Where to Eat Now: New to the List

Melrose/Fairfax/Beverly Boulevard

Du-par's Restaurant & Bakery Until its Farmers Market flagship closed a couple of years ago, Du-par's was the last of Southern California's quality-obsessed coffee-shop chains. Then the chain was sold — to W.W. "Biff" Naylor, whose father founded the Tiny Naylor's chain 80 years ago. Biff installed his daughter Jennifer Naylor, a Wolfgang Puck protégée, as chef, and longtime customers who lived and died for Du-par's French toast started contemplating the Grand Slam Breakfast at Denny's. Is the French toast the same? It is not — it's more of the egg-dipped-and-fried school than the buttery, puddingy variety I had always insisted was the best in town. But to everyone's surprise, Jennifer Naylor's Du-par's is neither a chefly interpretation of a coffee shop, like BLD, nor a parlor of seven-sprout omelets and tofu scrambles. It is, more or less, Du-par's, but with a killer hash-browns recipe, very decent bacon from Daily's, and all the tuna melts, Monte Cristos, tri-tip sandwiches and liver and onions any coffee-shop aficionado could possibly want. And the L.A. and Studio City locations are open 24/7. 6333 W. Third St., L.A., (323) 933-8446. No alcohol (except at Thousand Oaks location). Lot parking. American coffee shop. Also at 12036 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, (818) 766-4437, and 75 W. Thousand Oaks Blvd., Thousand Oaks, (805) 373-8785.

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Orochon Ramen

123 S. Onizuka St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Restaurant > Japanese

Region: Downtown

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Pitfire Pizza Company

108 W. Second St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Category: Restaurant > Pizza

Region: Downtown

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Terroni This Canadian import may actually feel more Italian than anywhere else in Los Angeles at the moment, with as many expats at the tables as on the restaurant staff, terra cotta serving dishes, a roster of decent Italian wines available in half-liter and quarter-liter carafes, and the deftest espresso pull this side of Palermo. Terroni, nominally a southern-Italian restaurant, specializes in pizzas — not the artisanal, wood-fired things you find at Mozza and Antica Pizzeria, but stretched thin to order over the lip of a counter and tossed into a regular deck oven. Terroni's pizza is good stuff: skinny, crunchy most of the way through, served as in Italy in individual uncut rounds, topped with things like broccoli rabe and crumbled sausage; Gorgonzola, honey and walnuts; or plain old mozzarella and tomato sauce. The pastas tend to be very good: rigatoni with tomatoes and mozzarella, a definitive penne alla Norma with fried eggplant, and possibly the first L.A. appearance of spaghetti ca'muddica, a Sicilian pasta a little like spaghetti alla puttanesca enriched with toasted bread crumbs. 7605 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 954-0300. Open for lunch and dinner Sun.-Thurs. 9 a.m.-11 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 9 a.m.-mid. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Italian.

West Hollywood

Ago The alpha wolf of Los Angeles Tuscan cooking is probably Ago, co-owned by Toscana czar Agostino Sciandri and a host of Hollywood dudes including the Weinstein brothers and Robert De Niro, where it all comes down to steak and beans: big, juicy, profoundly blackened rib-eyes and fiorentini grilled in the smoky wood oven. Night after night, Ago is as packed as the Donatello room at the Uffizi on a summer afternoon. 8478 Melrose Ave., W. Hlywd., (323) 655-6333. Lunch Mon.-Fri. noon-2:30 p.m.; dinner Mon.-Sat. 6-11:30 p.m. & Sun. 6-10:30 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Italian.

Carney'sA restaurant in the real Los Angeles tradition, Carney's is situated in two ancient Union Pacific cars transported to West Hollywood at great expense and mounted overlooking the Strip, where a mad parade of bass players and catalog models, hustlers and high school kids, movie guys and industry suits stare out of the windows onto the profusion of German tourists and Japanese cars that flow down this section of Sunset. Why would you want to eat a chili dog inside an old train? It's a pretty good hot dog for one thing, grilled to the color of old bronze (unless you'd rather have it steamed), crackly-skinned, bursting with a splash of garlicky juice when you bite into it, well-spiced, slender but considerable. The chili is of the thick, brown, Los Angeles school, thickened with starch, glistening and oily, adhering to the surface of the dog like impasto to a Jasper Johns painting, flavoring but not quite saturating the bun. They also sell chili burgers, and half-pound chili burgers, and chili-cheese fries, which may be the methadone of the Carney's chili experience. 8351 Sunset Blvd., W. Hlywd., (323) 654-8300 or www.carneytrain.com. Sun.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-mid., Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Beer, wine. Lunchtime delivery. Lot parking in rear. MC, V. Also at 12601 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, (818) 761-8300. American.

Dominick's For most of its existence, Dominick's was famous as the Hollywood restaurant that never looked open, a weathered, low building, neon permanently unlit, across from the small amusement park that later became the site of the Beverly Center. It was, or at least had a reputation as, the original Rat Pack hangout. And when it finally changed hands, it was made over into a neo–Rat Pack steakhouse, then a neo-neo–Rat Pack fusion place, then a couple of other things I don't remember until it finally ended up as a pleasant, much-enlarged, neo-neo-neo–Rat Pack restaurant with late hours, a killer recipe for spaghetti and meatballs, and a menu equally divided between tough-guy American-Italian cooking and girly, salady stuff, not to mention $15 Sunday dinners that come with the option of a $10 bottle of a house wine with the unfortunate name of Dago Red. Oddly, it is a very pleasant place to be, even when you are not watching young television stars grope one another, which you usually are. 8715 Beverly Blvd., W. Hlywd., (310) 652-2335. Sun.-Thurs. 6 p.m.-mid., Fri.-Sat. 6 p.m.-1 a.m. Beer, wine. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Italian.