Beat the summer heat with the best seafood restaurants from the 101 Restaurants guide.
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
The best mariscos, sushi and seafood restaurants in L.A. from the 101 guide
When the dog days of summer hit and turning on the oven is out of the question, seafood emerges as a convenient and refreshing option. You can pick up tinned fish for an impromptu picnic at the beach, spend a happy hour shooting oysters or go all out with a seafood tower on ice, maybe with a glass of champagne alongside. And no matter what type of cuisine you’re craving — Mexican, Vietnamese, Thai or simply an all-star supper centered around the sea — you’ll find plenty of options in and around Los Angeles. We have the abundant Pacific Ocean nearby and we’re also privy to a world-class restaurant scene that stands out as a leader in sustainable seafood practices. So not only can you indulge in butter-drenched mussels or spicy mariscos at a moment’s notice, you can feel confident knowing that these purveyors have employed the highest standards in sourcing your catch of the day.
With schools of seafood restaurants at our disposal, we’ve helped you narrow down the best options with 21 selections from the latest 101 Restaurants guide, spanning high-end Japanese, classic East Coast-style seafood houses and more, including our 2023 best restaurant of the year. And if someone in your party prefers land or vegetables over sea, you’ll find many of these menus will accommodate them as well. — Danielle Dorsey
Showing Places
Black cod and rice.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Hayato
Downtown L.A. Japanese $$$$
With seven diners seated along a cedar counter, Brandon Hayato Go and his small crew stay in continuous motion for several hours, composing more than a dozen courses. Washoku (a broad term for traditional Japanese cooking) and kappo ryori (in which the chef prepares a series of refined plates in front of the customer) inform his style of cooking. The meal’s structure loosely follows kaiseki, emphasizing varied cooking techniques served in ceremonial order. Whether Go has bound together scallops and corn in the laciest summertime tempura or steamed the sweetest fall Hokkaido crab, whether he’s grilled rockfish and lotus root to a smoky copper sheen or presented a lacquered bowl of dashi with an orb of shrimp that’s equal parts snap and silk, the quality of the seafood is profound.
Go began working at his father’s sushi restaurant in Seal Beach when he was 15. He’s been cooking in front of people for nearly 30 years. He can be at once immersed in his tasks and disarmingly relaxed. He tells funny travel stories; people lob out random questions about his favorite places to eat in Los Angeles. Bottles of wine may be shared among customers who arrived as strangers. By the time there are seconds (or thirds) of black cod and rice, followed by muskmelon and matcha for dessert, the group can be almost slaphappy from elation. It’s happened at each of my handful of meals at Hayato, this dinner-party-of-the-gods moment Go creates without forcing or staging a mood. I drift into the night always with the same feeling: That was some serious food, but that was also a seriously fun evening.
Go began working at his father’s sushi restaurant in Seal Beach when he was 15. He’s been cooking in front of people for nearly 30 years. He can be at once immersed in his tasks and disarmingly relaxed. He tells funny travel stories; people lob out random questions about his favorite places to eat in Los Angeles. Bottles of wine may be shared among customers who arrived as strangers. By the time there are seconds (or thirds) of black cod and rice, followed by muskmelon and matcha for dessert, the group can be almost slaphappy from elation. It’s happened at each of my handful of meals at Hayato, this dinner-party-of-the-gods moment Go creates without forcing or staging a mood. I drift into the night always with the same feeling: That was some serious food, but that was also a seriously fun evening.
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Noodle supreme with shrimp.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Anajak Thai
Sherman Oaks Thai $$
In 2019, Justin Pichetrungsi made the life-changing decision to leave a successful career as an art director at Walt Disney Imagineering and take over the Sherman Oaks restaurant his parents founded in 1981. In his hands, Anajak Thai straddles parallel worlds. The mainstay menu preserves the legacy of Ricky Pichetrungsi, Justin’s father, whose recipes coalesce his Thai upbringing and Cantonese heritage. Justin’s creative efforts — the Thai Taco Tuesday phenomenon he introduced in 2020, the omakase meals he serves that use a Japanese format to reexamine Southeast Asian flavors, a wine list that summarizes Angelenos’ disparate tastes — reframe the neighborhood institution as a seat of innovation.
At Thai Taco Tuesday, or #TTT as Justin tags it on Instagram, expect weekly whims — perhaps blue corn tortillas cradling Ora King salmon dressed with purple cabbage, a slick of mayo, chili crisp and nam jim, or tostadas overlaid with rounds of lap cheong, brightened with mint, or lobes of kanpachi dotted with salmon roe. All the while, the restaurant’s primary menu is tighter, truer, stronger. Fried chicken, a newer restaurant staple, is sheathed in rice-flour batter and scattered with fried shallots. The bird is prepared in the style of Nakhon Si Thammarat, a city in Southern Thailand where Rattikorn Pichetrungsi, Justin’s mother, has family. An optional side of caviar is very much Justin’s idea of embellishment.
At Thai Taco Tuesday, or #TTT as Justin tags it on Instagram, expect weekly whims — perhaps blue corn tortillas cradling Ora King salmon dressed with purple cabbage, a slick of mayo, chili crisp and nam jim, or tostadas overlaid with rounds of lap cheong, brightened with mint, or lobes of kanpachi dotted with salmon roe. All the while, the restaurant’s primary menu is tighter, truer, stronger. Fried chicken, a newer restaurant staple, is sheathed in rice-flour batter and scattered with fried shallots. The bird is prepared in the style of Nakhon Si Thammarat, a city in Southern Thailand where Rattikorn Pichetrungsi, Justin’s mother, has family. An optional side of caviar is very much Justin’s idea of embellishment.
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Freshwater eel marinated in dried scallop paste with seasoned rice along with the caviar.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Kato
Downtown L.A. Taiwanese $$$$
Kato 2.0 has grown in every way possible since its move over a year ago. With the expansion comes an all-in beverage program, including a 60-page wine list, steered by new partner Ryan Bailey. Bar director Austin Hennelly mixes some of the city’s brainiest cocktails. Even if you don’t spot it on the menu, see if he’ll make you a Bamboo; his martini-like blend of sake and vermouth tinged with tomato brandy and soy nicely readies the palate for the meal ahead.
From the kitchen, scallops or other seasonal seafood will arrive in a fish-fragrant sauce, the perfumes of garlic and ginger blazing like a comet’s twin tails. A hot brown-butter doughnut with uni and Ibérico ham will precede a showstopper of Dungeness crab and spinach in a wild butter sauce that involves mussel liquor, fermented cream and smoked onions. Caviar crowns the dish, of course. The cost is $225 per person. It’s a worthy splurge, however you consider Jon Yao’s food. If you’re looking to parse the almost clinical dissection of nostalgia, identity and luxury, the intellectual fodder is there. If you want simply to savor a beautiful, thoughtful sequence of plates, he can make you feel nourished on many levels.
From the kitchen, scallops or other seasonal seafood will arrive in a fish-fragrant sauce, the perfumes of garlic and ginger blazing like a comet’s twin tails. A hot brown-butter doughnut with uni and Ibérico ham will precede a showstopper of Dungeness crab and spinach in a wild butter sauce that involves mussel liquor, fermented cream and smoked onions. Caviar crowns the dish, of course. The cost is $225 per person. It’s a worthy splurge, however you consider Jon Yao’s food. If you’re looking to parse the almost clinical dissection of nostalgia, identity and luxury, the intellectual fodder is there. If you want simply to savor a beautiful, thoughtful sequence of plates, he can make you feel nourished on many levels.
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Zensai (Peking Duck, Ikura + Yamaimo, Shigoku Oyster and Tosazu, Tomato + Lobster Cream, Chestnut Sabayon + Truffle, Persimmon and Shungiku, Cucumber + Kikuno Hana.
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
n/naka
Palms Japanese $$$$
At a late-summer dinner at n/naka, the first plate to arrive — in custom with the ritualized, multicourse form of kaiseki — was sakizuke, a course composed of elements meant to reference the immediate past and future seasons. On this night, a scallop from Hokkaido had been layered into a precise disc with oyster aioli and fermented asparagus gelée. Yellow carrots and beets cut into thin petals encircled the scallop, and a dollop of caviar on top completed the picture: The composition, which resembled a sunflower, was the loveliest food I demolished this year. And in its arc of spring-to-fall contrasts, among the most delicious too.
Niki Nakayama composes her tasting menus around the precepts of kaiseki, which evolved out of Japanese tea ceremony traditions, but she isn’t confined by its structure. Along with Carole Iida-Nakayama, her wife and fellow chef, she follows an Angeleno’s regard for the farmers markets and for her own unmovable individualism. Their plates revise the notion of “what grows together, goes together” into Mary Oliver poems. Forests and seas of vegetables, noodles, seafood and broths appear as distinct habitats. It’s as if they’ve somehow occurred naturally, though the skill involved is also obvious and tremendous.
You will need to fight like hell for a reservation at n/naka. It will be worth it.
Niki Nakayama composes her tasting menus around the precepts of kaiseki, which evolved out of Japanese tea ceremony traditions, but she isn’t confined by its structure. Along with Carole Iida-Nakayama, her wife and fellow chef, she follows an Angeleno’s regard for the farmers markets and for her own unmovable individualism. Their plates revise the notion of “what grows together, goes together” into Mary Oliver poems. Forests and seas of vegetables, noodles, seafood and broths appear as distinct habitats. It’s as if they’ve somehow occurred naturally, though the skill involved is also obvious and tremendous.
You will need to fight like hell for a reservation at n/naka. It will be worth it.
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Chef Mori Onodera prepares sushi at Morihiro.
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Morihiro
Atwater Village Japanese $$$$
Most of the top-flight sushi bars in Los Angeles follow a school of omakase involving ornate small dishes that precede the parade of nigiri. It might be a few plates or a half dozen; they will display various culinary techniques (steaming, grilling, frying) and might include a zensai course of seasonal vegetables and seafood distilled into single exquisite bites. Morihiro Onodera, who has been making sushi in Los Angeles off and on for nearly 40 years, helped define this style. At his 2-year-old restaurant in Atwater Village, the first dish is usually homemade tofu: a square of near-custard made with particularly sweet soy milk from Kyoto, crowned with freshly grated wasabi and set in a pool of soy sauce. It arrives in a beautiful ceramic bowl, in a shade of robin’s egg with a speckled brown glaze, that Onodera fashioned himself.
Onodera has a special place in L.A. His splicing of traditions and innovations, his quest for the perfect sushi rice and his talents as a ceramist have made him a legend. Some sushi bars radiate serenity, or gravity. His tiny place exudes a chaotic sort of warmth. Seiichi Daimo, a certified sake sommelier, pours the most compelling pairings of any sushi bar in L.A. When I joked with Onodera once that he serves so many opening omakase courses that maybe some customers could leave satisfied without any nigiri, he bellowed back, “No way. This is a sushi restaurant!” You will leave very full and deeply aware that this is what fine dining in Los Angeles is all about.
Onodera has a special place in L.A. His splicing of traditions and innovations, his quest for the perfect sushi rice and his talents as a ceramist have made him a legend. Some sushi bars radiate serenity, or gravity. His tiny place exudes a chaotic sort of warmth. Seiichi Daimo, a certified sake sommelier, pours the most compelling pairings of any sushi bar in L.A. When I joked with Onodera once that he serves so many opening omakase courses that maybe some customers could leave satisfied without any nigiri, he bellowed back, “No way. This is a sushi restaurant!” You will leave very full and deeply aware that this is what fine dining in Los Angeles is all about.
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Santa Barbara Vermilion Rockfish.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Providence
Hollywood Seafood $$$$
Providence is a local and national benchmark of white-tablecloth extravagance, rightly famed for Michael Cimarusti’s luxury coddling of seafood. His cooking is less about fireworks and drama and more about technique in pursuit of clarity: Even if frothy corn sauce and fermented radish surround king crab, or truffles and pancetta scent a Hokkaido scallop, it’s the taste of the ocean that long stays in the memory.
If you desire, white truffles will rain down over risotto or golden scrambled eggs; cocktails can be made tableside; and a sommelier might arrange a parade of wine pairings that costs nearly as much as the tasting menu, which is $295 per person. Go ahead and splurge on the optional uni egg gilded with Champagne beurre blanc. Fanciness without human connection feels vacant, and the warm, alert individuality that Providence’s service team brings to the experience has contributed as much to the restaurant’s longevity as the brilliant food. I recently brought a 30-something Times colleague (who doesn’t work on the Food team) for his first dinner to Providence, and at the end of the evening he said, “If I make it to 80, I’m still going to be thinking about this meal.” I sat with his words for a minute, and then I thought: Same.
If you desire, white truffles will rain down over risotto or golden scrambled eggs; cocktails can be made tableside; and a sommelier might arrange a parade of wine pairings that costs nearly as much as the tasting menu, which is $295 per person. Go ahead and splurge on the optional uni egg gilded with Champagne beurre blanc. Fanciness without human connection feels vacant, and the warm, alert individuality that Providence’s service team brings to the experience has contributed as much to the restaurant’s longevity as the brilliant food. I recently brought a 30-something Times colleague (who doesn’t work on the Food team) for his first dinner to Providence, and at the end of the evening he said, “If I make it to 80, I’m still going to be thinking about this meal.” I sat with his words for a minute, and then I thought: Same.
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Almeja Preparada.
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Holbox
Historic South-Central Mexican $$
Gilberto Cetina has earned kudos for his mariscos stand near the entrance of Mercado La Paloma in Historic South-Central, but I’m not sure that praise has been heard broadly or frequently enough. Nearby daytime workers, whether coming from offices or their own homes these days, know what they have in his gently spicy coctel mixto and the smoked kampachi tostada with its two-toned crunch of shattering tortilla and peanut salsa. Baja blood clams in their gory beauty are a clue to the rigor of Cetina’s sourcing. There are also warming dishes, such as sopa de mariscos, buoyant with homemade fish sausage, and octopus grilled over mesquite.
The best news? After a two-year absence, Cetina has revived his weekly six-course tasting menu. Holbox’s 10-seat counter takes on the intimacy of a sushi bar as he passes out aguachile in wincingly tart citrus marinade, the better to offset the sweetness of scallops and spot prawns, and a fried taco filled with Dungeness crab and smoked yellowtail. The cost is currently $115 per person. I’ve paid twice as much in Los Angeles for meals half as revelatory.
The best news? After a two-year absence, Cetina has revived his weekly six-course tasting menu. Holbox’s 10-seat counter takes on the intimacy of a sushi bar as he passes out aguachile in wincingly tart citrus marinade, the better to offset the sweetness of scallops and spot prawns, and a fried taco filled with Dungeness crab and smoked yellowtail. The cost is currently $115 per person. I’ve paid twice as much in Los Angeles for meals half as revelatory.
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Kohada (Gizzard Shad) Sushi.
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Sushi Kaneyoshi
Downtown L.A. Japanese $$$$
The elevator descends toward the basement of Little Tokyo’s Kajima Building. The doors open into a waiting area. Soon the evening’s congregants will be led to a softly lit room of clean lines and blond woods, where Yoshiyuki Inoue presides over a 12-seat sushi bar. A veteran of local sushi restaurants — Mori and Sushi Ginza Onodera among them — Inoue was primed for his star turn. Two-year-old Kaneyoshi instantly became one of the city’s most coveted omakase reservations.
A few preambles might include grouper karaage; citrusy chawanmushi laced with matsutake mushrooms; and ankimo (monkfish liver) dressed in sweet miso and paired with a tiny log of green onion. Then Inoue and his assistants launch into a procession of edomae-style nigiri, each seasonal seafood aged (or perhaps cured or marinated) and lightly seasoned to magnify its flavors. At one point, he’ll likely hand each person pressed sushi folded into a sheet of nori that crunches like a potato chip. By the final piece, you’re in the master’s trance. This is sushi for connoisseurs, many of whom, at $300 per person, are already regulars.
A few preambles might include grouper karaage; citrusy chawanmushi laced with matsutake mushrooms; and ankimo (monkfish liver) dressed in sweet miso and paired with a tiny log of green onion. Then Inoue and his assistants launch into a procession of edomae-style nigiri, each seasonal seafood aged (or perhaps cured or marinated) and lightly seasoned to magnify its flavors. At one point, he’ll likely hand each person pressed sushi folded into a sheet of nori that crunches like a potato chip. By the final piece, you’re in the master’s trance. This is sushi for connoisseurs, many of whom, at $300 per person, are already regulars.
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Ebi Sumibi-Yaki.
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Tsubaki
Echo Park Japanese $$$
Charles Namba and Courtney Kaplan’s Echo Park gem exists at the intersection of Japanese pub, neighborhood restaurant and tiny atelier — the kind of place where the owners present their latest fixations on the plate and in the cup, so that you too become rapt. Namba crafts a distinct California izakaya repertoire, honing two dozen or so raw, steamed, fried and grilled dishes with a native Angeleno’s intuition for seasonality. His salads are some of the most compelling in the city; I’m thinking in particular of a patchwork of tomatoes and shaved corn mingled with pickled cucumbers and brined tofu in a balsamic-ginger vinaigrette that tasted of summer but reached beyond the needs-no-adornment clichés. Double down on yakitori (including skewers of prized chicken oysters with yuzu kosho) and splurge on the fried rice with Dungeness crab.
Kaplan’s selection of sake is one of the deepest and most exciting on the West Coast. I brought a visiting friend here after he gave an incredible performance in a staging of Haydn’s “The Creation” at Disney Hall. I asked Kaplan if she could recommend a sake that felt as celebratory as Champagne. When she poured a golden sparkling liquid that tasted of melon, my friend’s eyes popped with joy, and I was reminded why I often bring out-of-towners here. An even more immersive imbibing experience awaits next door at the couple’s sake bar, Ototo, where the finesse of the okonomiyaki and other drinking foods has all but caught up to the cooking at Tsubaki.
Kaplan’s selection of sake is one of the deepest and most exciting on the West Coast. I brought a visiting friend here after he gave an incredible performance in a staging of Haydn’s “The Creation” at Disney Hall. I asked Kaplan if she could recommend a sake that felt as celebratory as Champagne. When she poured a golden sparkling liquid that tasted of melon, my friend’s eyes popped with joy, and I was reminded why I often bring out-of-towners here. An even more immersive imbibing experience awaits next door at the couple’s sake bar, Ototo, where the finesse of the okonomiyaki and other drinking foods has all but caught up to the cooking at Tsubaki.
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Spicy braised cod, fish cakes and raw sou-marinated crab.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
Soban
Koreatown Korean $$
Koreatown: annex of Seoul (where a generation of Oaxacans and Salvadorans have also made a home); city within a city; civic treasure. Among dozens of restaurants and bars, there’s a strong argument for starting with a seat in Jennifer Pak’s small, welcoming dining room to begin delving into Koreatown’s food culture. The banchan is first-rate. A server will set down a dozen-plus plates — likely among them rolled egg, myeolchi bokkeum (stir-fried anchovies with peanuts) and kimchi that fizzes lightly on the tongue — arranging them with the efficiency of a blackjack croupier. Three vital dishes keep Soban’s reputation intact year after year. Ganjang gaejang, a speckled raw crab marinated in house-made soy sauce and dressed with green chiles and a sliced clove of garlic, reigns supreme. Extracting its sweet flesh is a full-sensory pleasure. Follow it with eundaegu jorim, the gochujang-spiced braise of black cod and daikon, and galbi jjim, hearty with short ribs and root vegetables. The sense of place they engender is palpable.
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Uni tostada.
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Damian
Downtown L.A. Mexican $$$
Damian began as Mexico City-based chef Enrique Olvera’s grandly announced entrance to the L.A. market but has settled into a restaurant that feels intentionally engaged with the city, with progressively delicious results. In a region already rich in Mexican food culture, Damian’s leadership team, led by Jesús “Chuy” Cervantes, seems to ask through its cooking: What can we bring to the conversation? Answers come in the forms of a modernist tlayuda tiled with squash and huitlacoche; elegant duck “al pastor” served with caramelized pineapple butter and hand-formed corn tortillas that taste as if they’re made of sunshine; plus a masterpiece centered around a meaty bulb of celery root that has been nixtamalized, baked, then braised in garlic, lemon and butter. At brunch, don’t book a reservation expecting a rundown of egg dishes. Go for crunchy-soft blue corn conchas and the Korean-inspired fried chicken, sheathed in a batter of rice and white corn flours.
Housed in a former Arts District warehouse, the interior is mod and moody, though the terrace is especially stunning. Architect Alonso de Garay and designer Micaela de Bernardí have turned the area — amid industrial decay, offset with fresh planters built above winding banquettes — into something exhilarating: part art installation, part urban haven.
Housed in a former Arts District warehouse, the interior is mod and moody, though the terrace is especially stunning. Architect Alonso de Garay and designer Micaela de Bernardí have turned the area — amid industrial decay, offset with fresh planters built above winding banquettes — into something exhilarating: part art installation, part urban haven.
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Shin Sushi chef-owner Taketoshi Azumi brushes fish with soy sauce while he prepares sushi for the evening’s omasake.
(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)
Shin Sushi
Encino Japanese $$$
The San Fernando Valley claims its share of top-tier sushi counters: I’d direct you to Brothers Sushi in Woodland Hills, Go’s Mart in Canoga Park or, for a glass of grand cru Chablis alongside your aji and hirame, Sushi Note in Sherman Oaks. I particularly admire Shin Sushi in Encino, an experience of the genre stripped to its essence. Chef-owner Taketoshi Azumi doesn’t pad his omakase with farmers market finds, vegan derivations, A5 Wagyu or truffle salt. Dinner will start with an appetizer plate of rotating seafood and vegetables that frequently includes one sawagani — a tiny fried crab that is entirely crunch. Then Azumi channels his energies solely into nigiri. His focus is a reminder that unions of fish and rice can be riveting in their gradations of texture, with minimal embellishment needed. Pray that he receives his shipment of menegi, needle-thin Japanese chives. He binds a bundle of them to rice with a band of nori and a finishing sprinkle of bonito flakes. This is often a finale piece, and its resonant sharpness doesn’t dim until after a spoonful or two of tofu mousse with black sugar syrup for dessert.
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A tray of oysters, clams and prawns.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Found Oyster
East Hollywood Seafood $$
“There’s no wait at 4 p.m.,” the Found Oyster team has lately taken to posting on Instagram with glamour shots of its namesake bivalves. The message is clear and, in my experience, true: At most any other hour of service, patience for seats (inside or along a semi-enclosed sidewalk patio) will be necessary. The 4-year-old East Hollywood seafood bar feels in essence like a neighborhood hangout, but the wit and consistency of its bicoastal dishes makes it a citywide destination. From the Pacific, count on Santa Barbara uni lacquered with wasabi and soy sauce, as well as spot prawn sashimi and Dungeness crab salad in season. The Atlantic inspires the brilliant lobster roll bathed in bisque; porky chowder; and small, crisply saline oysters, often from Maine or Massachusetts. Ask for a couple of oysters “Moscow style,” gilded with crème fraîche, vodka and a few beads of caviar. The “wedge” salad is more of a half-circle than a sliver, with the iceberg lettuce cut to model its concentric beauty even beneath fistfuls of Stilton, bacon and popping cherry tomatoes. It’s my favorite in Los Angeles.
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The Vietnamese style fried fish.
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Henry's Cuisine
Alhambra Cantonese $$
An exchange with David R. Chan, the Los Angeles native who has eaten at almost 8,000 Chinese restaurants across the United States, led me recently to the Alhambra restaurant run by Henry Tu and Henry Chau. It was a superb recommendation. Their menu blends Hong Kong-esque banquet seafood luxuries with a genre of dining that my Cantonese friends describe as the kind of place you’d eat homier-style dishes executed at restaurant-level skill. On Sunday nights, Henry’s booked-out dining room is a joyful cacophony of families sharing platters like whole lobster pummeled with fried garlic; a delicate mix of mushrooms sauteed with dried shrimp, pieces of dried fish and chives; beef chow fun; and the must-order dish, pig’s feet cured to the texture of greaseless ham and draped with near-sizzling squares of crisped skin. Come with a group too, and call a day ahead to order the winter melon soup, presented with pageantry in a silver tureen and swirling with chicken, dried scallops, fresh and cured pork, black mushrooms and dried longan fruit. The measure of the soup is the stock; it should have a clear, resounding richness … and this one very much does.
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The Poseidon.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Mariscos Jalisco
Boyle Heights Mexican $
It’s more than 20 years now that Raul Ortega has been parking his white lonchera at a curb along Olympic Boulevard in Boyle Heights, serving fish ceviches, octopus cocteles and the crowning dish he credits to his hometown of San Juan de los Lagos, Mexico: tacos dorados de camarón. Corn tortillas clutch a mixture of spiced, chopped shrimp that’s nearly a paste; Ortega and his team don’t quite seal the tortilla, so in the fryer the filling sizzles around its edges. Then they slice avocado over the top and ladle on a thin red salsa with roughly minced onions and cilantro. The first bite is the textural equivalent of your life flashing before your eyes: It’s every possible experience all at once.
I am one in a lineage of restaurant critics declaring Mariscos Jalisco to be a worthy first meal in Los Angeles if you want to understand the city’s culinary culture. I’m still amazed at how many people ask me for taco recommendations and have never heard of the place. Maybe this will help: Ortega operates three additional outposts, including a counter restaurant in Pomona, with the same menu, and a lonchera on the Westside. If none of them quite reaches the summits of the Boyle Heights truck, it still might be the most amazing seafood taco you’ve ever had.
I am one in a lineage of restaurant critics declaring Mariscos Jalisco to be a worthy first meal in Los Angeles if you want to understand the city’s culinary culture. I’m still amazed at how many people ask me for taco recommendations and have never heard of the place. Maybe this will help: Ortega operates three additional outposts, including a counter restaurant in Pomona, with the same menu, and a lonchera on the Westside. If none of them quite reaches the summits of the Boyle Heights truck, it still might be the most amazing seafood taco you’ve ever had.
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Buttered lobster rolls with caviar bumps.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Grand Central Market
Downtown L.A. Eclectic $$
There is no rush of sensation quite like entering the halls of downtown Los Angeles’ 105-year-old landmark, long a juncture of what the city has been, what it is becoming and what we’re hungry for right now. Life cycles play out among its daily throngs. The latest outpost of Broad Street Oyster Co., tidily replicating the warm lobster roll that made the Malibu original famous, replaces Prawn Coastal, the seafood stand run by legendary Campanile co-chef Mark Peel, who died suddenly in 2021. Follow one trail of neon signs for shrimp ceviche tostadas at La Tostaderia, a lox bagel from Wexler’s Deli and a seafood platter from the Oyster Gourmet. Turn nearby corners to find kimchi-braised pork belly at Shiku or a statuesque chicken katsu sando from Moon Rabbit. I have at least one habitual stop for manna to enjoy later: Nicole Rucker’s peerless Fat + Flour, for a slice of pie mounded with fruit from the best farmers in California.
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Grilled lobster from Lobsterdamus at Smorgasburg L.A.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Smorgasburg L.A.
Downtown L.A. Eclectic $$
Smorgasburg L.A. is the city’s great incubator of culinary talent. We convene on Sundays in Row DTLA’s back lot to plug in, to mingle, to eat our faces off. The lineup of vendors revolves continually, guided by general manager Zach Brooks’ curatorial mastermind. This year, some of my favorite popups and food trucks showed up regularly. Friends and I would split up, order and reconvene to share buttery grilled Maine lobster over garlic noodles from Lobsterdamus, oysters from the Jolly Oyster, shrimp tacos from Correas Mariscos and a couple of dessert flan tacos from Evil Cooks. And there’s so much more to try. Having a presence at Smorgasburg empowers a vital continuum. We fall in love with what we taste. We follow these chefs beyond the market as they grow their businesses. And then we return, hungry to see who and what is happening next.
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Trout & Ikura Donabe nori, pickles, sesame seeds.
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
n/soto
Mid-City Japanese $$$
“Accessible” can be an overused and twisty word in food writing, but in its most basic definition it aptly describes the new Mid-City restaurant from Niki Nakayama and her wife, Carole Iida-Nakayama. While their tiny flagship, n/naka, never stops showing up on listicles about the world’s hardest reservations, prime-time seating can be secured at n/soto by planning only a week out, sometimes less. Its izakaya model — small to midsize plates that incorporate myriad culinary techniques, matched with a thoughtful beverage program — has become a universal template for dining in Los Angeles. The couple knew they’d need to give n/naka their nightly attention, so Yoji Tajima, whose Beverly Hills sushi restaurant Yojisan closed in 2020, leads n/soto’s kitchen. Among the 50-plus items on the menu, much of it micro-seasonal and changing by the week if not the day, look for a constant: a bowl of freshly made oboro tofu. The soothing, savory custard seasoned with tosa joyu, a soy-based sauce enriched with shaved bonito, sets the mood for the sculptural plates of sashimi, smoky chicken thigh skewers and the exceptional shrimp-stuffed agedashi mochi ahead.
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The lobster roll.
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Connie and Ted’s
West Hollywood Seafood $$
The swooping front patio canopy constructed during the pandemic’s darkest months has been disassembled, and customers have returned inside Connie and Ted’s squiggly building — an ode to the Googie coffee shops of midcentury Los Angeles — that is now a West Hollywood icon in its own right. As for the last decade, the simplicity of the restaurant’s New England-style seafood stands on its own merits. When I disengage from automatically ordering milky-porky chowder and the fish and chips, I delight in the freshness of the New England clam boil; grilled Rhode Island swordfish with only a lacquer of herbed oil; and bouillabaisse, a frequent Wednesday-night special, served with rouille properly buzzing with garlic and saffron.
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A mix of oysters and Peruvian scallops.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
Fishing With Dynamite
Manhattan Beach Seafood $$$
Manhattan Beach’s star seafood bar has always been a tough reservation. Weekend dinner slots are usually booked weeks out, unless you’re hungry at 4:45 p.m. After a decade on the scene, the restaurant and its patchwork elements feel as effervescent as ever. Its tiny, always-full dining room lined with off-white clapboard gives an impression of New England in high summer. David LeFevre’s menu bounds through far-flung inspirations: Scallops in their shells arrive in a pleasantly stinging citrus marinade; chicharrón and harissa-spiked crema make for odd, winning garnishes for fish tacos; and a gorgeous porridge made of koshihikari rice is speckled with uni, crab and shrimp, plus an egg yolk to stir in and push the richness. If you eat too many fluffy squash rolls or fries swiped through malt vinegar mayo — well? You happen to be in the prettiest setting for an after-meal stroll.
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Steamed glutinous rice with Dungeness crab, chicken, calamari, pork intestines, tofu casserole and fried rice.
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Eat Joy Food
Rowland Heights Taiwanese $$
The Taiwanese menu at Eat Joy Food is as sprawling as the Pearl Plaza shopping center in Rowland Heights that houses the restaurant. Industry veteran Arthur Chen — who previously ran Cafe Fusion, a family-style Taiwanese restaurant in Arcadia — took over the space in October 2019. To whittle down the choices, ask the staff for direction on seafood specialties, a particular strength of the kitchen. They’ve led me to a three-cup casserole with calamari, drenched in the fragrance of basil; supremely fresh Dungeness crab sautéed with scallions and ginger; and steamed clams suspended in soft custard. I went hunting for a dish I love called o ah jian, a fantastically gooey Taipei classic of oysters, scrambled egg and gel made from sweet potato starch. The search ended happily: It was listed on the English menu as “Taiwanese street food stand oyster pan cake.”
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