Jonathan Gold's 99 Essential LA Restaurants

Meals by Genet

Fairfax Avenue’s Little Ethiopia is one of the grooviest enclaves in town, a long city block lined on both sides by coffeehouses, food markets, and places to buy both Ethiopian knickknacks and CDs of Ethiopian pop music, which is at the same time danceable and as inscrutable as Amharic poetry. Among the many restaurants on the strip, Meals by Genet stands out as an Ethiopian bistro, which is to say, a homey, soft-lit dining room that looks at least as French as it does African. The menu is short: a half-dozen stews and Genet Agonafer’s delicious version of kitfo, a dish of minced raw beef tossed with warm, spiced butter. Her dorowot is jaw-droppingly good, vibrating with what must be ginger and black pepper and bishop’s weed and clove but tasting of none of them, so formidably solid that the chicken becomes just another ingredient in the sauce. 1053 S. Fairfax Ave., L.A., (323) 938-9304, www.mealsbygenet.com. Lunch and dinner Wed.-Fri. 5:30-10 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Beer and wine. Catering. Street parking. MC, V. Ethiopian.

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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Mélisse

If you’ve been around the Los Angeles restaurant scene for long enough to remember Josiah Citrin as a surfer dude in the kitchens of Joachim Splichal, it may have seemed as if he was trying to ­create Mélisse as a Michelin-worthy restaurant by force of will alone, imposing luxury ingredients and luxury prices on a local public that seemed happy enough to eat its seared venison without the benefit of Christofle silver, velvet purse stools or airy sauces inflected with fresh black truffle. The cooking was always fine, but the effect was faintly ridiculous, like a teenager trying on his father’s best sports jacket when he thinks nobody is looking. And the prices, now $105 for an all-but-­mandatory four-course menu, would be high even in Paris. But Citrin grew into Mélisse; he wears it like a custom-fitted suit. His two Michelin stars are real. The truffled corn ravioli is a revelation. And his ­cuisine, which uses farmers-market produce and modern kitchen techniques without calling attention to itself, has shed most of its baby fat — the cassoulet of white asparagus with morels, the melting Copper River ­salmon and the ­butter-soft duck breast at a spring dinner all brought out the soulful essence of the ingredients in the least showy way imaginable. 1104 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 395-0881. Dinner Tues.-Thurs. 6-9:30 p.m., Fri. 6-10 p.m., Sat. 5:45-10 p.m. Closed Sun.-Mon. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, D, DC, MC, V.

Musso & Frank Grill

Before Musso & Frank Grill became a martini-fueled Hollywood clubhouse, the place where Faulkner blew out his liver and generations of character actors learned to show up on Wednesday for the chicken potpie, the restaurant was practically a showcase for what was then considered California cuisine, a genteel marriage of the local produce, abundant local fisheries and masculinized lunchroom cooking: avocado cocktails smeared with sweet, pink dressing and frigid bowls of chilled consommé; great naked planks of boiled finnan haddie and dainty plates of crab Louie; kidneys Turbigo. This is what the cosmopolitan life was like, before cosmopolitans. Or if you happen to be of a certain bent, you could always try a long, drowsy lunch of Vicodin, jellied consommé and Welsh rarebit, followed by a desert-dry Gibson and a long nap — an experiment in what one friend calls gout-stool cuisine. 6667 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, (323) 467-7788. Open Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Full bar. Validated parking in rear. AE, DC, MC, V. Entrées $15-$40. American.

NEW STAR

NextGen Ships: The Nickel

Even given the gentrification of downtown, the Nickel appears less like a diner than a movie set, a seemingly unreconstructed ’40s-era greasy spoon that popped up a few steps from what used to be considered the gamiest intersection in town, on a block where artists in natty hats share the sidewalk with homeless guys and dazed European tourists. The Nickel occupies the site of a long-forgotten diner — the remodelers uncovered hand-painted wall menus with prices last current during the Truman administration — but while the restaurant reflects the flavor of the neighborhood, it is more ambitious than that: The BLTs come with arugula; the hash is made with spicy pulled pork instead of canned corned beef; and all the toast, including the cinnamon-dusted Nickel Bag, is made with bread baked in-house. There are fancy dishes of baked eggs over polenta and mushrooms, as well as the usual fried (and vegan scrambles), brioche, as well as pancakes, and alongside the freshly squeezed orange juice is a cucumber-intensive house-made version of V8. The Nickel, which serves only breakfast and lunch for the moment, is a new kind of downtown diner, a Ships for a generation for whom full-sleeve tattoos are the new black — and it’s about time. 524 S. Main St., dwntwn, (213) 623-8301, www.5cdiner.com.

Nobu Los Angeles

Nobu Matsuhisa is the most influential Japanese chef in the United States, the father of a strange, original cuisine equally rooted in the sushi kitchen, the informal izakaya, and the seafood preparations of cosmopolitan Lima. Without him, half the new restaurants in Los Angeles and New York might still be selling California rolls and salmon-skin salad. But there is a steep learning curve to the restaurant Matsuhisa, with hundreds of dishes on the menu, and waiters who are perfectly happy to serve nonregulars the same omakase meal that the kitchen has been pumping out for almost 20 years. The West Hollywood Nobu changes all of that. The old l’Orangerie space is throbbing once again, with electronica bouncing off the walls and black BMWs clogging La Cienega. Where the dining room of l’Orangerie resembled a grand bank lobby, Nobu, designed by David Rockwell — whose imprint on the Tribeca Nobu pretty much launched a four-continent career — looks carved out of a vault. The streamlined menu resembles that of Nobu Next Door in New York, including things like whole black snapper roasted in a wood oven, steamed Chilean sea bass and even the occasional steak. If you are hungry for the now-classic hamachi with jalapeño or toro tartare with caviar, you can be assured of finding them here. And there’s roasted banana with soy caramel for dessert. 903 N. La Cienega Blvd., W. Hlywd., (310) 657-5711. Dinner Mon.-Thurs. 6-11:15 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 6 p.m.-mid., Sun. 6-10:15 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Japanese.