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.
Comme Ça is more or less a classic brasserie, with plateaux of chilled seafood, escargots persillade & sautéed skate Grenoblois, except that you can also get a nicely turned Aviation No. 1. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Known for the soup shots at the bar and for stuffing yellowtail into its croque madame. 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.
