Jonathan Gold's 99 Essential LA Restaurants

 A.O.C.

The cheese-and-charcuterie-intensive inspiration for L.A.’s new generation of wine bars, Suzanne Goin’s pan-Mediterranean A.O.C. is a fantasy of a modern small-plates restaurant, the kind of place you drop into for a glass of Friulian Tocai and a plate of sliced prosciutto, a Cairanne and some bacon-wrapped dates with Parmesan — or basically anything that comes with Goin’s spicy Catalan-influenced romesco sauce, which would probably be irresistible even if you garnished it with a brick. You could drink and eat like this all night if you remembered to make a reservation — and if A.O.C. didn’t unreasonably stop serving so early. 8022 W. Third St., L.A., (323) 653-6359. Mon.-Fri. 6-10:45 p.m., Sat. 5:30-11 p.m., Sun. 5:30-10 p.m. Wine bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. French-Mediterranean-influenced small plates.

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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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Asanebo

In the heart of Studio City’s sushi district, Asanebo is a second home for the hairy music-industry guys, the sophisticated expats and the tourists from Osaka that make up the clientele of so many of L.A.’s best Japanese restaurants. But Asanebo is no sushi bar — it specializes in the sashimi, the delicate pub food and the tiny portions of proto-Japanese cooked dishes that go so well with good sake. And while it became famous as the Valley’s answer to Matsuhisa, these days it is a much more pleasant destination. Perhaps there will be a flashing, vivid Spanish mackerel, bright as steel, reduced to six incandescent slivers, or Santa Barbara spot prawns served before they quite know what has happened to them, or slabs of kanpachi, a tiny coldwater tuna imported from Japan, laid into a small marine Stonehenge. Because the only displeasure to be found at Asanebo (unless you happen to be a prawn) comes with the check, which will be high. 11941 Ventura Blvd., Studio City, (818) 760-3348. Lunch Tues.-Fri. noon-2 p.m. Dinner Tues.-Thurs. 6-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 6-10:30 p.m., Sun. 6-10 p.m. Japanese sushi.

A-Won

At its best, Japanese sashimi is something exquisite; delicate ultrafresh nibbles meant to be contemplated as much as they are to be eaten. Korean sushi is something else entirely — it is bar food, seasoned with raw garlic and hot peppers, smeared with bean paste, consumed in great quantities with flowing oceans of soju or beer. Tucked into the rear of a Koreatown mini-mall, A-Won is one of Koreatown’s oldest sushi restaurants, a serene but well-worn place where the high-backed booths are as private as little cabanas. Marinated sea cucumber, big portions and the habit of eating sashimi with raw garlic have their fans, but the great Korean contribution to the world’s sushi kitchen may be hwe dup bap, an elaborate raw-fish salad leavened with dried seaweed and hot rice and flavored with chile paste. And at A-Won, a Koreatown institution devoted to the cult of hwe dup bap, the display is formidable: order after order racing out of the kitchen in bowls as big as Valkyrie helmets. Good hwe dup bap — and A-Won’s is very good — is as alive and vivid and evanescent as a wildflower. And don’t miss the al bap, a big bowl of warm rice frosted with half a dozen different kinds of fish eggs. 913½ S. Vermont Ave., L.A., (213) 389-6764. Open Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-10 p.m.; Sun., 4-10 p.m. AE, MC, V. Beer and soju. Guarded lot parking. Korean sushi. 

Babita

It may serve Guadalupe Valley Syrah instead of margaritas, and chiles en nogada instead of nacho plates, but Babita is a relaxed corner Mexican place with great food, an Eastside joint whose service is burnished to a white-tablecloth sheen. Chef-owner Roberto Berrelleza, who spent decades as a fancy-restaurant maitre d’ before he ever strapped on a toque, is a scholar of Mexican cuisine, especially of the antojitos from his Sinaloan hometown Los Mochis, although a few of the restaurant’s best dishes seem to have been invented by Berrelleza himself: fish-stuffed yellow chiles in strawberry salsa, seared fish with huitlacoche vinaigrette, and shrimp Topolobampo, a citrusy sauté of white wine, tomatoes and diced habanero peppers that takes over its victims’ bodies like an Ebola infection. If Berrelleza’s version of a Sinaloan machaca is on the menu — beef house-dried into a powder and fried with vegetables — you would be a fool to miss it. 1823 S. San Gabriel Blvd., San Gabriel, (626) 288-7265. Lunch Tues.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.; dinner Sun. & Tues.-Thurs. 5:30-9 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 5:30-10 p.m. Beer and wine. Street parking. AE, D, DC, MC, V. Mexican.

Bahn Thung

It’s almost mind-bending, a good nam kaow tod, the rustic Thai salad of deep-fried rice grains and wetly pink Thai “Spam,” citrus and slivered herbs, a kaleidoscopic whirl of crunchiness and chewiness, sweetness and animal pungency, three kinds of tart astringency and three kinds of chile heat — and it comes with fried peanuts. As the local palate becomes used to the wilder flavors of Thai cuisine, nam kaow tod, a specialty of the rural northeastern Isaan region of Thailand, is becoming what pad Thai and basil chicken were to the first wave of enthusiasts, the dish by which a Thai restaurant may be measured. And the best nam kaow tod of all may be the one served at Bahn Thung, a minimall restaurant well outside the usual Thaitown orbit, and a specialist in the fiery-hot salads and grilled meats of Isaan: waterfall beef; papaya salad with salted crab; and a glorious, stinky bamboo shoot salad. The pla lui saun, a profoundly delicious dish of fish stripped of its spine, turned inside out, fried to a golden block of pure crunch, and buried under a mound of Thai herbs, may be the best thing on the menu, which is saying a lot. 1001 N. Vermont Ave., L.A., (323) 665-7474. Open seven days 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Cash only. No alcohol. Lot parking. Takeout and delivery. Thai.