99 Essential - List Only

Uzbekistan

A giant, blistering-hot bialy served with cream cheese, baked dumplings called samsa stuffed with lamb, Korean-seeming hand-cut lagman noodles with lots and lots of carrots — Uzbekistan is probably the best Central Asian restaurant in Los Angeles, a living, garlic-reeking souvenir of the city Tashkent in a dining room that could double as a set for one of those ethnic disco parties on channel 18, and a vodka-drenched social center for some of the least subtle expats on earth. The great dish here is plov, the grand­father of all rice pilafs, dense and slightly oily, more like fried rice than ordinary pilaf, spiked with long-cooked carrots and crisp-edged chunks of lamb, flavored with a peculiar sort of Uzbeki cumin seed that is halfway between cumin and caraway. 7077 Sunset Blvd., Hlywd.; (323) 464-3663. Open daily 11 a.m.­mid. Full bar. Lot parking. AE, DC, Disc., MC, V. $

Location Info

Map

Apple Pan

10801 Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064

Category: Restaurant > American

Region: West L.A.

Photos

10 user reviews	Write A Review
Save to foursquare

Babita Mexicuisine

1823 S. San Gabriel Blvd.
San Gabriel, CA 91776

Category: Restaurant > Mexican

Region: Monterey Park/ Alhambra/ S. Gabriel

Photos

Related Content

• Q & A With Soul of a Banquet's Wayne Wang: Cecilia Chiang Why the Best Chinese Food in the World is in the SGV
  April 6, 2013
• 100 Favorite Dishes: The Whole Menu
  December 13, 2012
• Angelini Osteria: 99 Essential Restaurants 2013
  February 28, 2013
• Cavalia's Odysseo
  February 21, 2013
• The 20 Worst Albums Of The '90s: 20-11
  March 5, 2013

More About

• MC
• Gino Angelini
• Michael Lohan
• North-American Food and Cooking
• Seafood

Valentino

Everybody’s favorite Italian restaurants tend to serve perfected country dishes, rustic vegetables and grilled meats that replicate what a gifted grandmother might prepare for dinner in her Umbrian fireplace. But Angelo Auriano’s food at is as far from home cooking as any French chef’s: No grandmother is ever going to arrange dense slivers of smoked eel from Lake Garda into a still life, or scent marinated yellowtail with a few drops of basil oil and seabottom-pungent shavings of dried mullet roe, or stuff agnolotti with wild boar and garnish it with cured pig cheek and fiasco-simmered beans. Valentino has always been one of the most controversial restaurants in Los Angeles, loved by foodies who claim to have eaten the best meals of their lives in the dimly lit dining room and loathed by people who claim that the restaurant is a con job. It can be difficult to coax the best from Valentino. But with the return of Auriano, who presided over the kitchen in its best days, the cooking is once again up to the level of owner Piero Selvaggio’s massive wine list. Suddenly, although Valentino is quite expensive, the $85 tasting menu (and you’re missing the point if you order anything else) seems almost reasonable. 3115 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 829-4313.Dinner Mon.–Thurs. 5–10 p.m., Fri.–Sat. 5–10:30 p.m.; lunch Fri. 11 a.m.–noon. Full bar. Valet and street parking. AE, CB, DC, MC, V. Italian.$$$$

Village Idiot

The Village Idiot, housed within the scraped, hollow bones of the former Chianti, is the biggest gastropub in town at the moment, a vast place dominated by the surging throngs around the bar, a pub where you can get fish ’n’ chips, pints of Boddingtons and hand-drawn cider, but also crunchy cornmeal-crusted catfish, grilled chicken with bread salad, and a delicate goat-cheese tart served underneath a refreshing fennel salad. Are there salads with candied nuts and blue cheese, braised pork, and a version of the Father’s Office burger? Of course. The shouted, ale-lubricated conversation is probably half the reason for coming here — the ratio of great-looking women to shaggy indie boys may be the most impressive in all of Los Angeles. 7383 Melrose Ave., L.A., (323) 655-3331. Open daily 11:30 a.m.–2 a.m. Full bar. AE, MC, V. English. $

Vincenti

Valentino may be grander than Vincenti, La Terza flashier and Giorgio Baldi may draw a more famous clientele, but Vincenti feels like the spiritual center of fine Italian cooking in Los Angeles, its hearth. And befitting a hearth, much of Nicola Mastronardi’s food comes from the big, hardwood-burning ovens, flavored with the presence of smoke, of forests, stone chimneys and chilly afternoons — a scallop, say, sprinkled with bread crumbs and baked in its shell until it sizzles; a magnificent veal chop; soft curls of cuttlefish tucked into an herb salad; a whole, truffle-laced squab. The adjacent rotisserie turns out the best restaurant version of porchetta I have ever tasted in California — loin and belly are wrapped into a spiral, seasoned with fennel and spit-roasted to a crackling, licorice-y succulence. It is certainly possible to eat several mediocre Italian meals elsewhere in this neighborhood for the price of a single superb one here. At these times, it is good to remember that on Monday nights, pizza also comes out of these ovens. 11930 San Vicente Blvd., Brentwood, (310) 207-0127. Mon.–Sat. 6–10 p.m., Friday for lunch noon–2 p.m. Full bar. Takeout. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Italian. $$$

Water Grill

A big-city fish restaurant, Water Grill is a redoubt of oysters and fresh scallops, sparkling fish and sea creatures we can’t even pronounce, in one of the busiest commercial corridors of downtown. It was widely assumed that the restaurant would wither into irrelevancy when former chef Michael Cimarusti left to open Providence, but it is possible that the kitchen is even sharper under David LeFevre, who has added a certain global-Gallic sensibility to the seafood cuisine — which includes a beautiful peekytoe crab salad and perhaps the only local tuna tartare we would dream of ordering a second time. Extremely expensive and quite formal by Los Angeles standards, but you knew that. 544 S. Grand Ave., dwntwn., (213) 891-0900. Mon.–Fri. 11:30 a.m.–8:30 p.m., Sat. 5–9 p.m., Sun. 4:30–9 p.m. Full bar. Takeout. Valet parking. AE, D, DC, MC, V. Progressive American. $$$