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.
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.
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.
One of L.A.'s greatest culinary legacies is the California lunchroom burger, the multi-layered composition of iceberg lettuce, pickles and slightly underripe tomatoes. 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.
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.
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.
If you have contemplated a meal of blowfish, your dreams were probably shaped by the popular conception of the notorious fish of death. Here it's the centerpiece of a pleasant evening. 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.
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.
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.
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.
Get your Carolina-style slaw dogs, Italian dogs, rippers, cremators, Hatch chile dogs—made with artisanal, natural-skin, small-production franks imported from New Jersey. Read more.
The waiter will show you how to mix a soju bomb. Sobriety is not considered a virtue here. 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.
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.
It feels a bit like a grand steampunk machine dedicated to turning out roasted bone marrow with laksa leaf, kon loh mee noodles with barbecued pork, grilled lamb belly and fried chicken wings. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Try the Spanish fried chicken with cumin, pappardelle with nettles and asparagus with lemongrass, and don’t forget the glass of Sancerre. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
We recommend the astonishing "Hamembert" plate with Mangalitsa ham, oozing wedges of Camembert cheese, and an artfully charred length of baguette. 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.
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.
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.
