Where to Eat Now

A A A Comments (0) By Jonathan Gold Thursday, Aug 3 2006

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Santa Monica/Brentwood

LA99 Cora’s Coffee Shoppe. After decades in service as a prototypically grungy beach dive, Cora’s was chopped and channeled by Bruce Marder into a vision of what its former customers feared most: a pretty patio café fueled by well-made frittatas, truly spicy tacos given a not-inappropriate expensive-restaurant gloss, goopy $12 hamburgers made with ground Kobe-style beef, and astonishingly good house-made caramel ice cream. There goes the neighborhood. 1802 Ocean Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 451-9562. Breakfast, lunch and dinner Tues.–Sat. 7 a.m.–9 p.m. Closed Sun.–Mon. No alcohol. Takeout. Lot parking. AE, MC, V. American. JG $b

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Nick & Stef's

330 S. Hope St. (Wells Fargo Center)
Los Angeles, CA 90071

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: Downtown

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Lincoln Steakhouse Americana. I would have bet there was nothing new under the sun when it came to steak houses, that every possible permutation of the Rat Pack lifestyle, every $120 Kobe-beef fillet, every conceivable tomato salad, cigar station and vodka martini had been explored. This steak-house thing has been going on a long time, after all, and even the most Atkins-crazed Robb Report subscriber could hardly want for variety. But it’s not the braised turnip greens that make the difference at Lincoln Steakhouse, owned by the people who run Paladar. The profoundly charred Angus-beef porterhouses are fine, but no better than you’ll find at a dozen other places in town. What Lincoln has that other steak houses do not is young women, in packs and in pairs, on dates, on business dinners and dining alone. And these aren’t young women nibbling salads or sipping white wine, or hanging around the bar waiting for you, but women ordering big steaks and eating them. I would credit the well-known charm of the antler chandeliers for this phenomenon, but I would probably be wrong. 2460 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 828-3304. Lunch Mon.–Fri. 11 a.m.–2 p.m. plus bar menu until 5:30 p.m. Dinner Mon.–Sat. 5–11 p.m., Sun. 5–10 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. New-fashioned steak house. JG $$$bÂ?

Culver City/Venice/Marina Del Rey/Westchester and vicinity

Axe. At Axe (pronounced “ah-shay”), simple and gleaming as a Zendo, the clear ocean air is practically a design element. Some find the austere aesthetic “refreshing”; others find the seats uncomfortable, the overall effect harsh. The wait staff does tend to be more physically attractive than efficient, but this restaurant marches to its own beat, or rather, to that of the chef-owner Joanna Moore, whose breakfast, lunch and dinner menus are seductively eclectic. Try her meal-sized whole-grain pancake, a composed salad, her masterly spaghetti aglio olio and any dessert. 1009 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, (310) 664-9787. Lunch Tues.–Fri., dinner Tues.–Sun., brunch Sat.–Sun. Beer and wine. Valet parking. AE, D, MC, V. California. MH $$[

Simpang Asia. With a huge selection of Japanese candy and boxes piled neatly to the ceiling, this small Indonesian grocery, with a Web site, is what I’d imagine a 7-Eleven in Sulawesi might look like: immaculate shelves of chile peanuts, dried squid and juice boxes of starfruit drink, kilo bags of fried shallots, and more flavors of instant noodles than you may have known existed. Neighborhood kids drop in, carefully counting dimes for their rations of Pocky sticks or Japanese bubblegum. UCLA students haul off caseloads of ramen. Simpang Asia is almost exotic in its nonexoticism. 10433 National Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 815-9075, www.veryasia.com. Lunch and dinner, Mon.–Fri. 10 a.m.–10 p.m., Sat.–Sun. 11 a.m.–10 p.m. No alcohol. Takeout. Lot parking. D, MC, V. Indonesian. JG ¢b

San Fernando Valley

Carnival. The whole human comedy — or carnival, as it were — flocks to this relentlessly popular Middle Eastern restaurant in a Sherman Oaks mini-mall for big portions of mezze and kebabs. (A buck seventy-five adds soup or salad and rice or fries to any entrée.) Never mind the harassed, overworked waiters racing around on their last nerves. Try the daily specials — lamb shanks, lamb and okra stew. Hummus meat — chopped, deeply seasoned lamb and pine nuts in a nest of good hummus — is the dish to order. 4356 Woodman Ave., Sherman Oaks, (818) 784-3469. Seven days 11 a.m.–10 p.m. Beer and wine. Takeout. Lot parking. AE, MC, V. Middle Eastern. MH ¢b

South Bay/LAX/Long Beach and vicinity

Shula’s 347.They flock to Shula’s 347, the business-flier crowd, the sallow men who inhabit every airline lounge in the country and know their way around an airline bottle of Tanqueray, a no-iron Brooks Brothers polo shirt, and the back nine of half the golf courses in Ohio. They are the men you shuffle by on your way to tourist-class purgatory. Don Shula, of course, was the coach of the Miami Dolphins in their greatest days, and the number 347 refers to the number of victories he oversaw in his career; the blank-eyed men at the bar are surer of that number than they were of the date of their first wives’ birthdays, and all side dishes are priced at $3.47 in honor of the immortal stat. The Hickory Burger at Shula’s 347 is basically an honorable thing, a thick, flat burger made from certified if rather over-handled Angus beef, layered with applewood-smoked bacon, and served with a blizzard of oddly textured chopped cheddar that looks more like the output of a cross-cut paper shredder than like anything resembling cheese. The bun is slightly too big, too bready, like most commercial buns, and the sandwich is oddly heavy for its size, as if it conceals a payload of lead. When you finally bite into the Hickory Burger, the sensation is of pure smokiness, not the smack of the grill precisely, but more like the feeling that somebody has painted your tongue with liquid smoke. This smokiness is of a different caliber, intense enough to render the smoky bacon almost flavorless in your mouth. Sheraton Gateway Hotel, 6101 Century Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 642-4820. Sun.–Thurs. 5–10 p.m., Fri.–Sat. 5–11 p.m. Full bar. Three hours free valet parking. AE, MC, V. American. JG $$b?