Jonathan Gold's 99 Essential LA Restaurants
Local culinary classics, plus some new stars on the scene
Philippe the Original
Now that its only serious competitor is about to be retrofitted into a gleaming replica of itself, Phillippe’s is one of the few remaining artifacts of the Los Angeles that Philip Marlowe knew, a sprawling complex of long tables, cheap coffee, sawdust-sprinkled floors and a Depression-era beef stew of the type that has always made hard-working Americans swoon, so much a relic of prewar Los Angeles that sometimes it feels as if it isn’t really a part of Los Angeles at all, as if it belongs to an older city without neon, chrome or arugula. Philippe’s is the spiritual home of the French dip, that famous sandwich of carved meat layered onto a jus-soaked roll, imitated, never successfully, all over the United States for the last 100 years. If I reach my own 100th birthday, I intend to celebrate it here with a lamb dip, extra blue cheese, a dish of tapioca pudding and a glass of California red wine. 1001 N. Alameda St., dwntwn., (213) 628-3781. Open daily 6 a.m.-10 p.m. Beer and wine. For takeout, must call ahead, and order must be over $40. Lot parking. Cash only. American.
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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
Phillips Barbecue
Every year, there is an upstart who claims that he makes the best barbecue in Los Angeles. And every year, I visit the stand, snort, and stop back at Phillips on the way home, because there are occasionally things that shouldn’t be messed with. Crusted with black and deeply smoky, the spareribs at Phillips Barbecue are rich and crisp and juicy, not too lean. Beef ribs, almost as big around as beer cans, are beefy as rib roasts beneath their coat of char, tasty even without the sauce. They are the only ribs that can compete on equal terms with the best from Kansas City or Tuscaloosa. And the extra-hot sauce, so crowded with whole dried chiles that the ribs occasionally look as if they have been embellished with Byzantine mosaics, is exhilarating. Tucked into a mini-mall between a liquor store and the local chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous, the original Phillips might be a little hard to find, although if you keep your window open, you should be able to sniff it out from half a mile away. But the newest location, in the well-scrubbed chalet-style Crenshaw building that until recently housed the well-regarded Leo’s Bar-B-Q, is only a couple of blocks south of the 10 freeway. 4307 Leimert Blvd., L.A., (323) 292-7613. Mon. 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Tues.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-mid., Sun. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. 2619 S. Crenshaw Blvd., L.A., (323) 731-4772. Tues.-Thurs. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 11 a.m.-11 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. 1517 Centinela Ave., L.A., (310) 412-7135. No alcohol. Takeout. Lot parking. Cash only. Barbecue.
Pizzeria Mozza
It is almost impossible to have a civil discussion about pizza in this city of immigrants, because there may be no foodstuff so intimately linked to one’s sense of identity. But in the wood oven at Pizzeria Mozza, Nancy Silverton has more or less reinvented the very idea of pizza, airy and burnt and risen around the rim, thin and crisp in the center, neither bready in the traditional Neapolitan manner nor wispy the way you find pizza in the best places in Tuscany. The crust is sweet and bitter, salty and chewy, circled by crunchy charred bubbles. Every pizza at Mozza is a unique marriage of flour, salt and hot-burning almond wood, stretched into irregular discs, as individually lovable as children. The crust is so good, in fact, that it may be at its best dressed with nothing more than a drizzle of good olive oil and a few grains of sea salt — though it’s not sad to eat topped with burrata and vivid squash blossoms, taleggio and house-made sausage, lardo and rosemary. or pureed anchovies and fried egg. (The mandatory caveat applies here: Silverton is a family friend.) This isn’t the pizza you used to eat back in Jersey, and that, perhaps, is the point. 641 N. Highland Ave., L.A., (323) 297-0101. Modern Italian, pizzeria.
Pollo a la Brasa
If you are anywhere near Koreatown when the need for takeout chicken strikes, follow your nose to Pollo a la Brasa, a Peruvian chicken joint all but concealed behind a fortress of hardwood logs. The smoky, crisp-skinned chicken here, sizzled over a hot wood fire and served with the incendiary Peruvian herb sauce aji, is what happens when you cross a chicken with a smoldering log. 764 S. Western Ave., L.A., (213) 382-4090. Wed.-Mon. 11 a.m.-10 p.m. No alcohol. Takeout. Lot parking. MC, V. Peruvian.
Providence
When Michael Cimarusti left the stoves at Water Grill to start Providence, his fans were expecting nothing less than the Los Angeles equivalent of fish palaces like Le Bernardin and Oceana in New York. At this glowing restaurant, he managed to fulfill even those super-high expectations — this is among the best kitchens ever to hit Los Angeles. It just doesn’t get better than Cimarusti’s tartare of live spot prawns served with buttery leaves of brik pastry, sautéed squid with piquillo peppers and meltingly soft slivers of stewed pig’s ear, or a terrine of foie gras with muscat gelée that may be the best foie gras preparation in this foie gras–happy town. The dessert tasting menu of pastry chef Adrian Vasquez is a five-course degustation demanding and ambitious enough to command the attention of an entire evening, a universe of puréed avocado and hot cider foam. 5955 Melrose Ave., Hancock Park, (323) 460-4170. Mon.-Fri. 6-10 p.m., Sat. 5:30-10 p.m., Sun. 5:30-9 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, D, MC, V. Modern American seafood.
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