Jonathan Gold’s 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants

Kyochon
We are as jingoistic about fried chicken as the next guy, and we’ve been to dives in Louisiana where the chicken was so good it made a roomful of testosterone-crazed roustabouts weep like your mother’s bridge club that time Steel Magnolias came on TV. But Korean fried chicken really is an evolutionary leap forward — steeped in a cabinet full of spices, saturated with garlic, double-fried to a shattering, thin-skinned snap dramatic enough to wake a sleeping baby in an adjoining room. The first of the Korean chicken joints, Kyochon definitely has some problems. The chicken is cooked to order, so even a simple to-go box can take an hour to prepare, and the only real appetizer is marinated daikon cubes. Somebody should really teach them how to set the carbonation controls on the Coke machine. But then the whole tiny chicken comes out and every femur and scrap of rib meat becomes the most important thing in the world. 3833 W. Sixth St., L.A., (213) 739-9292. Open daily 11:30 a.m.-11 p.m. No alcohol. Lot parking. MC, V. Also at 2515 Torrance Blvd., Torrance, (310) 320-9299.

La Casita Mexicana
If you follow Spanish-language media, chefs Jaime Martin del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu are everywhere, demonstrating recipes on the Univision morning show, opening supermarkets, on billboards advertising Mexican avocados. They have the presence in the food pages of La Opinión that, say, Suzanne Goin does in the Times, and no local discussion of mole poblano, nopalitos or chilaquiles is complete until they have had their say. The two haunt communal farms, looking for huazontle, hoja santa and nopales as fresh and beautiful as they might be in the Jalisco villages in which they grew up. But mostly there is the cooking: a half-dozen different kinds of chilaquiles at breakfast; subtle soups; a beautiful purple-corn posole; delicious enfrijoladas; and an impeccable version of chiles en nogada, the most famous dish of haute Mexican cuisine. There is no alcohol, but ask about the aguas frescas — you may luck into the alfalfa drink, green as envy and flavored with the tiny Mexican limes that grow in Jaime’s mom’s backyard. 4030 E. Gage Ave., Bell, (323) 773-1898, casitamex.com. Open daily 9 a.m.-10 p.m. AE, M, V. No alcohol. Street parking.

Robert Rodriguez

Anne Fishbein

Riva

Location Info

Map

Angeli Caffe

7274 Melrose Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Hollywood

Photos

0 user reviews	Write A Review
Save to foursquare

Angelini Osteria

7313 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Melrose/ Beverly/ Fairfax

Photos

La Mill
The coffee wars between La Mill partisans and Intelligentsia fans have grown pretty heated in the last year. Lovers of La Mill’s winey, lightly roasted coffees face off against those who prefer Intelligentsia’s more robust beans, while Intelligentsia buffs draw swords on behalf of that coffeehouse’s espresso-intensive program against what they see as La Mill’s gimmicky coffee drinks — as if coffee made with doughnut-infused milk could be anything but a triumph! I am happy to listen to the arguments of either side as long as I have a hot cup of the beverage in question in front of me. But what is beyond question is the excellent cuisine at La Mill — whose menu is designed by Providence’s Michael Cimarusti and Adrian Vasquez. As you finish off the last bites of a Tasmanian sea trout carpaccio, eggs en cocotte with fresh Dungeness crabmeat or a $12 ham-and-cheese sandwich, you may agree. The cooking, which verges on molecular gastronomy, is among the most exciting at this price point in Los Angeles, including a hanger steak with an impossibly complicated watercress purée; duck breast sous-vided to within an inch of its life and crisped with honey and vadouvan; and a big, crunchy-skinned hunk of wild Alaskan salmon; and desserts — calamansi floats, liquid-center lollipops, s’mores with lemongrass cremeux — are basically straight out of the Providence playbook. If you needed further incentive to visit La Mill, there are now french fries, cooked with the same attention to detail as its potato chips. 1636 Silver Lake Blvd., Silver Lake, (323) 663-4441. Sun.-Thurs., 7 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 7 a.m.-11 p.m. No alcohol. Takeout. AE, MC, V.

Langer’s
The late Al Langer was among the last of the great deli men, a guy who could talk to you about sandwiches until your ears fell off but more importantly, knew the contours of a pastrami the way a great sushi chef does a side of tuna. In the course of the half-block walk from the Alvarado Blue Line station to his delicatessen, you smell the food from a half-dozen Central American countries, pass within sight of Mexican street murals, and are offered the opportunity to buy a counterfeit green card. Within the deli itself, run by his son Norm, you may wait for a table with customers speaking every language but Yiddish. Bite into a Langer’s pastrami sandwich: thick slices of hand-sliced beef, glistening with peppery fat, as dense and as smoky as Texas barbecue; thickly cut seeded corn rye, hot, crisp-crusted and soft inside, with a slightly sour tang that helps tame the richness of the meat; a dab of yellow mustard, as important to the whole as a sushi master’s wasabi, and you’ll know the inescapable fact: Langer’s serves the best pastrami sandwich in America. 704 S. Alvarado St., L.A., (213) 483-8050. Mon.-Sat., 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Beer, wine. Curbside service (call ahead). Validated lot parking (on corner of Westlake Ave. and Seventh St.). MC, V.