Try the seaweed-tofu beignets, spare arrangements of foraged greens, scallops with nightshade berries or shriveled, butter-soaked carrots that somehow manage to taste better than meat. Read more.
Some people arrange their weekly schedules around Angelini's specials: kidney stew on Tuesdays; braised oxtails on Wednesdays, liver alla Veneziana on Thursdays. Read more.
John Shook and Vinny Dotolo have a pretty good sense of what tastes good, be it melted cheese with chorizo or calves' brains with the French curry vadouvan Read more.
Try the Spanish fried chicken with cumin, pappardelle with nettles and asparagus with lemongrass, and don’t forget the glass of Sancerre. Read more.
Everyone is here for Attari's sandwiches: lengths of toasted French bread dressed with fresh tomatoes, lettuce and a smattering of spiced, super-tart Iranian pickles. Read more.
Go for the Bäco, Josef Centeno's signature creation, a kind of flatbread sandwich halfway between a Catalan coca and a taco pumped up on 'roids, slicked with a goopy, vaguely Mediterranean sauce. Read more.
A restaurant that makes beef-heart tartare seem not only possible but desirable; that makes a craveable specialty of pork boiled with cabbage. Read more.
Their brisket is a paradigm of meat, beef that disappears so quickly that if it weren't for the feeling of satisfying fullness you might swear that you had less eaten it than dreamed it. Read more.
Border Grill is the rare mainstream restaurant whose tacos don't make you yearn for a truck parked by an auto-parts junkyard somewhere in East L.A. Read more.
Some delicious examples: pistachio flavored with nuts hand-carried back from the Sicilian pistachio village Bronte, or rich goat's milk gelato spiked with roasted cacao nibs Read more.
Their menu is a living, habanero-intensive thesaurus of the panuchos and codzitos, sopa de lima and papadzules, banana-leaf tamales and shark casseroles that make up one of Mexico's spiciest cuisines. Read more.
Stunning bistro cooking: braised pork belly with favas and polenta, a gorgeous ballotine of rabbit with sprigs of fresh tarragon, tarte flambé, fried pig's ears, roasted marrowbone with radish. Read more.
Chef Sergio Peñuelas is a master of pescado zarandeado, marinated snook cooked by shaking over charcoal until the flesh caramelizes but does not char. Also recommended: the fiery shrimp aguachile. Read more.
Cooks County is a restaurant you could visit three times a week and then come back for oxtail hash and cheese biscuits at Sunday brunch. Read more.
Try the chefly interpretation of Mexican bar snacks, including seared slices of carnitas terrine with cubes of Coca-Cola gelee and pigskin two ways. Read more.
There’s some delicious meat and seafood here: Wagyu sashimi, bone marrow flan, thinly sliced veal tongue in salsa verde, and real Kyushu beef. Read more.
Din Tai Fung really does have good soup dumplings, tender and swollen with hot broth, zapped with fresh ginger, perfectly elastic and almost engineered. Read more.
The cooking here includes both handcrafted pasta — the pappardelle with pheasant and the handmade spaghetti with Sicilian almond pesto are wonderful — and steak, fish and duck. Read more.
The menu includes both spinach-leaf lasagna and bacon-wrapped bacon, a salad of beets and oranges and a plate of tongue with tomatillo. Read more.
Gjelina is cheerful, boozy & known for both its good-looking customers & Travis Lett's decent organic-fetish Italian food. The scene may be as crunchy as the pizza crust, but relax: It's Abbot Kinney. Read more.
L.A.’s essential rice pudding: touched with cinnamon, drizzled with heavy cream, coaxing the nutty, rounded essence out of every grain of rice. Read more.
The prospect of Golden Deli's bun thit, noodles tossed with fish sauce, grilled pork and fresh herbs, is always a happy one. Read more.
At Guelaguetza, you'll find tlayudas, like bean-smeared Oaxacan pizzas, the size of manhole covers; thick tortillas called memelas; and delicious, mole-drenched tamales. Read more.
If you dare, try the tacos with chiles torreados, ultrahot chiles grown in Armando De La Torre's backyard, sautéed until they practically melt from the heat, served in a fresh tortilla. Read more.
The South filtered through the not-South: fried chicken skin served with hand-made Tabasco, a hot biscuit with a spoonful of pimento cheese or a steaming bowl of black-eyed peas. Read more.
Known for the soup shots at the bar and for stuffing yellowtail into its croque madame. Read more.
A fusion of complex, ritualized Japanese kaiseki cuisine with modern California small-plates cooking, like the black cod served under smoldering sheets of the Japanese cedar hinoki. Read more.
The house-smoked Hunan ham has the smoky punch of first-rate barbecue, coarsely chopped and sautéed with dried long beans, garlic cloves, chopped chiles. Read more.
The first rule of the kitchen seems to be: Don't mess too much with the fish. That means the Santa Barbara sea urchin isn't a source of intriguing richness, it's a sea urchin. Read more.
Michael Voltaggio agonizes over every gram of sea-bean chimichurri on the beef tartare, every plate of potato charcoal with crème fraîche and every scoop of wood-smoke ice cream that leaves the line. Read more.
Specialties include pot roast, Kansas City steaks and an iceberg wedge salad frosted with blue cheese. Don’t forget to try the chicken with kaffir lime leaf, either. Read more.
Try the crunchy fried fish with homegrown turmeric, mango salad lightened with coconut water or soft-shell crab with the legendarily stinky sataw bean. Read more.
The waiter will show you how to mix a soju bomb. Sobriety is not considered a virtue here. Read more.
The great specialty is cherrywood-smoked Copper River salmon with mango, a dish that certain local sushi masters would rather die than serve. (It's their loss: The dish is stunningly good.) Read more.
Most famous for its version of bossam: boiled pork belly you wrap up into leaves with raw garlic, sliced chiles and a salty condiment made from tiny fermented fish. Read more.
Head to a deserted parking lot late at night and wait for the appearance of the Kogi truck, from which you will soon purchase enormous, great-tasting plates of Korean short-rib tacos. Read more.
Have you ever found transcendence in a plate of chilaquiles? This is a good place to try. Read more.
Favorite: The long-steamed pastrami, dense, hand-sliced and nowhere near lean, has a firm, chewy consistency, a gentle flavor of garlic and clove, and a clean edge of smokiness. Read more.
Suzanne Goin’s resinous herbs and precise splashes of acidity make vegetables dance and bring out the deep, fleshy resonances in braised pork cheeks and her notorious short ribs. Read more.
Pan-Asian perfected in a hundred little ways, including the precise acidity of the sticky Chinese pork ribs, the aromatics in the reinvented Singapore Sling and the deconstructed shrimp toast. Read more.
You're probably there for a crack at the impossibly rich bacon cheddar biscuits, and we can't say that we blame you. Read more.
Mantee brings a different kind of edge to Lebanese-Armenian cuisine. Try the platter of beef dumplings sizzling in a bath of garlicky yogurt. Read more.
Raul Ortega might personally hand you a taco, ask if you want to try a plate of ceviche or aguachile. His signature tacos dorados de camaron, fried tacos with shrimp, are just too formidable. Read more.
We sometimes dream of living close to Marouch, close enough anyway to drop in at noon for grilled quail and a beer and midafternoons for a Lebanese sweet and a thimble of thick Turkish coffee. Read more.
Nobu Matsuhisa is one of the one or two most important chefs ever to come out of Los Angeles, combining izakaya cooking and Peruvian flavors into a style that inspired chefs all around the world. Read more.
Specializes in cooking Kerala: saucer-shaped rice-flour saucers called appam; an obscurely flavored fish curry with undernotes of tamarind and garlic; the peppery, buttery cashew-rice dish ven pongal. Read more.
The dorowot, a two-day chicken stew vibrating with what must be ginger and black pepper and bishop's weed and clove, cuts straight through to the Ethiopian soul. Read more.
The luxury ingredients and luxury prices seem not to dissuade diners who are happy to face down $175 asparagus dinners, showers of truffles and caviar, and even the standard $125 prix fixe. Read more.
If you want a pisco sour, you're in the right place: The foamy, tart, lightly bitter version of the Peruvian national cocktail flows like water. Read more.
Musso's, if you look at it a certain way, is a living museum of 1920s American cuisine: avocado cocktails, crab Louie, jellied consommé, grilled lamb kidneys and Wednesday sauerbraten. Read more.
It is occasionally difficult to ascertain whether the most impressive bit of a dish is the chewy slab of Japanese halibut fin or the thimble-sized cucumber garnishing the fish. Read more.
Even strong men are defeated by the parade of sautéed pea shoots with garlic, crunchy salt-and-pepper squid and the gargantuan house-special lobster, fried with chile, black pepper and scallion. Read more.
Nickel Diner bakes its own bread, prepares elaborate cakes and maple-bacon doughnuts and makes delicious fried catfish with corn cakes. Don’t miss the Lowrider Burger. Read more.
Try the Rotgut Mekong whisky, stinky natural Gamays from the Loire, fearsome yet delicious nam prik, or pounded salads from the area around Chiang Mai. Read more.
Don't miss the bufala mozzarella draped with spectacular anchovy with Meyer lemon and an herb salad. Nancy Silverton makes a great a caprese with bufala, cherry tomatoes and basil.
Park's pretty much has the top end of K-Town barbecue to itself. The quality of the galbi, the pork belly and the spicy galbi soup is superb. Read more.
The thick wine list at Patina is rich in hidden treasures if you are willing to consider Corbières or Slovenian Pinot Gris instead of Napa Chardonnay. Read more.
The cooking—the puffy pies at Pizzeria Mozza, perfected northern Italian dishes at Osteria Mozza, charcuterie and grilled meats at Chi'Spacca or focaccia at Mozza2Go—comes from an Italy of the mind. Read more.
Chef Ricardo Zarate is filtering Peruvian cooking through the aesthetics of the izakaya--meals you've been used to eating in L.A. Peruvian restaurants become plates meant to be shared. Read more.
The gearhead version of a modernist hamburger: layered with ketchup leather, pickle shavings, homemade American cheese scented with kombu seaweed, and a microscopically thin layer of fried cheese. Read more.
A fresh take on African American dishes: smoked baby backs, roast salmon, buttermilk fried chicken and greens cooked down with ham hocks with an understated chefly flair. Plus hand-stretched pizza. Read more.
Michael Cimarusti’s raw materials come from all over the world, but his sense of seasonality, his easy multicultural flavor palette and his unfussy use of California produce is solidly L.A. Read more.
A nice place to drop in for Basque-inspired tapas: crisp, gooey chicken croquettes; lamb meatballs glazed with caramelized tomato sauce; tiny squid stuffed with duck sausage; or Spanish cured meats. Read more.
Chef Jordan Kahn keeps it weird and proud with nominally Vietnamese-based cuisine, and the results are often as delicious as they are startling. Read more.
You must start with an order of the tortillas florales: four little corn tortillas, handmade and still warm, tucked under a napkin. Each tortilla has a sprig of herb or a flower pressed into it. Read more.
Get the mole sampler and spend the evening comparing Oaxacan black mole with mellower mole Poblano; with the spicy, smoky mancha manteles; or with the signature mole de los dioses. Read more.
Under new chef Jeremy Fox, Rustic Canyon has jolted the superb produce into something resembling a cuisine; try the asparagus with fried pheasant egg and ultra-dense bone-marrow gravy. Read more.
You’re here for an astonishing quantity of meat, charcuterie ranging from potted duck with blueberries to the intense house-cured bacon, and a menu of simple, butcher’s food. Read more.
Sapp's boat noodle soup is magnificent: a musky, blood-thickened beef soup screaming with chile heat; tart lime juice in lockstep with the funkiness of the broth. Read more.
Delivers in every way a seafood house can deliver, with tanks full of spider crabs, exotic reef fish and Santa Barbara spot prawns, and a kitchen prepared to braise sea cucumber and sun-dried abalone. Read more.
Go straight for the crabs fried with chile and garlic; the crocks of Old Alley Pork, braised into pig candy; the smoked fish; the stone-pot fried rice; or the pan-fried pork buns. Read more.
Not just a sushi bar. You expect expensive wild sea bream to be treated reverently at a sushi bar. You do not expect the same care to be taken with a carrot. Read more.
The most popular dish? Definitely the fried chicken sandwich, with coleslaw and what must be the only aioli on the planet spiked with Rooster hot sauce. Read more.
If you should happen across a special of lamb innards or one of the gigantic sweet-sour braised pork shanks, make sure to order one the second you sit down. Read more.
The most famous restaurant in the observable universe, reinvented by Wolfgang Puck and his new chef, Tetsu Yahagi. The thick prime rib steak sings with the flavors of blood, age and char. Read more.
We recommend the astonishing "Hamembert" plate with Mangalitsa ham, oozing wedges of Camembert cheese, and an artfully charred length of baguette. Read more.
Specialty: pasta, handmade, whole-wheat rigatoni more or less in the style of cacio e pepe, cooked extremely al dente and tossed with cheese and a punishing handful of black pepper. Read more.
The turkey sandwich is heavenly: thick slices of nicely brined bird layered on dense house-made bread with thin slivers of just-ripe Camembert cheese, arugula and cherry mostarda. Read more.
Tar & Roses, which also has a terrific, mostly Italian, wine list, may also mark the first time in our nation's history when cauliflower became more delicious than prime steak. Read more.
The basic impression is of Italian cooking translated into an odd American dialect, in which grilled anchovies are laid so beautifully on the plate that you suspect there's an art director. Read more.
Ludovic Lefebvre is one of the greatest pure chefs ever to cook in Los Angeles. Trois Mec is the first place that has ever been his own, like a private club that happens to serve delicious cuisine. Read more.
Tsujita, a spinoff of a revered Tokyo ramen restaurant, is so far ahead of its competition that the others may as well not exist. Read more.
Jonathan Gold says: I will never forget my first taste of Quintarelli Amarone here, which is as close as I had gotten to a sweet, musky taste of heaven. Read more.
The chef, Nicola Mastronardi, is a master of the big, hardwood-burning ovens, of roast porchetta and cuttlefish salad, of the flavors of salt, clean ocean and smoke. Read more.
The dishes are exquisitely constructed: An encapsulation of liquid cheese that might be bouncy and over-thick in Bazaar's main dining room will be delicate at SAAM. Read more.
Do try the clay pot sea bass cooked in a complex Vietnamese caramel sauce. And stick around for the disco, if that's your thing. Read more.
In method and texture, the frittata is pretty close to a crisp paejon, Korean egg pancake, made with Italian ingredients instead of Korean ones. Read more.
The Mexicali-style tacos are pretty spectacular at this tidy storefront near Dodger Stadium, packed into the small, plump flour tortillas the owners bring up from Baja a couple of times a week. Read more.
Four courses, plated as beautifully as anything you'll see at Alma or Providence, run $52, which is not expensive for this level of cooking. Read more.
You will wonder how Lime Truck vet Jason Quinn managed to score A5 Miyazaki rib-eye cap to grill and you will wonder why he serves his grilled octopus with pickled pig's tongue. Read more.
Chef Evan Funke brings the Italian countryside — and great pasta — to Culver City. Read more.
The beef tartare melds Korean raw-beef dish yuk hwe, Sichuan peppercorns, French bone-marrow paste, Vietnamese herbs and Indonesian-style cassava chips. Read more.
Delicate tongue tacos with green salsa are especially good, as are the tacos of chicken tesmole, an herb-intensive Oaxacan preparation thickened with corn. Read more.
There is so much to taste on the menu here that even half a dozen visits isn't quite enough to exhaust the menu. Read more.
If you can make do with a plainly delicious Berkshire pork chop served with a grilled peach and a bit of polenta, or seared fresh albacore laid over a tomato salad, you're probably in the right place. Read more.
The pork chop is moistened with a reduction of juiced clover, the same stuff you may have rolled around in as a kid, and comes with charred nectarines that have collapsed in on themselves. Read more.
The crunchy fish and chips, made with fried true cod, is delicious, but it will not be the lightest version you have ever tasted. Read more.
Get there early: The lamb shoulder or sea urchin you've been craving may be sold out within minutes. Read more.
Marché Moderne is an oasis of calm, an unexpected place of guinea hen with calvados and scallops with cauliflower mousseline, moules frites and bone marrow with dense sauce bordelaise. Read more.
Angelo Auriana's new restaurant is a compelling hybrid, an informal trattoria with rather formal northern Italian cooking. Read more.
The large family-style pots are the star of the menu, but the other shareable bites like dumplings, squid, pollack roe, and fried rice are also worth trying. An unbeatable scene, too. Read more.
Your feelings about République may well depend on whether you mind paying a $5 supplement for mind-blowing Normandy butter ("ordinary" butter is free). Read more.
