Blossom
You’ll like Blossom for its food, but you’ll love it for its owner, Duc Pham. Duc is a Swiss knife at Blossom, bouncing from chef, bartender, interior designer and sommelier: ask for a table in the basement and you’ll see...
Downtown
RiceBox
RiceBox, not to be confused with Ricebar, is a pocket-sized Cantonese restaurant inside the striking Spring Arcade in Downtown LA. There’s a line even during off-peak hours, but diners are usually quite fast at the task. Save yourself a trip...
The NoMad
In LA, everyone’s a carpetbagger — born in a faraway land, venturing West for fame, fortune and outrageous tanning. Why should our bastions of leisure, like Downtown’s NoMad Hotel, be any different? The NoMad looks like another hoity-toity New Yorker...
Marugame Udon
Marugame Udon feels like taking a trip to Japan for less than ten dollars. The cooks salute you in Japanese when you enter the door, the decoration is minimalistic, and so is the cafeteria-style service. Don’t be put off by...
Superfine
If Rossoblu makes some of the best tortellini in town, its adjacent sister restaurant Superfine makes the finest pizza. It’s not just fine, it’s great, and the crust, is well, super thin (duh). Former Sotto chef Steve Samson makes by-the-slice...
Nightshade
While we can all agree that 2018 was a pretty terrible year, the future is starting to look just a little bit brighter now that Mei Lin, the much heralded winner of Top Chef season 12, has turned on the...
Silverlake Ramen
Silverlake Ramen’s tonkotsu brings all the boys to the yard — so be prepared to wait in line. A rich tonkotsu broth cooked for 16 hours with thick cuts of chashu pork belly, green onions, spicy chili paste and super...
Sari Sari Store
Over the last year or so Filipino food has finally begun making its way into the spotlight of LA’s mainstream food media. It’s about time, given that city has the largest Filipino American population in the country. At popular restaurants...
Hayato
Hayato, a shoebox of a restaurant nestled in the corner of the ROW DTLA, is just the type of place you’d be hard pressed to find anywhere other than Los Angeles. During the daytime, Chef Brandon Go, who cut his...
Mariscos Jalisco
Don’t be fooled by the pale imitations of Mariscos Jalisco food trucks in Boyle Heights: this is the only old school taco truck (aka lonchero) from San Juan de Los Lagos. You’ll taste the difference with their unbeatable taco de...