(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The most affordable places from the 2025 101 Best Restaurants guide
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The great truth of Los Angeles dining has, and I trust always will be, that $500 omakases and caviar-spackled tasting menus exist alongside tacos stands, noodle parlors, shawarma shops and sandwich specialists — the places, often mirroring the culture of their communities, that give the city its truest from-the-ground-up identity.
Restaurant critic Bill Addison and columnist Jenn Harris rank the 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles.
This is the second year that columnist Jenn Harris and I have co-written the annual 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles, released earlier this month, and exciting, affordable destinations across the region are always a critical part of our choices. For easy reference, here we’ve pulled out 21 favorites that go easy on the back account. They include suckling pig tacos dressed in a mustard salsa specific to Nayarit, a Koreatown institution that serves biryanis large enough to feed two or three, deeply comforting lamb and rice served in a San Gabriel Valley shopping complex … and the abundant options at Mercado La Paloma in South L.A., which lands the No. 1 on this year’s list.
— Bill Addison, restaurant critic
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Azizam
Silver Lake Persian $
![LOS ANGELES, CA - JUNE 17: [Cody Ma and Misha Sesar share a few dishes from their Persian Restaurant Azizam] on Monday, June 17, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA. (Ethan Benavidez / For The Times)](https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/435fa83/2147483647/strip/true/crop/3771x4714+0+0/resize/1200x1500!/format/webp/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fb8%2F52%2Fba6a8ddc48b6ab0dce899f0ea72a%2F1459972-fo-azizam-review19-eb.jpg)
(Ethan Benavidez/For The Times)
Our restaurant critic is an enthusiast of Iranian cuisine, a venerable authority on the subject in Los Angeles and beyond. So when he sang the praises of Cody Ma and Misha Sesar’s pop-up-turned-restaurant Azizam, I took notice. The name translates to “my dear,” a term of endearment in Farsi. The pair forgo the more ubiquitous kebabs in favor of a menu that bridges the gap between homestyle Persian cuisine and stalwarts you’re likely to find at your neighborhood Iranian restaurant. It’s hard not to fall for the kofteh Tabrizi, a gargantuan meatball of beef and rice crowded with fresh herbs and crowned with barberries. Ensconced like hidden jewels in the center are morsels of sweet dried fruit and walnuts. A thick slab of kuku sabzi, the labor-intensive frittata made from a garden’s worth of chopped herbs and greens, is nestled between two slices of seed-flecked barbari bread. It’s cuisine meant to be shared and lingered over, with a mazeh plate acting as a flawless overture to an afternoon spent on the sunlit patio. A seasonal vegetable yogurt is hot pink with beets. The shirazi salad a medley of crunchy cucumbers, tomato and onion. The mazeh I return to most on the table is the zeytoon parvardeh, a wonderfully tangy jumble of smashed green olives, pomegranate molasses, walnut and mint oil you can eat with a spoon.
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Barbacoa Ramirez
Arleta Mexican $
(Andrea D’Agosto / For The Times)
Lamb barbacoa — when cooked traditionally for hours to buttery-ropy tenderness — is such a painstaking art that most of Southern California’s true practitioners sell it on weekends only. In the Los Angeles area, conversations around sublime lamb barbacoa should start at the stand that Gonzalo Ramirez sets up on Saturday and Sunday mornings near the Arleta DMV. You’ll see him and his family wearing red T-shirts that say “Atotonilco El Grande Hidalgo” to honor their hometown in central-eastern Mexico. Ramirez tends and butchers lambs in the Central Valley. The meat slow-roasts in a pit overnight and, cradled in plush made-to-order tortillas, the tacos come in three forms: smoky, molten-textured barbacoa barely hinting of garlic; a pancita variation stained with chiles that goes fast; and incredible moronga, a nubbly, herbaceous sausage made with lamb’s blood. Plenty of customers pick up food to go. There’s a wonderful communion, though, to finding seats at the long table set up under a blue tarp and downing a few tacos dotted with red or green salsa while sipping a cup of lamb consommé bobbing with chickpeas.
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Biriyani Kabob House
Koreatown Halal Indian Pakistani $
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
“Bangladeshi, Indian and Pakistani Foods” reads the sign above the entrance to Enam Karim’s cramped location in a Koreatown strip mall. He opened his restaurant in 2014, devising a huge menu meant to connect the common cuisines of those three subcontinent nations. Plenty of the standard dishes — saucy chicken tikka masala, dark-green saag paneer, samosas grabbed from the hot box near the counter — are good enough. But what registers as outstanding? His Hyderabadi-style lamb biryani, and the specials that hew most closely to the cooking of Pakistan, Karim’s home country. The biryani is torrid with spice, the shank meat pulled effortlessly from the bone and the grains fluffy yet sticky from a masala of ginger, garlic, cardamom and a dozen other seasonings. Karim is mum on the recipe, but there’s a floral pheromone in there that must be kewra, a South Asian ingredient used similarly to rose water. His version of haleem, the fragrant beef and lentil porridge, is so fused in texture and flavor it translates as savory custard. For something brighter, try hariyali chicken immersed in a sauce of mint, cilantro, yogurt and ground cashews. Such specials tend to be advertised on paper taped to the wall, but Karim is an ebullient host: Just ask him what he’s made off-menu any given day.
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Bridgetown Roti
East Hollywood Caribbean $
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
I have never made it home with one of the patties from Bridgetown Roti. I eat the yellow-tinged pockets straight from their paper sleeves, scalding hot while the pastry breaks into shards all over my lap. I time my bites to the stoplights, careful not to endanger those around me with my momentary lapses in attention. But the sensation of the crisp, flaky crust collapsing into the warmly spiced paste of braised oxtail curry is too difficult to resist. They’re a staple at Rashida Holmes’ East Hollywood restaurant, where the food is an expression of the chef’s Barbadian heritage. When she started her pop-up, she helped introduce and propagate an appreciation for Caribbean flavors in L.A.. Her patties are nonnegotiable, even after finishing a curry shrimp roti, the plump shrimp and potato tucked into a buttery, flaky paratha roti with slaw. Or following a wedge of her macaroni and cheese pie, the noodles and cheese kissed with curry powder and the edges crusty. And alongside an order of jerk chicken, the dark, spice-rubbed meat singing with pepper and allspice. Holmes’ permanent location on Western Avenue, which marked its first anniversary this summer, is definitely something to celebrate. Patties forever!
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Casa Gish Bac
Pico-Union Oaxacan $
(Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times)
Earlier this year, David and Maria Ramos closed the original, 15-year-old location of their Oaxacan restaurant to focus on the new, much larger Casa Gish Bac in Pico Union. Set in a former banquet hall with a full liquor license, the space has a rainbow ceiling covered in papel picado. The menu should be familiar to longtime fans of the Ramos’ Valles Centrales cuisine. Tlayudas blanketed in refried beans, quesillo and cabbage. Chicken buried under mole negro. Enchiladas filled and folded into triangles and doused in a red mole with a deep, almost bitter roasted chile flavor. Go with a group and order generously. And plan to visit on a weekend if you want a taste of the barbacoa blanca; pit-roasted with avocado leaves, it’s tender and succulent, with subtle notes of garlic, cumin and anise. Maria, a third-generation barbacoa specialist, offers her barbacoa roja daily, redolent of tomato and dried chiles. The new Casa Gish Bac is just as charming as the original, only now you can order a cold beer to sip while you demolish that tlayuda.
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Delmy’s Pupusas
Atwater Village Salvadoran $
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Patience is a virtue when you’re sitting under the tarp of Delmy’s Pupusas at the Silver Lake farmers market, waiting for your food to reach a temperature that won’t burn your tongue. The walls of the pupusa look like they’re ready to collapse, with bits of cheese and loroco already seeping out the seams. One bite and the pupusa gushes with a molten, gooey mess of cheese and the bitter flower buds native to Central America. You tear away big pieces of the masa, like soft corn cake with crispy brown bits strewn across the surface. With a scoop of curtido and a drizzle of red salsa, it’s pure pupusa nirvana. Ruth Sandoval’s pupusas can be found at numerous weekly farmers markets around Los Angeles, including Atwater Village and Echo Park to name a few. When she started popping up at farmers markets in 2007, Los Angeles was already a city rich with El Salvador’s national dish. Sandoval’s stand apart from the rest, filled with ingredients she often plucks from a surrounding market. And though often brimming with vegetables, chicharron or whatever else is on offer, the ratio never overwhelms the delicate flavor and texture of the masa.
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Dolan’s Uyghur Cuisine
Alhambra Uyghur
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Among the cuisines that light up the San Gabriel Valley’s constellation of restaurants, Bugra Arkin’s two lodestars in Alhambra and Rowland Heights, with a third location in Irvine, illuminate a culture specific to the autonomous Xinjiang territory in northwest China. The cooking of the Uyghurs, the region’s Turkic-speaking Muslims, culls centuries of spice trade influences, including from modern-day India, Tibet, Afghanistan and Iran. Kick off with the signature “big plate chicken” heaped with potatoes, chopped red and green peppers, slivers of garlic and dried chiles. Wide hand-pulled noodles peek out underneath. Currents of Sichuan peppercorns and star anise jolt the broth. It’s terrific, as are manta (plump pleated dumplings) filled with earthy diced pumpkin and minced onion, and laghman, long noodles nearly as thick as taffy, buried under stir-fried vegetables and tender beef strips. For fun, throw in the “tower kebab,” with marinated lamb visibly speckled with spices draped over a tabletop metal contraption. With murals of Uyghur life and details at the Alhambra flagship like globe-shaped glass lamps patterned in starbursts and other geometries, Arkin evokes his culture as much in the dining room’s aesthetics as in the food he serves.
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El Bacano
North Hollywood Dominican $
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Siblings Deany Santana and Jonathan Santana worked together years ago in their family-run Dominican restaurant in Anchorage; in summer 2023 they reunited to serve their mother’s and grandmother’s recipes from a 16-seat storefront in a North Hollywood strip mall. Deany often can be seen through the kitchen window tending pots of various meats infused with lime juice, onions, garlic, oregano and other spices. The first one to try: Santana’s chicken, Jonathan’s renaming of the classic Dominican pollo guisado. The bird, richly browned, simmers with thinly sliced peppers in liquid that becomes a brothy, intense gravy. El Bacano unlocks its doors at noon, but a quintessential Dominican breakfast plate awaits any time of day: mangú (mashed plantains) with los tres golpes, or “the three hits” — two fried eggs, slabs of griddled salami and thin rectangles of queso frito. A staffer will ask if you prefer the plantains green or ripe, and my answer is the one the Santanas recommend: a smooth yet textured mixture of the two. As a side order, the queso frito also makes a munchy, salty midday snack. So does a hot empanada, its half-moon shape shattering to unloose a magma flow of stretchy yellow cheese and diced salami.
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Kang Kang Food Court
Alhambra Chinese $
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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
When friends ask to go on a dumpling crawl, I build an itinerary that involves an array of styles. Hui Tou Xiang for the blintz-shaped pockets of juicy pork and beef. Shanghai Dumpling House for the salted egg xiao long bao so heavy with soup they seem to droop. I always end the crawl at Kang Kang Food Court. The sheng jian bao, listed as small pan-fried bao on the menu, are always everyone’s favorite. Each has a crispy bottom, a soft, fluffy yeasted bun in the middle, a thin, chewy top and a juicy pork filling. This textural paradox creates the sensation of three dumplings in one. For more than two decades, the sheng jian bao at Kang Kang Food Court have been the gold standard, served with sweet vinegar for dipping. It may be tempting to take a big bite as soon as they hit the table, but it’s a mistake you make only once. Co-owner John Chin Yu Yeh created a poem to keep diners from sending hot filling across the table: Take a small bite, “blow up” on the dumpling, then slowly sip the juicy filling from the small hole. It’s posted on the wall in case you forget.
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Las Segovias
Huntington Park Nicaraguan $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Indio viejo is a hearty stew with strands of beef nestled in a masa-thickened, velvety gravy that will cling to your spoon and most likely your ribs. “It’s so good, right?” My server beams with pride as he watches me scrape the edges of the bowl. “This dish is very special to me.” That pride radiates from every wall mural and flag in the dining room and from the small marketplace at the rear that advertises snacks and clothing in the official blue and white colors of Nicaragua. The restaurant offers an expansive menu of dishes specific to the Central American country. The nacatamal is custard-like in the center, every bite a surprise of bone-in pork ribs, tomato, rice and potato tinged with sour orange. The carne asada platter is enough for two, with a handsome cut of marinated beef, a triangle of fried cheese, gallo pinto and crispy or soft plantains. Quesillos are served in plastic bags that barely contain the thick corn tortillas, crema and caramelized onion. Even if you experience a fullness not previously imaginable, find room for the buñuelos de yuca y queso. The pucks of cassava and cheese are fried until crisp and served in a cinnamon-and-clove syrup that tastes like the holidays.
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Los Sabrosos Al Horno
Cudahy Mexican $
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
Most weekends on an industrial block of Cudahy, in view of the 710 Freeway following the course of the Los Angeles River, David Delfín sets up a simple stand among other street vendors. (Check the weekly schedule on Facebook or Instagram.) His whole roasted suckling pig tacos, a style regionally specific to Nayarit, are like nothing else I know in Southern California. A taquero will chop one of two combinations — a mix of yielding cuts of meat and crackling skin, or pure pork belly — and pile it on two small corn tortillas with sliced cabbage and a duo of thin salsas, one spicier than the other and both twanging with mustard. Try one of each, and be sure to give them a bracing squeeze of lime. At first the salsa flavors slice like Bertman Original on a ballpark hot dog, but soon they mellow and meld with the pork. (My Southern roots compel me to mention the chance similarity between Delfín’s masterpiece and South Carolina whole-hog barbecue, also traditionally served with mustard-based sauce.) He doesn’t make any other kind of taco. He doesn’t need to.
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Macheen
Boyle Heights Mexican $
(Andrea D’Agosto/For The Times)
The stellar breakfast burritos at siblings Ana and Jonathan Perez’s restaurant inside Milpa Kitchen in Boyle Heights start in a single pan on the stove. It’s a medium-sized skillet similar to the one I favor at home, its handle and sides just as weathered. I watch as the cook uses the spatula to fold the eggs over low heat, the pillow-like texture visible from across the room. There’s a flurry of cheese, then the eggs are whisked from the heat at the exact moment the two fuse into a single, perfect cloud. The eggs are tumbled onto a fresh tortilla along with chile-dusted tater tots and your choice of meat. I’m partial to the way the strands of birria intertwine with the cheesy eggs, creating a series of cohesive bites infused with fruity guajillos, garlic and bay leaf. The tortillas are stuffed until nearly bursting, the egg, potato and meat bulging and visible through the surface of the burrito. For lunch, there are a handful of tacos built on blue corn tortillas, reminiscent of the masterful creations Jonathan first presented years ago while operating a roaming taqueria. Mushrooms are marinated in al pastor-style spices and kissed with smoke on the grill. A smear of choribeans supplies a soft landing for ropes of brisket and a salsa de aguacate that pulses with brilliant acidity. These are tacos — and burritos — as art. The kind you can consider, admire, then consume in 90 seconds.
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Mae Malai
Los Feliz Thai $
(Shelby Moore/For The Times)
This slender restaurant is home to my favorite bowl of noodles and my least favorite parking lot in Thai Town. Find solace from the honking and jostling at a counter seat with a cold, cloudy green tea and as many bowls of noodles as you can squeeze into the space before you. Former massage therapist Malai Data’s boat noodles drew crowds when she started popping up in front of Silom Supermarket a few years ago. In late 2023, she found a permanent home in the shopping center at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue. Here, you can nibble on Isaan and Northern-style sausages while you wait for your bowls of noodles. And there will be many, with portions and prices designed to allow diners to toggle between boat, tom yum and wonton to their heart’s content. Data’s boat noodles are the gold standard, with your choice of beef or pork, each protein marinated and stewed. The meat bobs in the ruddy broth alongside bits of pork cracklings, meatballs, green onion and bean sprouts. The flavors ricochet between sour and sweet, spicy and bitter. I like to get at least one bowl dry; the absence of broth accentuates the chew of the rice noodles and the sweetness of the dark soy sauce. You may be tempted to ask for your noodles “Thai spicy,” but you have not seen real tears until you’ve watched them stream down the red, puffy face of someone foolish enough to request it. Go for the medium and treat yourself to cooling bowls of steamed pandan and coconut custard for dessert. It will all cost less than what you paid last night for valet parking.
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Mario’s Butcher Shop
Newport Beach Butcher Shop Sandwich Shop $
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Imagine a perfectly seasoned steak with a deep mahogany crust and a ruby center. The kind of steak you spring for on a special occasion. A centerpiece at the best steakhouse in town. That’s the steak Mario Llamas is using for his paper-wrapped sandwiches, sliced and piled onto a crusty roll dripping with chimichurri. Llamas, who used to be the chef at an Argentine steakhouse, runs Mario’s Butcher Shop in Newport Beach. He recently remodeled the space to include an expanded area for merchandise, a longer butcher case and more room for waiting customers. And there are many, with weekend crowds dressed in college sweatshirts, surfer gear and soccer uniforms. Llamas is a master at stuff between bread, smoking his own pastrami and curing a variety of deli meats. His smashburgers aren’t squashed into oblivion, the patties retaining prized meat juices despite their crispy halos. The sandwich that always leaves me a little breathless is the smoked bologna, heaped onto a soft roll slathered with yellow mustard. The last time I ordered it, the person at the register said, “It really tastes like a hot dog today.” It did. Like the best hot dog in the universe.
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Mercado La Paloma
Historic South-Central Mexican $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The line at Holbox during the midweek lunch hour has become a cultural sensation, a queue of locals and visitors trailing past the automatic doors and around the parking lot like devotees angling for the latest iPhone series or limited-release sneakers. Believe the lauds, including ours when we named Holbox as The Times’ 2023 Restaurant of the Year. Gilberto Cetina’s command of mariscos is unmatched in Southern California – his ceviches, aguachiles and tostadas revolutionary in their freshness and jigsaw-intricate flavors. The smoked kanpachi taco alone — clinched with queso Chihuahua and finished with salsa cruda, avocado and drizzles of peanut salsa macha — is one of the most sophisticated things to eat in Los Angeles.
Holbox could be considered for the top ranking on its own strength. But in a year when disasters tore at our city, honoring the power of community feels more urgent than ever. Cetina’s seafood counter doesn’t thrive in a vacuum. Holbox resides inside the Mercado La Paloma in South L.A. The mercado is the economic-development arm of the Esperanza Community Housing Corp., a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 that counts affordable housing and equitable healthcare among its core missions. When the mercado was in the incubation stage, Esperanza’s executive director Nancy Ibrahim interviewed would-be restaurateurs about their challenges and hopes in starting a business. Among the candidates was Cetina’s father, Gilberto Sr., who proposed a stall serving his family’s regionally specific dishes from the Yucatán. Their venture, Chichén Itzá, was among the eight startups when the mercado opened in a former garment factory nearly 25 years ago, in February 2001.
Step into the 35,000-square-foot market today, and the smell of corn warms the senses. Fátima Juárez chose masa as her medium when she began working with Cetina at Holbox in 2017. Komal, the venue she opened last year with her husband, Conrado Rivera, is the only molino in L.A. grinding and nixtamalizing heirloom corn varieties daily. Among her deceptively spare menu of mostly quesadillas and tacos, start with the extraordinary quesadilla de flor de calabaza, a creased blue corn tortilla, bound by melted quesillo, arrayed with squash blossoms radiating like sunbeams.
Wander farther, past the communal sea of tiled tables between Holbox and Komal, to find jewels that first-timers or even regular visitors might overlook.
Taqueria Vista Hermosa, run by Raul Morales and his family, is the other remaining original tenant. Order an al pastor taco, or Morales’ specialty of Michoacan-style fish empapelado smothered in vegetables and wrapped in banana leaf. The lush, orange-scented cochinita pibil is the obvious choice next door at still-flourishing Chichén Itzá, but don’t overlook crackling kibi and the brunchy huevos motuleños over ham and black bean puree. The weekends-only tacos de barbacoa de chivo are our favorites at the stand called Oaxacalifornia, though we swing through any time for the piloncillo-sweetened café de olla and a scoop of smoked milk ice cream from its sibling juice and snack bar in the market’s center. Looking for the comfort of noodles? Try the pad see ew at Thai Corner Food Express in the far back.
The everyday and the exquisite; the fast and the formal (just try to score a reservation for Holbox’s twice-a-week tasting menu); a food hall and sanctuary for us all. Mercado La Paloma embodies the Los Angeles we love.
Holbox could be considered for the top ranking on its own strength. But in a year when disasters tore at our city, honoring the power of community feels more urgent than ever. Cetina’s seafood counter doesn’t thrive in a vacuum. Holbox resides inside the Mercado La Paloma in South L.A. The mercado is the economic-development arm of the Esperanza Community Housing Corp., a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 that counts affordable housing and equitable healthcare among its core missions. When the mercado was in the incubation stage, Esperanza’s executive director Nancy Ibrahim interviewed would-be restaurateurs about their challenges and hopes in starting a business. Among the candidates was Cetina’s father, Gilberto Sr., who proposed a stall serving his family’s regionally specific dishes from the Yucatán. Their venture, Chichén Itzá, was among the eight startups when the mercado opened in a former garment factory nearly 25 years ago, in February 2001.
Step into the 35,000-square-foot market today, and the smell of corn warms the senses. Fátima Juárez chose masa as her medium when she began working with Cetina at Holbox in 2017. Komal, the venue she opened last year with her husband, Conrado Rivera, is the only molino in L.A. grinding and nixtamalizing heirloom corn varieties daily. Among her deceptively spare menu of mostly quesadillas and tacos, start with the extraordinary quesadilla de flor de calabaza, a creased blue corn tortilla, bound by melted quesillo, arrayed with squash blossoms radiating like sunbeams.
Wander farther, past the communal sea of tiled tables between Holbox and Komal, to find jewels that first-timers or even regular visitors might overlook.
Taqueria Vista Hermosa, run by Raul Morales and his family, is the other remaining original tenant. Order an al pastor taco, or Morales’ specialty of Michoacan-style fish empapelado smothered in vegetables and wrapped in banana leaf. The lush, orange-scented cochinita pibil is the obvious choice next door at still-flourishing Chichén Itzá, but don’t overlook crackling kibi and the brunchy huevos motuleños over ham and black bean puree. The weekends-only tacos de barbacoa de chivo are our favorites at the stand called Oaxacalifornia, though we swing through any time for the piloncillo-sweetened café de olla and a scoop of smoked milk ice cream from its sibling juice and snack bar in the market’s center. Looking for the comfort of noodles? Try the pad see ew at Thai Corner Food Express in the far back.
The everyday and the exquisite; the fast and the formal (just try to score a reservation for Holbox’s twice-a-week tasting menu); a food hall and sanctuary for us all. Mercado La Paloma embodies the Los Angeles we love.
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M Joy
San Gabriel Valley Halal $
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Lamb shank, lamb ribs, lamb skewers, lamb bone soup, rice glossy from rich lamb stock: That’s basically the menu at M Joy in San Gabriel, the second U.S. location (after first opening in Anaheim) of a fast-casual chain based in Hangzhou, China. Even if lamb is not your jam, this could be the place that flips your opinion. The restaurant imports lean, grass-fed lamb from New Zealand, and the shank in particular, served over rice flecked with soft bits of carrot, is the mildest, most lulling possible presentation of the meat. Condiments — burgundy-red chile oil, pickled onion spears, shredded carrot salad for crisp contrast — introduce vivid dimensions. Fundamentally, the dish is a deconstructed riff on lamb pilaf traditions closely associated with the Uyghur people of China’s Xinjiang province, once the easternmost terminus on the ancient trade routes that stretched to what became Istanbul and Italy. For more direct spice, order the grilled ribs crusted with cumin and chile flakes, quelling the heat with sips of salted milk tea and yogurt studded with raisins for dessert.
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Perilla L.A.
Chinatown Korean $
(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
At Jihee Kim’s tiny converted garage in Victor Heights, banchan isn’t the whirlwind of bowls that accompany a spread of Korean barbecue. It’s the star of a meal anchored by dishes that closely track the harvest times in California. Squares of fermented cucumber and melon sting with heat and offer a satisfying crunch. Green beans are laden with a savory, nutty sesame sauce. Collard greens prove a suitable match for an onslaught of gochugaru, the heat accompanied by the welcome flood of fish sauce, ginger and garlic used to make the kimchi. Two banchan are a snack. Three are a meal. Then there’s the avocado and mentaiko rice, with ripe avocado dressed in a creamy mentaiko sauce with salty pops of roe. The doenjang-smeared cod is soft as butter, served over rice with a sampling of the day’s banchan. I love the way the miniature squeeze bottle of hot mustard sauce that accompanies the gimbap makes my nose tingle. The yolks of the smoked eggs are a reliable cross between a decadent custard and a jelly. I show no restraint at the counter. My overzealous ordering is rewarded with a week’s worth of leftovers.
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Sincerely Syria
Sherman Oaks Syrian $
(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Adham Kamal, raised in As-Suwayda (sometimes also spelled Sweida) in southwestern Syria, brings to Los Angeles the finely shaved, deep-down-marinated shawarma he learned to make as a teenager. He operates locations in Sherman Oaks, Pasadena, Anaheim and the first local stand he ran near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, then called Hollywood Shawarma. Choices at each storefront come down to two menu options: spiced lamb and beef, referred to as lahme (meat) in Arabic, or lemony chicken, called djej. Each has a traditional sauce: tahini-based tarator for lahme, toum (whipped garlic paste) for djej. The hardest decisions concern size and form. Do you want a one-handed classic stuffed pita, or a 12-inch version, made using extra-thin flour tortillas, that comes as a plate with fries? Think smaller is my suggestion, and ask for the wrap to be rolled using only one round side of a pita, a common request among regulars. It’s about proportions. A shawarma wrap is not a burrito. It is meant to be compact and intense. The winning touch: Kamal and his staff finish the packet on the griddle, searing until every angle is browned and crackling.
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Sonoratown
Mid-Wilshire Sonoran $
(Silvia Razgova/Silvia Razgova)
The single food item I consume most frequently in Los Angeles? Sonoratown’s Burrito 2.0, a sum fashioned from the greatest parts. As with most everything served at Teodoro Díaz Rodriguez Jr. and Jennifer Feltham’s outstanding taquerias in downtown, Mid-City and Long Beach, the excellence begins with the flour tortillas. Master tortillera Julia Guerrero oversees production of gold-standard exemplars, made using Sonoran wheat and pork lard for maximum flakiness and pliability. I jump between four meat options: costilla (a mix of boneless short rib and chuck) or chicken grilled over billowing mesquite, chile-stained chorizo from the Chori-Man in San Pedro and occasionally tender-ropy cabeza braised with cloves and other spices. Melting pintos, slicks of Monterey Jack, roasted poblano (optional but wonderful) and flickers of guac and smooth chiltepin salsa complete the smoky, mingled bundle. If I’m feeling extra-hungry, or greedy, I’ll throw in a chivichanga, mini packages of chicken or beef guisados, laced with cheese, that in bulk are perfect party food. For lingering, head to the Mid-City location: it’s the only Sonoratown outpost with a bar for limey, spicy micheladas and Modelo on tap.
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Surawon Tofu House
Koreatown Korean
(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
There are likely hundreds of restaurants offering soondubu jjigae in Koreatown, but I don’t know that you’ll find a version more satisfying than the mini cauldrons served in the modest dining room of Surawon Tofu House. The soup is roiling when it hits the table, a raging inferno of exploding bubbles. The broth tastes long-simmered, kissed with heat and tinged red with gochugaru. Each bowl is crowded with boulders of trembling tofu made by owner Sun Los Lee. She prepares yellow soy bean and black soy bean tofu daily. Both are silky, soft and supple as custard, though the black soy beans contribute an earthy richness with nutty, sesame-like undertones. Her bowl of soondubu jjigae is a one-pot meal you can lose yourself in. The temperature of the soup requires that you take your time consuming, or risk scalding the inside of your mouth. Perhaps order a leek and vegetable pancake, or a plate of glass noodles to enjoy while you wait for the soup to cool down. Never one for patience, the slight burn is more than worth it.
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Tacos Los Cholos
Huntington Park Mexican $
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Tacos Los Cholos is a place for carne asada lovers. For the people who require nothing more than salt and a hot grill. It’s a temple of meat of the highest order, where the intoxicating perfume of the mesquite grill and a cloud of smoke greet you as you enter. What began as an Anaheim pop-up in 2019 has grown to encompass a handful of locations across Southern California, including this two-story restaurant in downtown Huntington Park. The Santa Maria-style grill is directly opposite the door, hissing and crowded with beautifully marbled slabs of meat over hot, glowing coals. The menu boasts more than a dozen fillings for tacos, burritos and even baked potatoes. There’s a lot to consider, but direct your attention to the “prime” section of the menu. The rib-eye taco plops what could be half of a steak onto a pair of corn tortillas. It’s enough filling that when you attempt to fold it, half the contents spill from the back. The asada has not been hacked with a cleaver into oblivion, and it’s cooked exactly to your desired doneness. The mesquite smoke clings to the meat, permeating the bite-sized pieces and the bits of char that cling to the edges. A bite of taco. A bite of chile güero. This taco may be why humans discovered fire.
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