99 Essential - List Only

Dino’s Burgers

If you are looking for a proper representation of hellfire, the grill at Dino’s Burgers may be as close as you will get, a smoke-belching landscape of fire and ashes, with stacks of chickens ready to be flipped into the blaze like so many unrepentant sinners. A dingy burger stand in the Byzantine-Latino Quarter still owned by founder Demetrios Pantazis, Dino’s is as perpetually crowded as Pink’s after the bars close. The half-chicken plates cost only $4.50 a pop, including fries and tortillas; steak platters with rice, beans and salad run maybe a buck more. (In practice, nobody orders the burger.) And the best part of the meal may be the dense stratum of French fries underneath the chickens, saturated with the greasy, capsaicin-rich juices of the bird. It may take a week to scrape the residue out from under your fingernails, but it will be worth the crimson shame. 2575 W. Pico Blvd., L.A., (213) 380-3554. Sun. 7 a.m.–11 p.m., Mon.–Thurs. 6 a.m.–11 p.m., Fri.–Sat. 6 a.m.–mid. No alcohol. Takeout. Limited lot parking. Cash only. Chicken.¢

Drago

Celestino Drago has been the king of pasta in Los Angeles since the day we all stopped eating SpaghettiOs. His casual yet rigorous pan-Italian cooking at his various dining rooms helped define the way Angelenos think about Italian food, and he seems to collect restaurants — Il Pastaio, Celestino, Enoteca Drago, Panzanella, Dolce Forno, among others — the way your 12-year-old brother collects baseball cards. But you will most often spot his mournful, bearded countenance at Drago, working the door, barking at a sous-chef, following a bit of roast venison or stewed boar out into the dining room as if he had shot it himself. The careful braising and sweet-and-sour flavors that are characteristic of Drago’s style really come into focus when he is stuffing boned-out quail with dense sausage, cooking pheasant with mushrooms for a pasta sauce or simmering boar until it all but collapses under its own molecular weight. 2628 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 828-1585. Mon.–Fri. 11 a.m.–3 p.m. & 5–10 p.m., Sat.–Sun. 5–11 p.m. Full bar. Takeout. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Italian. $$$

El Huarache Azteca

Half of Highland Park bellies up to the counter on weekend afternoons, guzzling housemade horchata, tepache and watermelon drink out of foam cups the size of oil cans, hovering over the few oilcloth-covered tables inside, gathering tacos and sopes by the dozen to bring home to their families, and coaxing burning-hot ­huitlacoche quesa­dillas — fried turnovers stuffed with musky, jet-black “Mexican truffles” — out of the stone-faced woman who mans the fry cart outside the entrance. The famous dish at El Huarache is, of course, the huarache, a flat, concave trough of fried masa the approximate length and shape of a size-12 sandal, mounded with beans, cultured cream and meat — but the great specialty is probably the weekend-only barbacoa, chile-rubbed lamb roasted to the point of collapse. 5225 York Blvd., Highland Park, (323) 478-9572. Open daily, 9 a.m.–10:30 p.m. No alcohol. Street parking. Takeout. Cash only. Catering. ¢

El Parian

The birria here, Guadalajara-style goat stew, may be the single best regional Mexican dish in Los Angeles, and nothing in the thousands of Mexican meals I have eaten in the last 30 years has done anything to sway me from that belief. But a sizable contingent also believes El Parian has the best carne asada tacos in town, that the kitchen excels at drawing a sweet, meaty, garlicky taste out of thin, charbroiled steak. And they may be right — the meat is well blackened and peppered with delicious pockets of liquified fat, and the thick tortillas are strictly homemade. Will I order the carne asada taco the next time around? Of course not. But I’m glad to know it’s there. 1528 W. Pico Blvd., L.A., (213) 386-7361. Open daily 8 a.m.–9 p.m. ?Takeout. Beer. Cash only. Mexican. ¢

Euro Pane Bakery

Sumi Chang’s bakery may be the center of civilized life in Pasadena: a place to buy excellent-to-superb scones and baguettes and pains au chocolat, of course, but also the heart of a certain sort of society, the chemistry professors, theology students and writers who worship at the twin altars of caffeine and conversation. On a good day, Euro Pane’s magnificent croissants could be mistaken for France’s best in a police lineup. Toss in the homemade granola, the epochal bread pudding, the rustic fruit tarts and the gooiest egg-salad sandwich in town, and it’s no wonder that Europane’s regulars treat the bakery more as a permanent residence than as a café. 950 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (626) 577-1828. Mon.–Sat. 7 a.m.–5:30 p.m., Sun. till 3 p.m. No alcohol. Street parking. MC, V for orders over $20 only. California Bakery. ¢

Father’s Office

Creator of the most-imitated Los Angeles dish since Nancy Silverton reinvented an obscure Piedmontese dessert called panna cotta, Sang Yoon is the baron of the new-style cheeseburger: dry-aged beef cooked exceptionally rare, dressed with onions cooked down to the sweetness of maple syrup, Gruyère and Maytag blue cheeses, smoky bacon, arugula and a tomato compote, all on a French roll. I’m not sure that a restaurant has opened on the Westside in the last couple of years without some kind of variation of Yoon’s burger — I half expect to see a ciabatta-based version at Jack in the Box any day now. Still, at least until Yoon’s adults-only microbrew fiefdom expands to include a larger Culver City location later this year, dining here is a full-contact sport. If you want one of the few tables in the bar, you will have to circle the room until somebody gets ready to leave, then plunge into a vicious scrum. The more Unibroue you drink, the easier the battle becomes. 1018 Montana Ave., Santa Monica, (310) 393-BEER or www.fathersoffice.com. Food served Mon.–Wed. 5–10 p.m., Thurs. 5–11 p.m., Fri. 4–11 p.m., Sat. noon–11 p.m., Sun. 3–10 p.m. 21 and over only. Beer and wine. Takeout. Difficult street parking. AE, M, V. California Contemporary. $