Jonathan Gold's 99 Essential LA Restaurants

Renu Nakorn

While the expense-account crowd awaited each new overhyped East Coast import this year, the Thai-food cognoscenti paced anxiously outside a gentrifying Norwalk mini-mall instead, worrying as the structure rose to resemble a series of potential GameStops. But finally, after larb-less months of anticipation, the redone Renu Nakorn is modern and spacious, and filled with Breck girls from the local Bible college, as well as Thai folk happy to be reacquainted with the restaurant’s minced-shrimp larb and sour Isaan rice sausage. If you ever went to the original Renu Nakorn (or to the fabulous Lotus of Siam in Las Vegas, which is run by family that owned the restaurant in the 1990s), you probably know the tripartite nature of the menu, the usual Thai specialties supplemented by the barbecue and spicy grilled-meat salads of the Isaan region, and an almost-hidden list of specialties from the Chiang Mai area, which may be the kitchen’s real strength: pounded roast-chile dips to scoop up with freshly fried pork rinds, sweet pork curries influenced by Burma and coconut-enhanced khao soi noodles. After dinner, you can wander next door to the last working dairy in Norwalk and pick up a load of free cow manure, or better, a quart of the excellent chocolate milk. 13019 E. Rosecrans Ave., Suite 105, Norwalk. (562) 921-2124. Mon-Sat 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m., Sun noon-8 p.m. Thai.

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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Rustic Canyon

Like so many other restaurants on the Westside, the food at the wine bar Rustic Canyon owes less to the standard bistro playbook than it does to the kind of cooking that French guys don’t consider cooking at all: basically a compendium of what happens to be on the farmers market A-list that week collated with artisanal cheeses, sustainable meats, and lovingly handcrafted pastas. As cynics might say, that’s not cooking, that’s shopping. On the other hand, it is also more or less the strategy followed by places like Lucques and Chez Panisse at the moment. And when executed by a chef as skilled as Rustic Canyon’s Evan Funke, whose goat cheese tortellone with fresh mint, duck breast with cherries, and sliced sunchokes sautéed with garlic are so fine, it seems like the only possible way to eat — his roasted root vegetable shepherd’s pie couldn’t have been better if it were made with hare or blood sausage rather than roasted turnips and parsnips, and I don’t think I have a higher compliment I can pay. Zoe Nathan is the hot young pastry chef in town at the moment, and when you taste her rustic tarts or hot doughnut spheres with stone-ground hot chocolate you will understand why. 1119 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 393-7050, www.rusticcanyonwinebar.com. Open Sun.-Thurs., 5:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. Beer and wine. Valet parking. Wine bar.

Sanuki No Sato

A decade and a half after this elegant noodle shop became famous as Dodger ace Hideo Nomo’s favorite hideout, the still-unmarked (at least in English) restaurant is as good as ever. Udon noodles come in all the standard flavors: topped with crisp buttons of tempura batter in a plain soy-enriched broth, or with chewy bits of rice cake, or with exquisitely slimy Japanese mountain yams. Yuki-nabe udon — served in a rustic-looking iron kettle and buried beneath half an inch of grated daikon, a sprinkling of grated wasabi and a ferociously spiced cod-egg sac — is refreshing in spite of its bulk, an exotic bowl you could eat every day. At lunch, come early for the infamous sanuki bento, a multicourse banquet served in a lacquered box, and a testament to Japanese engineering: I have seen buffet tables with less food on them. 18206 S. Western Ave., Gardena, (310) 324-9184. Open for lunch Mon.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. Open for dinner Mon.-Sun. 5:30-10 p.m. Beer and wine. Lot parking. AE, DC, MC, V. Japanese.

Sapp Coffee Shop

Sapp may be the best lunchroom in Hollywood, a bright Thai restaurant, unrelentingly yellow inside, sharing a small mini-mall with a video shop and a place to get griddled Thai desserts; crowded at noon, not with revelers but with people who have come to Thai Town to shop and eat spicy, stinky boat noodles, remarkable grilled chicken and bright-green “jade” noodles tossed with Chinese barbecue. Sapp is the Thai equivalent of Pie ’n’ Burger, a lunchroom where the virtues of homeliness become extraordinary when put in context with the shiny, glittery surfaces against which it might compete. 5183 Hollywood Blvd., Hlywd., (323) 665-1035. Open 7 a.m.-8:30 p.m.; closed Wednesdays. No alcohol. Takeout. Lot parking. Cash only. Thai.

Sona

David Myers’ breakthrough restaurant is an exquisite Los Angeles space, a serene bubble of luxury and refinement with an endless, nuanced ever-changing tasting menu, which often tends toward the Japanese: cubes of sansho-pepper-scented tuna married to sautéed sweetbreads, passion-fruit cannoli stuffed with peekytoe crab, tiny Nantucket scallops flavored with dates and poppy seeds, or rare duck with red wine and pumpkin seeds toasted to resemble the exact crunch of its skin. Sona is the furthest thing imaginable from the Rabelaisian assault of a brasserie. What we know as California cuisine may be dedicated to revealing produce at its best, but Myers goes after nature with blowtorches and microtomes and dynamite, determined to bend the old woman to her will. The morning after nine courses at Sona (this is one restaurant where only the tasting menu will do), it will already seem like a half-forgotten dream. 401 N. La Cienega Blvd., W. Hlywd., (310) 659-7708. Tues.-Fri. 6-10 p.m., Sat. 5:30-11 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, D, DC, MC, V. Modern French.