Jonathan Gold's 99 Essential LA Restaurants

Drago

Celestino Drago has been the king of pasta in Los Angeles since Kraft dinners were in fashion. The casual yet rigorous pan-Italian cooking at his various dining rooms helped define the way Angelenos think about Italian food, and the Drago family seems to collect restaurants — Il Pastaio, Celestino, Enoteca Drago, Panzanella, Dolce Forno, and the upcoming Drago Centro and Via Alloro among others — the way your 12-year-old brother collects baseball cards. But you will most often spot his mournful, bearded countenance at Drago, working the door, barking at a sous-chef, following a bit of roast venison or stewed boar out into the dining room as if he had shot it himself. The careful braising and sweet-and-sour flavors that are characteristic of Drago’s style really come into focus when he is stuffing boned-out quail with dense sausage, cooking pheasant with mushrooms for a pasta sauce or simmering boar until it all but implodes. 2628 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 828-1585. Mon.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. & 5-10 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 5:30-11 p.m. Full bar. Takeout. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Italian.

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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NEW STAR

Bloody Good: 8 Oz. Burger Bar

Here at 8 Oz., a side project of Govind Armstrong’s that we may like better than we ever liked his Table 8, you can pick up a mug of microbrew, a perfect rye Manhattan and a plate of chicken-confit buffalo wings, little corn dogs made with Kobe-style cocktail franks and served with violet mustard, fried potato skins sprinkled with truffle salt, or a grilled cheese sandwich stuffed with braised short ribs — the kinds of things chefs like to make for themselves from the contents of the walk-in but which rarely make it onto restaurant menus. There is a tasting platter of sliders made with ground boar, ground lamb and something called ground triple-prime beef, all paired with small, matching pours of beer. And the burgers are really good, of the drippy, bloody school, especially a burger made with roasted mushrooms and grass-fed beef, which ranges just on the near side of gaminess. Is it a drag to pay a buck extra for catsup, no matter how organic and artisanal it may be? Kind of. But there are s’more tarts for dessert. 7661 Melrose Ave., between Stanley and Spaulding ­avenues, W. Hlywd., (323) 852-0008. Sun. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m., Mon.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-mid. (bar open until 2 a.m.).

El Huarache Azteca

In Mexico City restaurants like El Huarache Azteca may be thick on the ground, but in Highland Park, there is nothing like it on a Saturday afternoon, a cramped storefront filled with families guzzling house-made horchata, tepache and watermelon drink out of huge foam cups, hovering over the few oilcloth-covered tables inside, gathering tacos and sopes by the dozen to bring home to their families, and coaxing burning-hot huitlacoche quesadillas — fried turnovers stuffed with musky, jet-black corn fungus — out of the stone-faced woman who mans the fry cart outside the entrance. What you have come for is, of course, the huarache, a flat, concave trough of fried masa mounded with beans, cultured cream and meat. 5225 York Blvd., Highland Park, (323) 478-9572. Open daily, 9 a.m.-10:30 p.m. No alcohol. Street parking. Takeout. Cash only.

El Parian

Until a local website praised its carne asada, El Parian was best known for its birria, Guadalajara-style roasted goat in broth, and when you sat down at one of the well-battered tables, the waitress didn’t offer you a menu, she asked whether you were having a full order or were only hungry enough for a half. El Parian’s birria may be the single best regional Mexican dish in Los Angeles. But those carne asada tacos have been pulling a crowd of people less interested in goat than in the sweet, meaty, garlicky charbroiled steak. And the taco people may be right — the meat is well blackened and peppered with delicious pockets of liquified fat, and the thick tortillas are strictly homemade. Will I order the carne asada taco the next time around? Of course not. But it’s good to know it’s there. 1528 W. Pico Blvd., L.A., (213) 386-7361. Open daily 8 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Takeout. Beer. Cash only. Mexican. 

Elite

The sharpest Chinese seafood house in town at the moment is Elite, which used to be the local branch of a Chinese-owned chain called New Concept, and which still serves a few of the funkier dishes from that restaurant, including suckling pig with foie gras, fried prawns served in a bed of oatmeal flakes, and papaya salad with goose webs. It can certainly be the most expensive Chinese restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley — its banquet menu includes options costing up to $2,288 for a table of 10 — but unlike its competitors, it is too intimate to land the enormous wedding-banquet bookings, which means that you can probably land a seat even around the time of Chinese New Year, and that you are unlikely to be subjected to endless rounds of bridesmaid karaoke. There are enough unsustainable choices on the seafood menu to make a Heal the Bay member weep salty, salty tears. Yet the the roast squab has skin as delicately crunchy as any Beijing duck. The Shunde-style soup of seafood with minced ham and bits of bitter melon is as tautly balanced as the exhaust note of a Lamborghini. The balls of chopped shrimp steamed in nets of shredded turnip and garnished with their own roe —s the essence of the sea captured. And the morning dim sum breakfasts, ordered from menus instead of carts, are divine. 700 S. Atlantic Blvd., Monterey Park, (626) 282-9998. Dim sum Mon.-Fri. 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner nightly 5-11 p.m. Beer and wine. Street parking. AE, MC, V. Chinese.