Jonathan Gold's 99 Essential LA Restaurants

Jar

Any place in town can broil an acceptable filet mignon, but Suzanne Tracht’s snazzy steak house is a blast from the Mad Men ’60s, chefly riffs on the strip steak and the porterhouse, the hash brown and the french fry that may or may not incorporate every last pea tendril and star-anise infusion in the Asian-fusion playbook. Some people we know have never even tried the steak here — the braised pork belly, the glorious pot roast and the various and sundry wonders of the duck-fried rice are just too compelling. But the steak is about as good as it gets. The décor is straight off the set of a Cary Grant movie. And there’s always banana cream pie for dessert. 8225 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 655-6566. Dinner daily 5:30-11 p.m., brunch Sun. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, D, MC, V. Entrées $19-$29. California American. 

Anne Fishbein

A slice of Cut

Anne Fishbein

Cooking sharp, Octavio Becrra

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Asanebo

11941 Ventura Blvd.
Studio City, CA 91604

Category: Restaurant > Japanese

Region: San Fernando Valley

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A-Won

913 1/2 S. Vermont Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90006

Category: Restaurant > Korean

Region: Mid-Wilshire/ Hancock Park

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JiRaffe

JiRaffe is a pleasant space in a bright corner of Santa Monica, all neo-Palladian windows, white tablecloths, and the kind of minimal Gallic décor you see in the restored farmhouses they feature in Elle Decor. Raphael Lunetta’s food tends to be elegant, almost ladylike, with the sort of seasonality you might expect from a serious restaurant located a few hundred yards from the best farmers market in Southern California, and careful, restrained presentations. JiRaffe is a real California bistro, the kind of casual yet slightly formal place the Ivy only pretends to be, and with much better food. In restaurants as in architecture, sometimes less is more. 502 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 917-6671. Mon. 6-9 p.m., Tues.-Thurs. 6-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 6-11 p.m., Sun. 5:30-9 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. $23-$28.50. French.

NEW STAR

Hot Restaurant: Jitlada

The restaurant has been around in its present incarnation for only 18 months or so, and the glossy-magazine clippings on its walls are much newer than that. Still, it is already hard to believe there was a time before Suthiporn Sungkamee and his sister Jazz Singsanong were fixtures on the Hollywood Thai restaurant scene. The Southern Thai specialties we have quickly learned to take for granted — the Songkhia-style rice salad; the fried sea bass with homegrown turmeric; and the infamous endorphin bomb kua kling Phat Tha Lung, a beef curry in its purest form is spicy enough to strip the bark off a log — were abstractions Angelenos could only read about in books. The printed menu is still a roster of the usual Thai banalities, but the typed insert of Southern specialties — originally translated by a visiting Chicago blogger — is basically a list of dishes you’ll find in few other places: delicious, foul-smelling yellow curries of fermented bamboo shoots; delicate lemon curries; curries of fried softshell crabs and the notorious sataw bean; wild tea leaves cooked down like creamed spinach with bits of gluey-skinned catfish; beef simmered with pickled buds of Asian cinnamon. There are accessible dishes, too, like grilled beef with green papaya salad, steamed mussels with lemongrass and chile, a tropical coco-mango salad and shrimp fried with basil — it’s not all fish kidneys and dried mudfish. When you need to show visitors the diversity and wonder still possible in Los Angeles restaurants in 2008, Jitlada is Exhibit A. 5233½ 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. 

J N J Burger & Bar-B-Q

Like Gaul, J N J is divided into three parts: a shaded, gravel-floored dining area; an area dedicated to hamburgers; and the inner sanctum — a worn counter, a kitchen that resembles a temporary structure built to feed hungry firemen, and the smoker itself, a mammoth, puffing construction that has been built to resemble a splendid steam engine. The brawny, dripping beef ribs are great, and the chicken is fine and moist. But J N J’s long-cooked spare rubs are compelling — blackened, rendered of most of their fat, tending almost toward a jerkylike chaw, saturated with smoke, and profoundly spicy even without the sauce, which blankets the pork like a winter coat. J N J may not be the most polished restaurant in Los Angeles, but it may be the closest thing you are going to find to a country-road shack within city limits. 5754 W. Adams Blvd., L.A., (323) 933-7366. Mon.-Thurs. 10:30 a.m.-7 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 10:30 a.m.-9 p.m. No alcohol. Street parking. Cash only. American.

Kagaya

Shabu shabu has become a local fad in the last few years — a transparent petal of prime beef swished through bubbling broth for a second or two, just until the pink becomes frosted with white. You can find shabu shabu restaurants now in half the suburbs in the county. But when the dish is done correctly — and if the quality of the meat and vegetables is as high as it is at Little Tokyo’s superb (and expensive) Kagaya — the texture is extraordinary, almost liquid, and the concentrated, sourish flavor of really good beef becomes vivid. 418 E. Second St., downtown, (213) 617-1016. Mon.-Sat. 6-10:30 p.m., Sun. 6-10 p.m. Wine, beer, sake. Lot parking. DC, MC, V. $38 fixed-price. Japanese.