Where to Eat Now: New to the List

Hollywood and Vicinity

Arax Falafel Arax, which has been feeding the Little Armenia neighborhood for almost 25 years, is not a large place, just three tomato-red Formica booths and an ATM machine, the owner's TV set tuned to the Colts game, and a line of takeout customers stretching out the door. The crisp, dripping, lovely shwarma here is so far from the pressed-gristle shwarma served at your local kebab hut that it is practically another dish. This is shwarma of integrity, shwarma that tastes of beast. There are chicken kebabs at Arax, and shish kebabs, and oozing, garlic-laden sandwiches stuffed with the Armenian sausage called soujok. The hummus and tabbouleh are rather fine. And Arax's falafel is with good reason considered the best in Hollywood — falafel that is crisped in the cleanest frying oil this side of an Osaka tempura bar. What may not be obvious is that the real specialty of Arax may be the tongue sandwich: thick slices of stewed lamb's tongue stuffed into a length of French bread and grilled crisp in a battered metal sandwich press. 5101 Santa Monica Blvd., Hlywd., (323) 663-9687. Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. No alcohol. Lot parking. Cash only (ATM on premises). Middle Eastern.

Location Info

Map

Orochon Ramen

123 S. Onizuka St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Restaurant > Japanese

Region: Downtown

Photos

0 user reviews	Write A Review

Pitfire Pizza Company

108 W. Second St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Restaurant > Pizza

Region: Downtown

Photos

Related Content

• 100 Favorite Dishes: The Whole Menu
  December 13, 2012
• The Taco Madness Tournament Returns to L.A. Taco
  March 22, 2013
• Five Dance Shows to See in L.A. This Week, Including an Offshoot of Cirque du Soleil
  April 25, 2013
• Top 10 Miracle Mile Bars
  April 4, 2013
• Eastside vs. Westside: 5 Ways of Looking At It
  April 30, 2013

More About

• Culver City
• Christiano Bollini
• Santa Monica
• Thai Food and Cooking
• Meat

Café Tropical Cuban sandwiches, those divine, decidedly unkosher concoctions of ham, roast pork, cheese, pickles and garlicky mojo melded onto lengths of French bread, are among the greatest things ever to come out of a sandwich press. In the right neighborhoods of Tampa and Miami, you can find two or three Cuban sandwich places on every block. In Los Angeles, you can find pretty good versions at all the usual Cuban restaurants — including Rincon Criollo, Versailles and El Colmao, among others, but a Cuban sandwich, as well as its cousin the medianoche, is something best consumed when you're bellied up to a counter with a frothing glass of juice or a bottle of malta close at hand. Which brings us, as always, to the venerable Café Tropical in Silver Lake, which has become a little more upscale in the past few years, but which still serves a formidable Cuban, juicy and garlicky and lacquered with pickles. And the Cuban coffee is remarkable too. 2900 W. Sunset Blvd., L.A., (323) 661-8391. Mon.-Fri. 6 a.m.-10 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 7 a.m.-10.p.m. No alcohol. Street parking. MC, V. Cuban deli.

El Gran BurritoIf you're into tacos, at one time or another you've probably noticed the conflagration outside El Gran Burrito, a stand tucked away near LACC. Like most great Los Angeles taco places, El Gran Burrito is less notable for the food served inside the restaurant than for the food served out back on evenings and weekends, when the big grill is set up under an awning, and the aroma of charred beef permeates the air for blocks. El Gran Burrito is Hollywood's entrepôt of carne asada, grilled beef, snatched from the fire, hacked into gristly nubs, and made into tacos in less time than it takes you to fish a couple of dollars from your jeans. They are grand tacos, sizzling hot, oily, glowing with citrus and black pepper. In the world of food, a truly fine taco may be as close as you can get to nirvana. 4716 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A., (323) 665-8720. Open daily 24 hours. No alcohol. Lot parking. Cash. Mexican.

Jitlada Thai Restaurant Jitlada has always been one of the most respected Thai restaurants in Los Angeles, the fanciest place in Thai Town since at least the late 1970s. But with a recent change of ownership, it's been reborn. The kua kling Phat Tha Lung at Jitlada may be the spiciest food you can eat in Los Angeles at the moment, a sweet, thick, brown curry tossed in a wok with shredded beef, a turmeric-rich endorphin bomb that is traditionally one of the hottest mouthfuls in southern Thailand, which is to say the world. Jitlada's auxiliary menu is almost a thesaurus of southern Thai specialties that you probably haven't encountered outside a guidebook — things like delicious, foul-smelling yellow curries of fermented bamboo shoots; a Songkhia-style rice salad, khao yam, tossed with toasted coconut, dried shrimp, shredded fresh lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and a sweet sauce called naam khoei; and whole sea bass shellacked with fresh turmeric, deep-fried and showered with crunchy bits of crisp, fried garlic. The house version of the classic Thai dessert of ripe mango and coconut-scented sticky rice is superb. 5233 ½ Sunset Blvd., Hlywd., (323) 663-3104. Mon. 5-10 p.m., Tues.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri.-Sun. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Beer and wine. Difficult lot parking. AE, MC, V. Thai.

La Buca After years of patrons' squeezing in like drupelets for a taste of "Mamma's" homemade gnocchi, burrata with vegetables, and trenette al pesto, the dining room at La Buca, the beloved pasta-intensive commissary down the street from Paramount, is at last bigger than the inside of a minivan — a soaring, wood-paneled space with wine-bottle chandeliers, picture windows looking out onto Melrose, and a peculiar glassed-in aerie above the bar that may eventually function as either a VIP room or the observatory of a CAA panopticon. The menu is still a bastion of new-generation Italian comfort food: smoky pappardelle flavored with scamorza cheese, spinach-stuffed ravioli with butter and sage, and tiramisú for dessert. 5210 ½ Melrose Ave., L.A., (323) 462-1900. Mon.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. & 5:30-10:30 p.m., Sat. 5:30-10:30 p.m., Sun. 5-10 p.m. Wine. Street parking. AE, MC, V. Entrées $7.95-$18. Italian.