me a Big Gulp-sized cup with a straw. Yes, it really is.
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Tokyo Fried Chicken
Downtown L.A. Fried Chicken $
For years, Tokyo Fried Chicken Co. was a tiny operation in a strip mall in Monterey Park. Visits required advance coordination with friends and a volunteer to arrive an hour early to get on the waitlist. I experienced a pinch-me moment last year when owners Kouji and Elaine Yamanashi closed the original location and opened a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles with counter service and ample seating. Now, you walk up to the counter and trays of chicken appear in less than 10 minutes. Kouji’s chicken is never changing: giant pieces of bone-in karaage battered and fried like one might find all over the American South. Scabrous and golden, the batter cracks to release the flavors of soy, garlic and ginger emerging in a flood of hot juice from the chicken. Thighs, drumsticks and wings are served in sets with rice polished with chicken fat, pickles, a side and dipping sauce. I favor the shredded cabbage salad, craving the cool freshness of the cabbage and the ginger tang of the dressing. Chicken is always the priority, but lately I’ve been starting lunch with an order of potato chips and onion dip and the chicken skins dusted with chile.
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Lasita
Chinatown Filipino $$$
The Filipino restaurant and natural wine bar in Chinatown’s Far East Plaza run by Chase Valencia, his wife, Steff Barros Valencia, and chef Nico de Leon remains centered on two dishes. Inasal, a chicken specialty of the western Visayan Islands in the central Philippines, soaks up a pungent cocktail of lemongrass, ginger, garlic and calamansi juice before being grilled. Pork belly lechon is rolled like porchetta and filled with similar herbs and spices. Lasita bills itself as a rotisserie, though in its fourth year that label doesn’t convey the breadth of the cooking. Grilled branzino stuffed with lemongrass and ginger or pork chop with a spicy-sweet barbecue glaze may be on the menu one week; soon they’re replaced by snappy grilled shrimp over sweet corn puree and whole dorade in a summery sweet-and-sour plum sauce. Vegans can feast on pancit dishes threaded with vegetables and a sizzling mushroom variation on the chopped pork dish sisig. Chase freely gives advice on wines: He looks for ones that he thinks of as “cutters” — high-acid whites and meant-to-be-served-chilled reds that especially slice through the salty, garlicky density of the meats.
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n/soto
Mid-City Japanese $$$
While securing reservations at Niki Nakayama and Carole Iida-Nakayama’s kaiseki showcase n/naka remains one of the toughest feats in the known universe, their Mid-City izakaya led by head chef Yoji Tajima slips far more quietly under the radar. I keep a running list of dishes by which to persuade people of n/soto’s many merits. Ease in with a plate of crudités alongside mochi flatbread (crisp but also enticingly elastic) and a smoky eggplant dip that calls to mind Persian kashke bademjan. A warm, gingery bowl of just-set tofu settles the senses. In the summer, look for cooling creations like King crab meat and uni dolloped with avocado dressing in an edible cup made of rice flour. Chillier nights call for mussels tangled in garlicky udon with crème fraîche and bacon. Skip the sushi for a donabe full of impeccably steamed rice and changing options such as autumnal mushrooms or soft-boiled egg and chicken thigh. In the spirit of izakaya, the beverage program is full of smart options that the staff can discuss in depth. Lead bartender Reed Windle, in particular, devises intricate cocktails that marry the Japanese-California ethos, driven by fruits and spices: Check out his Time Goes So Fast, which whirls together rye, anise hyssop, herbal Benedictine, aged sake and sake vermouth.
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Bhookhe
Artesia Indian $$
The nearly 100-item menu at Bhookhe, as with many other Indian restaurants along Pioneer Boulevard in Artesia, veers through some of the subcontinent’s most popular categories: pan-regional snacks; curries, including a smattering of North Indian classics like palak paneer; and Indian Chinese favorites such as tangy-sweet gobi Manchurian. Zero in on the vegetarian maharaja thali, though, as an immersion into the flavors of Rajasthan, where chef Pooja Dwivedi and her co-owner husband, Anshul, were raised. Where to start, among the tray’s nearly two dozen components? Point your spoon toward gatte ki sabji, soft squares of chickpea dumplings submerged in a yogurt sauce so finely spiced you’ll drink it like a lassi. Then graze through half a dozen small breads made from different flours (cornmeal and pearl millet among them), ideal for dunking in warm ghee or soupy dal. Garlicky chutney, tense with kachri, a tiny, wild melon, and green chile pickle ignite forkfuls of rice. The kitchen frequently changes up dishes on the maharaja thali, particularly seasonal vegetables, to pique the interest of return customers. There are a lot of us.
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Hakata Izakaya Hero
West Los Angeles Japanese $$
Along a stretch of Westwood otherwise rich in Persian restaurants and groceries, it can be easy to miss the black-painted façade of Hiroki Chiya’s five-year-old izakaya. Open the door to find its tiny room brimming nightly with a multigenerational crowd. This is an establishment that, rather than leaning into a Japanese California interpretation of izakaya, hews more closely to the modern concept of the genre in Japan: casual and gently rowdy, a place to gather after work for eating and drinking in groups. As Chiya’s menu explains in words and illustrations, his 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, the broth of pork bones simmered for hours until the stock basically transforms into meat milk. Chiya often fashions an extra-intense version made from pork head and knee simmered for over 24 hours, which appears frequently on his handwritten list of specials. Some other favorites: teba gyoza (excellent fried chicken wings stuffed with minced chicken); cool wilted cabbage scented with yuzu; tempura such as kibinago (a small, silvery fish in the herring family that runs in the springtime); and Fukuoka-style pork belly skewers cradled in lettuce with tomato and soft herbs. Ask one of the composed, fast-moving servers about seasonal sake selections, though know that you can also sip Chateau Montelena Chardonnay with your tempura and ramen.
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Mr. T
Hollywood Restaurant and lounge
Angelenos are fickle creatures. Restaurants from around the world have attempted moves here, only to find that we’re unfazed by their popularity elsewhere. Mr. T, the two-year-old location of the Paris bistro with the same name, has carved a niche for itself in the middle of the buzzy Sycamore District. At the bottom of the glass tower that houses Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, smartly dressed patrons flood the patio during breakfast and lunch. An impressive case boasts François Daubinet’s pastries. You can taste the butter in his croissants, and they shatter on contact. A few of the Paris restaurant’s dishes make appearances for dinner, like the mac and cheese with mimolette flambé set aflame at the table, but chef Alisa Vannah, who previously cooked at République, has made the restaurant her own. Vannah’s cooking is a quiet luxury, demure but powerful in its intention and flavors. Mackerel and yellowtail are dressed in a tomato water seasoned like dashi, with bonito, white soy and a shiver of yuzu. Lumpia are plump with chicken and shrimp. Treat Daubinet’s desserts as mandatory caps to the evening. His custard is nearly deliquescent, flooded with the sharp tang of passion fruit. Chocolate mousse is rich and fleeting, impossibly smooth before it vanishes on the tongue.
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Stir Crazy
Hollywood Wine Bars $$
The conception of a successful small restaurant — the physical and psychological dimensions, how the experience makes diners feel contained and secure rather than cramped and claustrophobic — is a specific art. Macklin Casnoff, Mackenzie Hoffman and Harley Wertheimer poured their tastes and hospitality knowhow into an enveloping 500 square feet along Melrose Avenue that for roughly 30 years housed a coffeehouse of the same name. The result: minimalist space, maximum impact. A warming renovation that serves form and function. A casual, Euro-Californian menu. An incredible wine program led by Hoffman. The kitchen team, under Caroline Leff, keeps a few perennial dishes in rotation. Among them is a celery salad with walnuts, aged Gouda and raisins that nicely pings between sweet and savory, soft and crunchy. As a main course, a link of mildly spiced German-style sausage, sourced from Mattern’s Sausage & Deli in Orange County, is presented with a mound of Japanese-style potato salad creamy from Kewpie mayo and a healthy dollop of mustard. Both dishes are forthrightly delicious, and the kind of untaxing combinations I could eat once a week, alongside a glass of Austrian Zweigelt that pitches cherry right down the middle. That’s precisely the aim.
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Lalibela
Little Ethiopia Ethiopian $$
Tenagne Belachew’s quiet haven is one of the places I most consistently bring out-of-towners for lunch. We build our meal around the 11-dish “veggie utopia,” uplifting in its chromatics of salads, simmered vegetables and thick lentil purees spiced to profound, molecular levels. Sometimes I veer to bozena shiro, a bubbling chickpea stew laced with a bit of minced meat, or yebeg alicha wot, a mild and creamy lamb sauté. Always, though, I return to the “special kitfo,” 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. Little Ethiopia, in general, is a treasure. Meals by Genet, reopened in early 2024 for weekend dinner hours, has ascended to the 101 Hall of Fame. I sometimes can’t decide between the dulet (raw minced beef liver, tripe and other cuts in spiced butter) at Messob; a vegetarian platter followed by a cup of fortifying, freshly roasted coffee at Rahel Ethiopian Vegan Cuisine; or turmeric-stained alicha tibs at Awash just technically outside the neighborhood. Most often, I return to Lalibela.
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Post & Beam
Baldwin Hills/Crenshaw Californian Southern $$
I think of Post & Beam as one of the beating hearts of the city, a sort of central hub where the biscuits and the shrimp and grits possess a gravitational pull that directs people straight to the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw mall. It’s been this way since Brad Johnson opened the restaurant in 2011, then handed the keys over to John and Roni Cleveland in 2019. The food celebrates the flavors and spirit of Southern cooking, where black-eyed peas share real estate on the table with catfish rubbed with jerk spice over a mound of dirty rice. The shrimp and grits, a dish most emblematic of Lowcountry cuisine, is long-cooked into something luxurious. The coarsely ground corn transforms into a smooth, creamy porridge studded with tiny squares of sweet red peppers. The way I feel about the braised oxtail grilled cheese borders on obsession. Brunch here is cheery. Parties merge and mingle over bottomless mimosas and plates of pecan pie French toast. It’s worth noting that the best seats in the house are at the bar, opposite the pizza oven, where you can watch trays of biscuits rise and turn a pale golden. These are the biscuits against which I judge all others, with flaky layers you can peel away and a tender crumb. With two to an order, you can eat one for brunch and one on the drive home.
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Tacos La Carreta
Whittier Mexican $
Late in 2020, José Manuel Morales Bernal began serving tacos from a food truck on the northern fringes of Long Beach. They mirrored the style his father had learned growing up in a town called El Verde in Mexico’s Sinaloa state. The quick success his son found led to the opening of a taqueria, its menu nearly identical, in a Whittier strip mall in early 2023. The foremost Sinaloan glory: a chorreada, which begins by crisping a corn tortilla on the comal and sprinkling on Monterey Jack and, crucially, asiento, a rendered paste made from the remnants of frying chicharrones. Its taste crisscrosses the nutty, caramelized purity of homemade ghee with the explicit richness of pork. Morales makes three meats: carne asada, adobada and tripa. Mixing the asada or adobada with tripe lands the flavors in a sweet-spot juncture of smoke, seasoning and funk. Consider the same combination when ordering the Sinaloan pellizcada, a medium-large round of masa, thicker than the average tortilla but thinner than a sope. Morales drives to Tijuana weekly to pick up pellizcadas made by a vendor in Mazatlán. The number he needs to order, he told me recently, keeps growing and growing.
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Sincerely Syria
Sherman Oaks Syrian $
Adham Kamal, raised in As-Suwayda (sometimes also spelled Sweida) in southwestern Syria, brings to Los Angeles the surprisingly delicate, deep-down-marinated shawarma he learned to make as a teenager. He now operates in four locations: Sherman Oaks, Pasadena, Anaheim and the first local stand he ran near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, then called Hollywood Shawarma. The menu at his operations comes down to two choices: 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. There are three options: a handheld stuffed pita or 12- and 24-inch versions, made using flour tortillas, that come with fries. Think small is my advice, and ask for the wrap to be rolled using only one round side of a pita. It’s about proportions. A shawarma wrap is not a burrito. It is meant to be compact and intense. A crowning touch: Kamal and his staff finish them on the griddle, searing every angle until they’re browned and crackling.
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El Bacano
North Hollywood Dominican $
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. They unlock their doors at noon but plate a quintessential Dominican breakfast that greatly comforts at any time of day: mangú (mashed plantains) with los tres golpes, or “the three hits” — two fried eggs, slices 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. Deany often can be viewed through the kitchen window tending pots of various meats infused with lime juice, onions, garlic, oregano and other spices. I’m especially partial to Santana’s chicken, Jonathan’s renaming of the classic Dominican pollo guisado. The bird is richly browned and simmered with thinly sliced peppers in a bit of liquid that forms a brothy, potent gravy. Start with an empanada, its half-moon shape shattering into flakes to unleash a lava flow of yellow cheese and diced salami.
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Sobar
Culver City Japanese $$
At Sobar, Masato Midorikawa’s Culver City restaurant, your bamboo sieve of noodles comes with a set of instructions. First, taste the noodles bare. Next, sprinkle some yuzu salt onto one bite. Then try matcha salt on another. Only then should you dip your noodles in the provided bowl of cold or hot broth. This is the way to fully appreciate ju-wari, a style of soba made from only buckwheat flour and water. Each morning, Midorikawa mixes the flour and water, then uses a machine he developed with a partner in Japan to make every tray of noodles to order. The earthy flavors are deeper and more intense than soba made with the addition of wheat flour, and the speckled gray noodles are denser and more brittle. The yuzu salt heightens the nuttiness of the buckwheat, while the matcha salt is more subtle and grassy. There’s a small menu of appetizers and sashimi to help round out the meal. The kakiage, served as a tangled cylinder of fried onions and shrimp, is the preferred soba sidekick, but there’s karaage, agedashi tofu and assorted Japanese pickles too.
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Hu Tieu De Nhat
Garden Grove Vietnamese $$
Orange County’s Little Saigon — overlapping Westminster and Garden Grove, and home to one of the largest Vietnamese populations in the United States — has enough culinary density for its own edition of 101 Best Restaurants. Previous recommendations in this guide have included Brodard Chateau, with its famous nem nuong wraps and its sweeping menu; Pho 79, where oxtail meat is a coveted addition to the spiced broth; and Ngu Binh, where Mai Tran and her family present dishes from Thua Thien Hue, a province in central Vietnam famous for its royal cuisine, including bánh ít kep bánh ram (two-tiered dumplings of glutinous rice dough filled with shrimp and pork and then set on discs of lacy fried dough).
Another for the short list: Hu Tieu De Nhat, a nine-table storefront in Garden Grove’s Koreatown community. The specialty is hu tieu, a noodle soup vital to Saigon’s street-food culture that distills Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian influences. Concentrate on the “Nam Vang” section of the menu, choosing from among three noodles: egg, rice or “glass” made from potato starch. Order them in combinations to accentuate the bouncy, squiggly contrasts. Bowls arrive arrayed with shrimp, pork belly, ground pork, fishcake and quail eggs. “Soup or dry?” the server asks. If there are two of you, try one of each. The broth, flavored with pork bones and dried shrimp, comes on the side for the dry version: You might add it a little bit at a time, along with crucial condiments like pickled garlic and a chile oil reminiscent of XO sauce. It might take a minute to tune your seasonings, but when your chopsticks finally plunge into your hu tieu, the tastes and textures are symphonic.
Another for the short list: Hu Tieu De Nhat, a nine-table storefront in Garden Grove’s Koreatown community. The specialty is hu tieu, a noodle soup vital to Saigon’s street-food culture that distills Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian influences. Concentrate on the “Nam Vang” section of the menu, choosing from among three noodles: egg, rice or “glass” made from potato starch. Order them in combinations to accentuate the bouncy, squiggly contrasts. Bowls arrive arrayed with shrimp, pork belly, ground pork, fishcake and quail eggs. “Soup or dry?” the server asks. If there are two of you, try one of each. The broth, flavored with pork bones and dried shrimp, comes on the side for the dry version: You might add it a little bit at a time, along with crucial condiments like pickled garlic and a chile oil reminiscent of XO sauce. It might take a minute to tune your seasonings, but when your chopsticks finally plunge into your hu tieu, the tastes and textures are symphonic.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Camphor
Downtown L.A. French $$$
When is a bistro also not a bistro? When chef Max Boonthanakit turns soupe à l’oignon inside out, setting down toast covered with gently broiled Comté, Gruyère and caramelized onion mousse in a moat of duck broth. When a tableside pan that in traditional settings might hold boeuf Bourguignon instead arrives full of roasted maitake and shimeji mushrooms over basmati rice, all soused on Madeira. When roasted chicken is reconstructed into circles with preternatural textures closer to pâté, and beef tartare arrives glossed in lemon aioli, with lightly battered basil or mint leaves on the side as chips, Camphor, by design, resists fitting neatly into any category. Nearly every surface in the dining room has been painted white; walls and ceilings and tabletops take on a pearlier glow as daylight dims. The gracious staff helps decipher the ambiguously worded menu. It’s how you find understated knockouts like lentils simmered in a smoky broth made with lamb and spices — a dish introduced by Boonthanakit’s former co-chef Lijo George, who departed the restaurant this year. The luxury burger is just that, dripping in smoked Gouda and tomato remoulade and more caramelized onions. At the restaurant’s elegant bar, chase its excesses with a martini-adjacent cocktail splashed with absinthe and celery bitters.
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(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Yess Restaurant
Downtown L.A. Japanese $$$
The dining room at Yess is a remarkably serene space, pure pale wood and smooth concrete, with the scents and sounds of a five-star spa. Junya Yamasaki’s cooking is equally subtle but purposeful, his interpretation of Japanese food ambitiously leaning into the plurality of Southern California with sustainable seafood in mind. A cold block of tofu is doused in a salsa macha infused with red miso, black vinegar and mirin. During a mid-autumn meal, he served squares of sweet Weiser Farm Bonny melon with slivers of lemon drop chile that popped with citrus-y heat. It was a dish so understated yet profound that it was the most talked-about plate on my table, maybe only second to the spiny lobster sandwich that appears with a whole tail and a knife pierced through the middle of the bun. Yamasaki treats the tail like katsu and makes a lobster salad out of the leg meat. Both are layered onto a buttery roll and doused with a bisque made from the head of the crustacean. Sous chef Giles Clark is opening an all-day cafe and wine bar next door, adding some casual daytime vibes to the overall Yess operation. With Benedictine bacon sandwiches and perfect fruit tarts, it’s quirky, but with the same careful precision acting as the throughline between the sister restaurants.
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(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Villa's Tacos
Highland Park Mexican $
No two queso tacos ever look exactly alike emerging from the griddles at Villa’s Tacos. Sometimes the blue corn tortillas fuse with cheese to form the jagged rhombus shapes of continents. On others the cheese runs like thinned crêpe batter that seizes into lacy edges. But at either location — the always-busy taqueria in Highland Park or the popular counter in Grand Central Market — the result is salty-crisp deliciousness. Then taqueros pile on cotija, onion, squiggles of crema and guacamole. Among meats, I will always favor the hashed chicken thigh meat bathed in mesquite smoke. For second and third tacos, look to fragrant chopped asada, nubbly chorizo or a nicely piquant vegan option of half-pureed black beans scattered with cactus salad. “Tacos estilo Los Angeles” is Victor Villa’s motto for his more-is-more taco philosophy. Like the city he invokes, the closer you look, the more stories you find. Among a half-dozen or so salsas, for example, look for a ruddy mulch labeled “jiquilpan.” It’s based on a recipe dense with smoked chiles that Villa’s father was taught in Michoacán.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Cassia
Santa Monica Vietnamese French $$$
I’ve happily followed the breadcrumbs of Bryant Ng’s career, from his time making pizzas with Nancy Silverton at Pizzeria Mozza to the now-shuttered Spice Table in downtown L.A., where he served fried soft-shell crabs with salted egg and smoldering beef rendang. There are echoes of his former kitchens woven into the menu at Cassia, in the flatbread that accompanies the chickpea curry, spotted with golden bubbles, chewy and crisp like both pizza crust and naan; in the Hainanese chicken leg served over rice kernels plump and slick with duck fat. Ng continues to merge the idea of a grand French brasserie with his own Chinese-Singaporean narrative. And you’ll spot plenty of nods to the decades his family spent cooking Chinese American food in Los Angeles, as well as wife and partner Kim Luu-Ng’s Vietnamese heritage. Sunbathing prawns are inspired by the ones a friend made in Vietnam — spicy, a little sweet and deeply savory with chicken powder. Ng dresses dan dan noodles in a tahini-leek sauce hot with roasted chile oil. Fried calamari rings are buried in cereal crumbs, mirroring the cereal prawns you’ll find all over Singapore. At Cassia, which in 2019 won The Times’ Gold Award, Ng has perfected his syncretic style of cooking, and every plate feels immensely personal.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Found Oyster
East Hollywood Seafood Restaurant
Seafood-centric restaurants with raw bars aren’t quite the anomaly they once were in Los Angeles, but a meal at Ari Kolender’s petite Found Oyster remains unparalleled. Opened just before the pandemic, it’s a narrow slice of New England in East Hollywood, next to a vegan grocery store and just down the street from the Church of Scientology’s big blue building. Parking is rarely easy, and it’s likely there will be a wait for a seat, but a chilled glass of wine helps pass the time and you’ll be handsomely rewarded for your efforts. The seafood platters are grand and inviting, with a lower tier of oysters fanned out on crushed ice with a plate of the day’s crudo in the center. The top layer is crowded with crab cocktail, Ritz crackers and peel-and-eat prawns rubbed with enough spices to stain your fingers red. I make dining companions order their own scallop tostada, greedy for my own bubbly fried shell covered in sweet scallop, tart yuzu and fragrant basil. The lobster bisque roll is as advertised, brimming with chunks of lobster. And I don’t think I’ve ever skipped the wedge salad. But I always make room for a few of the specials scribbled on the chalkboard out front. Fried spot prawn heads with togarashi? A Caesar schnitzel sandwich? Grilled salmon collar with espelette butter? Yes, please.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Macheen
Boyle Heights Mexican $
Breakfast burrito culture in Los Angeles is as limitless as tacos. Do you want yours bursting at the seams and crusted with cheese? With equal parts pastrami and eggs? There are thousands of places to indulge your particular craving for egg and cheese in a tortilla. The place contributing the loudest to the breakfast burrito conversation may be Macheen, siblings Ana and Jonathan Perez’s daytime restaurant inside Milpa Grille in Boyle Heights. The soft-scrambled eggs and Swiss cheese form a creamy, cheesy base for chile-dusted tater tots and brisket, longaniza, fried chicken, mushroom al pastor or Brussels sprouts. The flour tortillas are griddled until just charred but never really toasted, still stretchy and chewy. It was Jonathan’s tacos that first drew me to his roaming taqueria nearly a decade ago. The menu is more streamlined now, with blue corn tortillas you can fill with the same crispy pork belly, birria and fried chicken at lunch. I would jump at the chance to taste his taco de pollo en mole blanco again but appreciate the groove he’s settled into since becoming a permanent location in 2023. Knowing there is a breakfast burrito waiting for me, whenever I want one, is a luxury.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Borit Gogae
Koreatown Korean Barbecue $$
“Set menu with barley rice,” reads the modest description for the centerpiece meal at this two-year-old Koreatown breakout hit. For $30 per person, the staff delivers a near-overwhelming deluge of dishes to the table. Soups, mild pumpkin porridge, salad with bouncy cubes of acorn jelly and a few crunchy mung bean pancakes precede a spread of banchan-style seasoned vegetables (among them tea leaf, spinach, various mushrooms and an evolving selection of kimchi) arrayed on a woven basket. Bowls of barley rice also arrive, in which you assemble your lunch or dinner from the many elements, similarly to bibimbap, finishing with sesame oil and gochujang to taste. This is one of the most nourishing dining experiences in Los Angeles, and for gilding you can order extra meat options such as deeply savory grilled short rib patties. “Borit gogae” translates as “barley hump” and refers to a time of food scarcity in mid-20th century Korea. Owners Bu Gweon Ju and Sung Hee Jung, who are siblings, have reclaimed the phrase as a celebration of abundance, and the local community keeps the dining room full throughout the day.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
My 2 Cents
Mid-Wilshire Soul Food Californian $$
When I think of the dishes integral to this city’s taco identity, Alisa Reynolds’ oxtail tacos at her California soul restaurant are some of the first that come to mind. The velvety strands of oxtail are braised for six hours until the meat is slack, succulent and nearly spreadable. She places a heap in a warm corn tortilla with roasted tomatoes and showers the taco with wisps of curly kale and slivers of raw red onion. The meat juices run wild and mix with a drizzle of whiskey reduction, the two creating a heady dressing for the taco, and anything else on your table. Regardless of how you feel about meat pressed into a loaf (lifelong stan here), her turkey meatloaf burger is ingenious. She coats the slab in panko, then fries it until a crisp crust forms. Nestled between two slices of Texas toast with fresh shaved apple, it’s one of Los Angeles’ great sandwiches. Reynolds’ sister Theresa Fountain, with whom she opened the restaurant in 2013, is responsible for all the desserts. I typically find myself with little room for something sweet after lunch, but I never leave without a slice of her vegan sweet potato pound cake. Reynolds has called My 2 Cents a gift to the city. I couldn’t agree more.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Bar Chelou
Pasadena French $$
Chelou is a French word that various translation apps interpret as “weird,” “strange,” “unexpected” or “dodgy.” You get the idea. One might occasionally apply such an adjective to Douglas Rankin’s modernist plates. In his hands a pile of sinewy lamb ribs, for example, arrives dotted with buckwheat groats and tiny edible flowers, taking the form of a curious (and also delicious) floral arrangement. But mostly I’d just say the man excels at flavor combinations. Dill and bottarga blast awake the flavors in a brothy bowl of shelling beans. Shredded carrots anchor a salad pooled in coconut-ginger dressing with lime leaf and scattered Thai basil … but then Rankin piles on a maniacal hill of potato sticks. A signature rainbow trout entree is presented sauced in twinned nouvelle cuisine squiggles of garlic-chive oil and pil pil (traditionally made by blending salt cod, garlic and olive oil) and served over rice pilaf caramelized in corn juice to achieve a ragged sort of crispness. Housed in the same 99-year-old Spanish Colonial Revival complex as the Pasadena Playhouse, the restaurant inhabits its name with a central oval bar and a louche, dimly lit vibe to the open dining room. Cocktails laced with absinthe or yellow Chartreuse feel wholly appropriate.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Pizzeria Bianco
Downtown L.A. Pizza $$
The most compelling plate of produce in Los Angeles may be the antipasto platter at the downtown L.A. outpost of Chris Bianco’s Phoenix pizzeria. The chef has a hands-off approach when it comes to the produce in Southern California. “You just need to not screw it up,” he says. A recent platter showed off a bounty of baby squash halved and caramelized in the oven until the bitter skins turned sweet; blistered Romano beans from Harry’s Berries; Hypha Farms king trumpet mushrooms as meaty and tender as a steak; and garlic-strewn chunks of Weiser Family Farms potatoes cooked until the texture resembled custard. It’s a mandatory precursor to the pizza that inevitably follows. Bianco changed the way America thinks about pizza when he started Pizzeria Bianco in 1988 out of a grocery store in Phoenix. He applies that same don’t-screw-it-up approach to pizza, with a golden, nutty crust that cracks when you fold it but still has a nice chew. The Rosa is the one I can’t seem to quit. The crust gets a sprinkling of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, finely shaved ribbons of red onion, fresh rosemary and crushed, roasted pistachios. It just works.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Ladyhawk
West Hollywood Mediterranean $$
The mezze platter at Charbel Hayek’s debut restaurant at the Kimpton La Peer Hotel in West Hollywood is the swiftest, most celebratory introduction to the restaurant’s elegant Lebanese cooking. Give the black-lacquered tray a spin, turntable-style, to reach hummus in two variations; baba ghanouj jeweled with pomegranate seeds; muhammara, ruddy with roasted red pepper and walnuts; labneh, its creaminess offset with minced makdous (pickled eggplant); falafel, dark as rich soil on the outside, spring green with herbs on the inside; and cubes of fried potatoes radiating garlicky heat. The feast, which includes hot-from-the-oven Arabic bread and costs $130, presumably is designed for groups to kick off their meal, but I’ve seen couples split it as dinner, with plenty of leftovers for the next day’s lunch. It’s a viable strategy, to which I might only add a clever roast chicken entree. Whipped toum (garlic sauce) and tiny pickles flank the bird. They’re classic flavors in a Lebanese chicken shawarma, deconstructed here for universal appeal — an implied directive in a hotel restaurant — while still shouting out Hayek’s home country.
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(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Pine & Crane
Downtown L.A. Taiwanese $$
Vivian Ku’s three Taiwanese restaurants — the original Pine & Crane in Silver Lake, its second location in downtown L.A. and her slightly more casual spinoff Joy in Highland Park — can be, and usually are, mobbed at any given time of day. Each has a slightly different fast-casual menu that quells cravings for shrimp wontons with satisfying snap, dan dan noodles plunged in peanut-sesame sauce and comforts like minced pork over rice gently revved with soy-braised egg and daikon pickles. Her connection to the Taiwanese dining culture in the San Gabriel Valley, where she gathered with relatives growing up, animates the spirit of her cooking. She credits her penchant for light, clean flavors to her grandmother, who immigrated to Taiwan from China in 1949 before the family moved to America. The DTLA outpost holds special appeal because it also serves riffs on Taipei-style breakfast dishes every morning, including crunchy-soft fan tuan wrapped tightly with soy egg and pork floss, savory “thousand-layer” pancake wraps that make great on-the-go meals and dan bing (rolled egg crepe crunching with corn kernels and shaved cabbage). An extensive beverage program centered around but not limited to Taiwanese whiskies draws me back downtown in the evenings.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Barsha
Hermosa Beach Tunisian Mediterranean
I had my first brik a decade ago, at a long-shuttered restaurant in downtown L.A. appropriately named the Briks, a melting pot of Middle Eastern and Spanish influences with a focus on the phyllo-wrapped pastry ubiquitous across Tunisia. The savory fillings vary, but the exterior should be fried and golden, and you’ll typically find an egg in the center. At Barsha, chef Lenora Marouani’s brik is closer to a triangular egg roll, with a bubbly wonton wrapper shell that encases soft potato, chopped tuna and capers. The filling is bunched into the center, with long, crisp shards of pastry at all three corners. To dip, there’s a smoky harissa aioli smeared on half the plate. It’s the preferred way to begin a meal at Marouani and husband Adnen’s Hermosa Beach restaurant. Inspired by Adnen’s Tunisian roots, the menu encompasses chickpea stew, shakshuka and turmeric-stained chicken mosli. The couscous that accompanies the lamb meatballs is about triple the size of the Moroccan variety, submerged in a savory tomato stew and served with a spoonful of cool labneh. A true neighborhood staple as well as a citywide destination, it’s just the sort of place where I’d be lucky to be a regular.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Damian
Downtown L.A. Mexican $$$
An oval huarache piled with fried artichokes and spread with potato puree. Glossy costillas enmoladas served with pickles and wraps inspired by Korean bo ssam. Salmon tostadas spread with Sungold tomato sauce and smoky, glassy chicatana ants (a luxury ingredient in Oaxaca and other regions of Mexico). Damian remains the rare Los Angeles bridge linking Mexico City’s alta cocina momentum with Southern California’s culture and bounty. I was sad to see the restaurant discontinue brunch this year; it was one of L.A.’s great weekend meals that admittedly never quite found a steady audience. Its disappearance reminds me to return more often for dinner — for the incredible cooking led by Jesús “Chuy” Cervantes, the unflagging hospitality and the gorgeous, mod setting in a former Arts District warehouse. For a daytime meal Thursday through Sunday, there’s always Ditroit, the taqueria around back also run by Enrique Olvera’s restaurant group, Casamata. Seize on its peerless fish flauta dressed in crema, punchy salsa verde and cabbage slaw with a sprinkling of cotija.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Poncho’s Tlayudas
Historic South-Central Mexican $
It is Friday night. It is time to head to South L.A. for the once-a-week pop-up serving one of our city’s defining dishes. Among billows of mesquite, under a tent in a shrubbery-filled yard, Alfonso “Poncho” Martínez will be grilling and folding tlayudas in the style he grew up loving in Oaxaca’s Central Valley. He begins by swabbing his masa canvas (always imported from his home state) with asiento, a toasted lard he renders himself, before spreading over frijoles refritos, shredded cabbage and cheese yanked into short strings. Choose among three meats: chorizo; tasajo, a thin cut of flank steak salt-cured overnight before grilling; and moronga, a miraculously light, herb-laced blood sausage made from a family recipe of Martinez’s wife and business partner, Odilia Romero. (She co-founded the organization Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo, or CIELO, which hosts Poncho’s Tlayudas weekly.) I like all three meats combined, which Martínez and his crew cheerfully accommodate. Soft and crackling, fragrant and dense, this tactile masterwork coaxes all your senses into play.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Dulan's on Crenshaw
Hyde Park Southern $$
Greg Dulan remembers his father, Adolf, teaching him to make fried chicken with a brown paper bag and a cast-iron skillet. The method creates a golden, rugged landscape of well-seasoned crunch and meat that drips when you take a bite. The Dulans have been serving that same fried chicken, and an array of soul food dishes, since Adolf and his wife, Mary, opened Aunt Kizzy’s Back Porch in Marina del Rey in 1985. The family expanded its soul food empire with restaurants in Inglewood, Gramercy Park and Crenshaw. Greg, who runs the Dulan’s on Crenshaw, reopened the restaurant earlier this year after a substantial remodel. A large kitchen absorbed the old hot bar, where patrons used to line up at the counter to watch their plates being assembled. The macaroni and cheese is some of the best in the city, the noodles completely engulfed in cheese. Once the collard greens are long gone, you’ll want to gulp, not sip the pot likker. I appreciate the new space, especially the blown-up picture of Greg’s grandparents Zady and Silas, who watch over you while you eat your fried chicken.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Delmy's Pupusas
Atwater Village Salvadoran $
Ruth Sandoval started Delmy’s Pupusas in 2007, named for her mother, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s during the Salvadoran civil war. She serves variations on El Salvador’s national dish, popping up weekly at farmers markets including Silver Lake, Atwater Village, Echo Park, Torrance and Hollywood. In a city like Los Angeles, there’s a pupusa for every persuasion. I’m partial to Sandoval’s harina de maiz, which is almost cake-like in the middle. The pupusas bake on the hot griddle until they’re splotchy with crisp brown spots and the insides are ready to burst. A filling of ground chicharrón takes on the consistency of creamy grits. There’s even a blue corn masa plant-based pupusa stuffed with vegetables from the surrounding farmers markets. My go-to order at any pupuseria, including Delmy’s, is the cheese and loroco, which features the bitter flower buds that are native to Central America. A splash of red salsa and a scoop of zesty curtido complete the pupusa trifecta of cheese, acid and crunch. And after pupusas, there are sweet, fried plantains with a black bean puree for dipping.
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(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Asadero Chikali
Inglewood Mexican $
Earlier this year, I described the carne deshebrada with refried beans from the East Los Angeles Asadero Chikali stand for our guide to the 101 Best Tacos in the city. It was the taco I was handed when I asked the taquero to surprise me with his go-to order. It’s still the taco that comes to mind when someone asks for my favorite in all of Los Angeles. The meat is tangled with stewed tomato, onion and peppers. It’s my preferred filling for the exemplary flour tortillas, rolled by hand and cooked on a flat-top until mottled with toasty brown bubbles. They’re buttery, slender and surprisingly sturdy; I could eat a stack on their own. Asadero Chikali (Chikali is the locals-only nickname for the border city of Mexicali) recently opened its first bricks-and-mortar restaurant in a small strip mall in Inglewood, not far from SoFi Stadium. There, the tacos come with a tray of salsas and pickled onions. Though I can’t seem to quit the deshebrada, I always get at least one carne asada “Chikali style,” with the bits of smoky meat served under a dollop of guacamole and beans. And I never leave without a dozen tortillas to go.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Majordomo
Chinatown Korean New American $$$
Majordomo is a no-skip-record of a restaurant. You could blindly point to a spot on the menu and know that whatever arrives will be something you’ll still be thinking about on the drive home. It’s the type of L.A. restaurant that has felt relevant since it opened in 2018, on a hip, industrial stretch in northern Chinatown. The clientele look like they sauntered off the pages of a Copenhagen street fashion blog into its warehouse location. Chef David Chang has figured out the Midas touch for a dining room that’s constantly buzzing. I imagine his celebrity helps, with multiple podcasts and series involving Chang and famous friends. It’s more likely his brazen approach to cooking that launched his Momofuku restaurant group with locations around the country. His smoked bo ssam is a boulder of smoked pork belly you tear at with tongs and stuff into perilla leaves painted with scallion oil, kimchi and ssamjang. The mushroom crispy rice features a crunchy bottom that rivals the best tahdig in town. Dessert is a fiery spectacle, prepared tableside with fried doughnuts, rum flambé and vanilla ice cream.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Danbi
Koreatown Korean $$
John Kim, Patrick Liu, Alex Park and Yohan Park made a wise decision this year when they shut down their “Korean tapas” concept Tokki, housed in one of the corner spaces in Koreatown’s restaurant-filled Chapman Plaza complex, and reconceived it as Danbi. Under the direction of chef Lareine Ko, the menu ditches a misguided globalization of Korean flavors in favor of a streamlined collection of dishes that totter more thrillingly between tradition and innovation. Her version of haemul pajeon showcases tiny fried scallops that crackle against the pancake’s crunch. She pairs pine nut-scattered beef tartare with bone marrow for textural commentary (hot and cold, softly chewy and basically molten) and, for warming balm, fans the thinnest, milkiest slices of pork over rice in rich broth. Ko has a fantastic pastry counterpart in Isabell Manibusan, who has a talent for reimagining Korean staples in a California dessert context. She capped the end of summer with a corn flan (think cheese corn transformed into sweet custard) and riffed on the idea of a popular ice cream bar called Melona in an icy honeydew semifreddo. It’s been a year when locally and nationally we’ve seen an acceleration around notions of modern Korean cuisine. Danbi has joined the conversation with plenty to contribute.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Henry's Cuisine
Alhambra Cantonese $$
Dinner at Henry’s is a chaotic, bustling affair, where families rotate lazy Susans crammed with sticky honey-and-garlic pork chops, tiger prawns over glass noodles and mountains of fried rice flecked with bits of salty fish. Each table is its own grand Cantonese banquet. Brrring, brrring! Every 10 minutes, a chef slams his hand onto a bell, twice in quick succession, to let servers know that another plate of the deep-fried salted pig’s feet is ready. This is the dish on everyone’s table, the tiles of crispy skin like glass and the meat cured to pink, tender perfection. A woman presents a 4.5-pound live lobster like we’ve just won a prize on a game show. It reappears later, fried, cut and covered in mounds of crispy sweet garlic, chiles and green onion. The kids at the next table tangle their chopsticks, reaching for the last piece of pork skin. I zone out while excavating a piece of lobster from a claw. Can someone please pass the chow fun? Is there any more beef curry stew? Regardless of who’s at the table, you can fight over the crispy pig skin like family.
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(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Mae Malai Thai House of Noodles
Los Feliz Thai $
Malai Data began serving her superlative version of boat noodles — a recipe gleaned from her mother-in-law, who’s made the dish professionally in Bangkok for decades — from a stand in front of Silom Supermarket in Thai Town in late 2022. By year’s end she had a lease for a space two blocks away, in the shopping complex at Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue. The short menu, including basil-scented egg rolls and respectable pad see ew, is roundly satisfying, but the boat noodles are the irrefutable star attraction. Data’s servings are small and under $10, as is customary: In Bangkok part of the fun is going from stall to stall, tasting each cook’s tweaks. My order at Mae Malai: thin rice noodles (among five options), as the server recommends; pork over beef; and “spicy” rather than “Thai spicy.” At this level, the chile heat races across the taste buds as a big first sensation and then retreats, balancing the broth’s sweetness and vinegary thwack. Spices like star anise and white pepper glint like fireflies at dusk. Green onions and fried crumbles of pork skin rustle against the teeth, and bites of the bowl’s solo pork meatball bounce around the palate. The noodles feel squiggly, and they’re gone quickly, until only the must-sip liquid dregs remain, tingly and the color of black coffee. Other worthy bowls of boat noodles exist in Los Angeles, but this one rates as a master class.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Kuya Lord
Hollywood Filipino $$
Behold the behemoth “Kuya Tray,” the fastest and most comprehensive introduction to the cooking at Lord Maynard Llera’s 28-seat Melrose Hill restaurant. Sized for two, each platter contains canary-yellow spiced rice, sauteed vegetables, achara (pickled green papaya) and a choice of six meats or seafood. I’ll point you to a hypnotically spiral slice of “lucenachon,” Llera’s nickname for his version of Filipino-style pork belly stuffed with lemongrass stalks and fennel fronds, or to blue prawns simmered in garlicky crab paste. In the afterglow of last decade, which witnessed the brightest-ever spotlight turned on modern Filipino cuisine, Llera, who won the James Beard Foundation award this year for Best Chef: California, stepped into the arena as a gripping new expressionist. He keeps the menu restaurant concise, but it still harbors two relative sleepers: mami, a sustaining egg noodle soup with pork belly and garlic-chile oil; and laing, a delicious mulch of taro leaves braised in coconut milk and shrimp paste for nine hours. Llera, true to his individualism, adds smoky katsuobushi with pickled chile as an umami bump at the end.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Yang's Kitchen
Alhambra Taiwanese
Chris Yang’s Alhambra restaurant somehow bridges the divide between what my 89-year-old grandmother considers “good enough to wait for a table” and my graduate school friends’ proclivities for orange wines and kid-friendly brunch food. This is a restaurant that operates without borders, seamlessly transitioning from hash browns with smoked salmon belly when the sun’s out to grilled cabbage dripping with bagna cauda and a perfectly cooked 20-ounce rib-eye for dinner. It’s become my favorite place for lunch, serving as a weekday staple for balanced sets of dry-aged barramundi, plenty of farmers market vegetables and miso soup. On weekends, Yang’s Kitchen is the place to indulge in grilled slabs of sourdough sesame toast smeared with chicken liver mousse and jam, plus giant cornmeal mochi pancakes made with a blend of rice flour and cornmeal for the perfect chewy bite. On specific Monday evenings there are burgers. Wine night happens Thursday through Sunday, with flights from Jordan Chen. Where else can you sip a chilled Serbian red wine while dining on smoked pork jowl char siu and cold noodles with Dungeness crab? And there’s soft serve too.
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(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Si! Mon
Venice Panamanian $$
Last year Panamanian chef José Olmedo Carles Rojas partnered with Louie and Netty Ryan (whose projects include Hatchet Hall and Menotti’s Coffee) on a restaurant in the space that formerly housed Venice LGBTQ+ icon James Beach. As Si! Mon settled into its first year, the cooking has come into focus: This is a rare-for-L.A. feat of reimagined Central American flavors in a finer-dining setting. Carles Rojas and executive chef Christian Truong frame seafood strikingly. Surf clams wade in ceviche sunlit by culantro leche de tigre. Coconut milk and charred scallion oil add creamy-spicy contrasts to beautifully pleated shrimp dumplings. Miso butter and dried shrimp salt amplify the flavors of grilled branzino without overpowering the fish; be generous with the side of smooth salsa made from mild green cachucha chiles. Cocktails dip into the expected realms of rum and passion fruit. This martini drinker is very happy that the version on the menu labeled “very MF cold” delivers on its promise. Whether you sit on the semi-enclosed patio or the more cloistered dining room, look around at the clusters of lush plants and the ceiling pattern based on Panamanian Indigenous prints. They suggest the country’s tropical climate without ever devolving into kitsch.
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