At Mae Malai Thai House of Noodles, boat noodles are the irrefutable star attraction on the short menu.
(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
28 newcomers to the 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. list to visit ASAP
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“What are the new additions?” is one of the most commonly asked questions when the 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles guide publishes annually.
This year the project has nearly 30 fresh entrants. Among them are some of the most exciting restaurants that opened in the last year, including a new Arts District draw redefining the bistro for Los Angeles; a Persian cafe bridging Iranian home-cooking and restaurant-menu traditions; and a tiny charmer serving an incredible bowl of Thai boat noodles.
But not all of them are newly minted. Some places, with renewed energy in the kitchen, return to the list; others reflect our efforts to continually seek out under-the-radar excellence. One of the last meals columnist Jenn Harris and I shared before we made our final decisions was at Las Segovias in South Gate. We dug spoons and forks into an enormous, pudding-like Nicaraguan tamale, studded with bone-in pork ribs and olives and raisins, and knew we’d found a winner.
May the guide lead you to many similarly ecstatic moments. — Bill Addison
Showing Places
(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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![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/f0ce56a/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5789x3859+0+0/resize/1200x800!/format/webp/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fe3%2F3f%2Ff17560a44bea9cb970fcd897d19e%2F1476418-fo-101-azizam-02-mjc.jpg)
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Azizam
Silver Lake Persian $
The cooking of Iran has historically been a cuisine with distinct expressions inside and outside the home. Family settings often involve dishes that can be exceptionally labor-intensive or stews so nuanced and subtle they defy professional kitchen standardization. Most restaurant menus are purposefully designed around crowd-pleasing, fire-kissed kebabs, creamy dips and snowdrifts of seasoned rice heaped on platters. Cody Ma and Misha Sesar have poignantly narrowed the divide at the Silver Lake cafe they opened in March. The star among their concise mix of mazeh (cold small plates), sandwiches and mains is the kofteh Tabrizi, a giant beef-and-rice meatball riddled with herbs and steeped in a tomato-based sauce electric with Persian dried lime. Your spoon soon finds its sweet, secret heart: a filling of dried apricots, prunes, barberries and walnuts. Look to turmeric-marinated chicken over rice for sheer comfort. In the several years that Azizam previously ran as a pop-up, Ma and Sesar mined an exploratory streak in their cooking, finding the similarities and differences in their individual families’ regional recipes. I’m betting as they settle into the restaurant’s early success, we’ll see more intricate khoresht (seasonal stew) specials like a brothy June stunner of lamb neck with apricots.
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(Andrea D’Agosto/For The Times)
Barbacoa Ramirez
Arleta Mexican $
Steamy, fragrant, supple-ropy lamb barbacoa, when done right, is such a painstaking art that most local practitioners sell it only on the weekends. Some standouts must be mentioned: in Lincoln Heights, Josefina Garduño serves spicy consomé bobbing with chickpeas and wisps of meat alongside barbacoa tacos, and in frequent Boyle Heights pop-ups Petra Zavaleta of Barba Kush unwraps her Pueblan-style barbacoa from a swaddle of maguey leaves. Conversations around sublime lamb barbacoa should start up north, however, at the stand that Gonzalo Ramirez sets up on Saturday and Sunday mornings in the north San Fernando Valley, 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-cooks in a pit overnight and, cradled in plush made-to-order tortillas, the tacos come in three forms: smoky, molten-textured barbacoa; a pancita variation stained with chiles that goes fast; and incredible moronga, a nubbly, herbaceous sausage made with lamb’s blood.
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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Bistro Na's
Temple City Chinese $$$
Your meal at Bistro Na’s is meant to be regal, or as close to regal as one can come in a Temple City strip mall. This is food fit for an emperor, with a menu bound like an ancient text and dishes inspired by Chinese imperial kitchens. There are platters of pork feet jelly, golden soup teeming with the jewels of the sea. Shrimp are fried and lacquered with a sticky glaze made from sweet hawthorn and dried chiles. The Peking duck requires a table reservation and preordering one week in advance. Making the duck is a three-day process that involves marinating, scalding the skin and hanging and drying the bird multiple times before it’s roasted. The finished duck is presented whole to the table, impossibly plump with shiny skin the color of warm honey. Each crisp square of skin seems to shatter, then melt on the tongue. There are gossamer chun bing for wraps and a third course of soup or deep-fried bones. I prefer the soup, a calming respite between bites of lavish skin, shrimp and the rest of your royal feast.
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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Borit Gogae
Koreatown Korean Barbecue $$
“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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(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)
Camélia
Downtown L.A. French Japanese $$$
Having built Tsubaki, their tiny Echo Park izakaya, and next-door sake bar Ototo into community havens, Courtney Kaplan and Charles Namba wanted a third project that gave them room for creative growth. They reenvisioned a lofty space in downtown’s Arts District, once occupied by long-running Church & State, into a Midcentury Modern vision of an enveloping bistro: globe lighting that casts a butterscotch glow on the grainy wood paneling and handsome brick floors. The menu splices French and Japanese cuisines, a choice that reflects their hospitality backgrounds and their inspiration derived from Tokyo’s thriving French restaurant culture. In the kitchen, Namba and his team take the synergy dish by dish. A composition such as scallops over dashi-lime cream with maitake and king trumpet mushrooms, chestnut-date puree and Tokyo negi threads the two cuisines with surgical dexterity. To sharpen the soft flavors of beef cheeks simmered in red wine, wasabi cleverly replaces the more traditionally Gallic horseradish. A tall, hefty dry-aged cheeseburger with fries? No twists necessary, it’s simply a fantastic burger. Kaplan, one of L.A.’s most gifted beverage pros, has the chance to flex her knowledge of wine as well as sake. The notes on her list detailing current obsessions (say, a consideration of ancient vines versus ancient strains of rice) are always absorbing; I could read a book full of them. Open since July, and honing its strengths month by month, Camélia has emerged as one of the most exciting new restaurants in Los Angeles.
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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Danbi
Koreatown Korean $$
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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(Shelby Moore/For The 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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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Dolan's Uyghur Cuisine
Alhambra Uyghur
Among the constellation of cuisines that light up the San Gabriel Valley, Bugra Arkin’s restaurants 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. Most tables hold orders of the “big plate chicken” heaped with potatoes, chopped red and green peppers, slivers of garlic and dried chiles. Wide, looping noodles hide underneath. Currents of Sichuan peppercorns and star anise flow through the broth. It’s superb, as are stir-fried lamb freckled with cumin seeds; 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 quyash qatlima, a pinwheel-shaped savory pie full of spiced meat and oozing mozzarella. With murals of Uyghur life and details 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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(Catherine Dzilenski/For The Times)
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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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Fat + Flour
Culver City Bakery $$
The scent of butter and sugar grips you as soon as you walk through the doors of Nicole Rucker’s Culver City cafe. Inside the pastry case are slices of pie with chunks of sunset-colored peaches spilling from the middle, wedges of custard pie with burnished meringue tops and mountains of cookies and brownies alongside cheddar and chive scones. This is the place I recommend most in the entire city. To taste Rucker’s fruit, cream and custard pies is to experience the sweetest parts of Southern California. The peaches taste like they were just plucked from the tree, sun-ripened and glutted with natural sugars. Passion fruit custard beneath a bouffant of meringue is so addictively sharp, it makes my mouth pucker. Her crusts are buttery and flaky, creating perfect squiggly rims around each pie. If you see egg salad behind the counter, order it. The white bread is the soft, squishy variety and the egg salad is well-seasoned and velvety. But if you’re planning on something savory before or after dessert, know that the short menu of sandwiches isn’t always available. Rucker has turned the area opposite the counter into a mini superette, where you can find various condiments, snacks and gifts for food-minded friends. What she’s created is nothing short of a destination-worthy wonderland of fat and flour, sugar and love.
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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Hakata Izakaya Hero
West Los Angeles Japanese $$
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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(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)
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)
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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(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)
Komal
Historic South-Central Mexican $
The tortillas at Fátima Júarez’s new restaurant and molino in the Mercado La Paloma are a revelation. Delicate but supple, they taste of the sun and soil, earthy and bursting with the sweetness of summer corn. Júarez sources, nixtamalizes and grinds different heirloom Mexican corn varieties to make fresh masa for a short menu of antojitos. Chalqueño corn from the state of Mexico and Oaxacan blue bolita are featured in tlacoyos, griddled corn cakes stuffed with ayocote beans and generously garnished with nopales and salty crumbles of queso fresco. The best way to appreciate Júarez’s fresh masa (besides a stack of tortillas you can order by the dozen) may be the flor de calabaza quesadilla. The folded tortilla is brimming with Oaxacan cheese and a corn sofrito. Júarez’s mole, the culmination of a childhood spent in Oaxaca, is dusky and intricately spiced, noticeably sweet and redolent with toasted chiles. After I finished my molotes de platano, I took a warm tortilla, rolled it into a loose cigar and dipped it into the leftover mole for dessert. There’s already talk of a weekly tasting menu. But for now, sampling all the antojitos is a great way to spend a lunch break.
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(Ron De Angelis/For The 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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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
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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(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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(Andrea D’Agosto/For The 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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(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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(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)
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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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Mori Nozomi
Sawtelle Japanese $$$$
Glutted may be too strong a word to describe the state of omakase counters in Los Angeles, but we certainly can lay claim to the most lavish number of extravagant sushi options in the city’s history. Amid the profusion, Mori Nozomi easily rates as the most exciting sushi arrival of 2024. Chef-owner Nozomi Mori grew up near Osaka. She began her career in luxury retail stores (Gucci, among others) before traveling and eventually moving to Los Angeles in 2017. She landed a job making sushi, where customer interaction came with the territory, and knew she’d found her calling. In her Sawtelle space, established in the former location of Mori Sushi (no relation), she and her all-female team serve eight guests per night. Sweet, sharp, buttery, chewy, briny: Their selection of rarer, seasonal Japanese seafood hits all the top-flight omakase signifiers. The meal follows the very L.A. sequence of kaiseki-inspired small plates before nigiri, with some choices — an elegant kegani ankake (hairy crab with rice, presented in the shell), an assertive red miso soup, a finale of dashimaki tamago straight from the pan — that punctuate Mori’s individualism. The tea geek in me hopes that the restaurant’s very cool idea for a tea pairing will eventually include more freshly steeped examples and fewer chilled brews or sips diluted with sparkling water. That small detail aside, this should be the next place where L.A.’s sushi lovers vie for reservations, which already book out in a digital blink.
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(Innis Casey Photography)
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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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
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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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Rustic Canyon
Santa Monica New American $$$
Like the ebb and flow of California harvests to which its menu so closely hews, Rustic Canyon has had its own seasons of change. Last summer Zarah Khan, then executive chef, made the most intricately spiced and cloudlike dal I’ve tasted in a restaurant. When she departed soon after, chef-owner Jeremy Fox (who also runs Birdie G’s across Santa Monica as part of Josh Loeb and Zoe Nathan’s Rustic Canyon Family restaurant group) stepped in, redirecting the menu toward a careful swirl of Italian, Japanese, Mexican and French flavors. Chef de cuisine Elijah DeLeon now builds on Fox’s aesthetic with his own vision. A late September meal mirrored the week’s weather: bay scallops surrounded by barely liquid tomatoes and bits of fried bread, a salad built around pears and dates, softly curried roast chicken with plums, an herbed pork chop covered in slices of poached quince. Was it summer or fall? The world isn’t always easily definable, but one thing came through clearly: Rustic Canyon is having another grand moment.
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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Si! Mon
Venice Panamanian $$
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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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Sobar
Culver City Japanese $$
At Sobar, Masato Midorikawa’s Culver City restaurant, your bamboo sieve of noodles comes with a set of instructions. First, taste the noodles bare. Next, sprinkle some yuzu salt onto one bite. Then try matcha salt on another. Only then should you dip your noodles in the provided bowl of cold or hot broth. This is the way to fully appreciate ju-wari, a style of soba made from only buckwheat flour and water. Each morning, Midorikawa mixes the flour and water, then uses a machine he developed with a partner in Japan to make every tray of noodles to order. The earthy flavors are deeper and more intense than soba made with the addition of wheat flour, and the speckled gray noodles are denser and more brittle. The yuzu salt heightens the nuttiness of the buckwheat, while the matcha salt is more subtle and grassy. There’s a small menu of appetizers and sashimi to help round out the meal. The kakiage, served as a tangled cylinder of fried onions and shrimp, is the preferred soba sidekick, but there’s karaage, agedashi tofu and assorted Japanese pickles too.
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(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Stir Crazy
Hollywood Wine Bars $$
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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