Jonathan Gold's 99 Essential LA Restaurants

Angeli Caffe

If you have ever been to Italy, you probably still have a vivid memory of your first meal at a simple side-street caffè — not the grand and complicated dishes you read about in your guidebook, but a plate of spaghetti dressed with nothing but a bit of cheese, a few stalks of fresh asparagus, or a handful of clams recently plucked from the sea. Evan Kleiman’s restaurant can seem like that sometimes: Angeli crystallized the affinity of Angelenos for casual Italian cooking — the spaghetti alla checca, garlicky roast chicken and minimally garnished pizza that a Sienese teenager might eat for dinner at the trattoria down the block on the nights his mother didn’t feel like turning on the stove, but which was essentially unobtainable to those of us on this side of the sea. The clove that dare not speak its name makes a bold and uncensored appearance in Kleiman’s version of spaghetti aglio e olio, a powerful, pungent pasta tossed with caramelized garlic, hot chile flakes and a little parsley, nothing else, and the sticky garlic essence is so powerful that you probably have to use industrial abrasives to get it off your teeth. In other words, it’s the real thing, compatible with a glass of professional-grade Chianti and rendering the tempering umami of Parmesan cheese almost useless. Kleiman’s repertory of artisanal olive oils, summertime bread salads and goat-cheese pizzas may no longer be novel, but sometimes there is no place you would rather be than behind a table at Angeli, contemplating a glass of Sangiovese and starting in on a plateful of ravioli with melted butter and sage. The Thursday-night dinners, multicourse prix-fixe extravaganzas based around a different cuisine each week, are legend. 7274 Melrose Ave., L.A., (323) 936-9086 or www.angelicaffe.com. Lunch Tues.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; dinner Tues.-Thurs. & Sun. 5-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 5-11 p.m. Beer and wine. Takeout. Valet parking. AE, D, MC, V. Rustic regional Italian. 

Anne Fishbein

C'est cheese at Comme Ça.

Anne Fishbein

Frosted rice: A-Won’s al bap

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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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Angelini Osteria

Where my favorite osterie in Italy find purpose in the repetition of classic dishes, in menus that may not change for decades, Gino Angelini is by nature a creative chef who likes to mark dishes as his own. A regular at his restaurants could tell the difference between Angelini’s saltimbocca and a traditional saltimbocca blindfolded. But as his nearby La Terza came into its own, the simpler Osteria seems to have become fun for the chef, a place where he can serve less elaborately garnished versions of his dishes to people who love them, fuel a happy lunch crowd with pasta al limone and a plate of tripe, serve oxtails on Thursday nights, dish out respectable versions of Roman trattoria classics like spaghetti carbonara and pollo alla diavola. Angelini Osteria may not be a serious restaurant, but sometimes you are in the mood for artistry, and sometimes you just want to have supper. 7313 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 297-0070 or www.­angeliniosteria. Lunch Tues.-Fri. noon-2:30 p.m., dinner Tues.-Sun. 5:30-10:30 p.m. Beer and wine. Takeout. Valet parking. All major CC. Italian.

NEW STAR

Ultimate Dude Food: Animal

The first thing you should know about Animal is that it is practically a shrine to bacon, which appears everywhere on the short, seasonal menu, up to and including a chocolate dessert. The chefs, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, former Food Network stars who call themselves the Food Dudes, are the Jay and Silent Bob of the food world, perpetually red-eyed and rarely seen outside one another’s company, and they seem to consider a dish incomplete without a sliver of pancetta, a crumble of Nueske’s Wisconsin bacon, a bit of pork belly, or a slab of the bacon they smoke themselves in the kitchen. Animal is a poor place to bring a Muslim or an Orthodox Jew. But the operating principle at Animal is neither the aggressive clams-in-ham philosophy of so much avant-garde cooking nor the Rabelaisian head-to-tail approach but testosterone-laced pleasure: a simple, howlingly good plate of crisp, assertively salted hominy; a bubbling crock of melted cheese spiked with a few slips of thinly sliced chorizo. Chefs have been serving seared foie gras with syrups and compotes for centuries: Animal’s take is to put it on a sweetened version of the truck-stop standard of biscuits and sausage gravy. Animal is small and loud and powered by seasonal organic produce; has a nice list of manly wines available by the bottle, the glass and the half-bottle carafe; and although it is populated with people who like meat, is unafraid to serve an unadorned bowl of fruit for dessert ... if only at those times when even bacon isn’t enough. 435 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A., (323) 782-9225. Open Sun.-Thu. 6-11 p.m., Fri-Sat. 6 p.m.-2 a.m. All major CC. Valet. Fresh comfort food.

NEW STAR

A Brilliant Brasserie: Anisette

Anisette looks as if it has always been here, absinthe bottles rising to Heaven behind the zinc bar and upper walls tinted nicotine yellow, like an awkwardly narrow space that has thrived since the belle epoque in spite of the fact that it was originally designed as a bank. Chef Alain Giraud has a background in French haute cuisine perhaps unmatched by Los Angeles chefs, including decades in Parisian three-stars, a long stint as the chef de cuisine at Citrus and a term as the founding chef at Bastide. But at Anisette, Giraud isn’t presenting a modern interpretation of French cooking, a chef’s fantasy of French cooking or riffs on the theme of French cooking — the brasserie serves regular French cooking as designed by an amazingly skilled French chef, steak-frites and onion soup and winey house terrines, prepared with superb California produce and served by Santa Monica waiters who occasionally seem practiced at French diffidence. The rotating list of daily specials includes such old-fashioned standards as lobster Thermidor and duck a l’orange, done superbly well. Desserts are generally things like floating island, chocolate mousse and profiteroles. One goes to Anisette not to experience the new and revolutionary, one goes to be fed. 225 Santa Monica Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 395-3200, www.anisettebrasserie.com. Open Mon.-Thurs., 7:30 a.m. to mid.; Friday, 7:30 a.m. to 1 a.m.; Sat., 8 a.m. to 1 a.m.; Sun., 8 a.m. to mid. AMEX, MC, V. Full bar. Nearby city lot parking on Second Street free for two hours. French.