Jonathan Gold’s 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants

Larkin’s
You won’t see Roscoe’s-size portions at Larkin’s, vegans will find more to eat than they’d expect, and there is a bit of mint in the sweet tea. Southern food purists — and there are a lot of them— love to gripe about this modern juke joint, owned by chef Larkin Mackey, a shy, slender man who rarely leaves the kitchen. Every dish on the menu is probably somebody’s best recipe: The tart, creamy potato salad is credited to Aunt Carolyn; the ground beef–intensive chile verde to chef Mackey’s grandpa; the caramel-tasting banana pudding to Mama. But one thing is beyond argument: Mackey’s fried chicken — tender-crusted and juicy, golden and singing with the taste of clean oil — is about as good as it gets in L.A. restaurants. 1496 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock, (323) 254-0934, larkinsjoint.com. Lunch Wed.-Fri. & Sun., 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Dinner Wed.-Sat., 5:30-9:30 p.m., Sun., 5 p.m. until the food is gone. No alcohol. Limited lot parking. AE, MC, V.

Let’s Be Frank
In what I have come to think of as the Year of the Truck, Let’s Be Frank was first out of the garage, upgrading from a hot dog cart parked at the Helms Bakery complex to a fancy, bright-red, frequently mobile beast. The proprietor is Sue Moore, a former Chez Panisse forager, and her dogs are made with organic, grass-fed, sustainably raised beef; her bratwurst from organic Berkshire pork; her Italian sausage, should you be lucky enough to run across it, from rare-breed Heritage pigs. None of this would matter if the hot dogs weren’t great, but they are: taut, delicious natural-skin beauties that snap like rim shots when you bite into them; mildly seasoned, tucked into griddled buns and served, if you wish, with grilled onions, organic sauerkraut and an occasional mystery condiment Moore hides under the counter like the secret stash at a comic book store. Helms Ave., between Venice and Washington boulevards, Culver City. Wed.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m., Sat.-Sun., 11:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. No alcohol. Lot parking. AE, MC, V.

Robert Rodriguez

Anne Fishbein

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Angeli Caffe

7274 Melrose Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Hollywood

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Angelini Osteria

7313 Beverly Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Melrose/ Beverly/ Fairfax

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* Little Dom’s
Little Dom’s is a young person’s idea of an old person’s restaurant: all dark wood and dim lights, snappy waitresses and deep booths. The mostly Italian wine list isn’t bad, but everybody seems to be drinking martinis or ginger-infused highballs. You can get modish salads of beets and burrata or blood oranges with fennel and goat cheese, but the action seems to be with the fried shrimp and an Italian wedding soup that could have come from the first scene of The Godfather, with thick steaks and spaghetti and meatballs. The easy comparison may be to neighborhood Italian restaurants in South Jersey, but chef Brandon Boudet grew up in New Orleans, and Little Dom’s seems patterned after the neighborhood joints in that city: grown-up places where short, idiosyncratic menus may lean Italian, French or even Vietnamese, but the local preferences for anise, artichokes and fried seafood poke out where you least expect them. An appetizer of fried shrimp and artichoke wedges, served with a kind of salsa verde of mint with lots of capers, is the kind of dish I can imagine Tom Fitzmorris, the Rush Limbaugh of New Orleans food, going on about for a half-hour on his radio show. And if you are offered an oyster po’ boy as a daily special, don’t hesitate: Boudet’s interpretation — which involves fried, freshly shucked mollusks piled onto crunchy toasted focaccia with tomatoes, a crumpled sheet of fried speck, and a peppery rémoulade — is unconventional but is probably the best in L.A. 2128 Hillhurst Ave., Los Feliz, (323) 661-0055.Open daily 8 a.m.-3 p.m., Sun.-Thurs., 6-11 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 6 p.m.-mid. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, D, DC, MC, V.

Los Balcones del Peru
So close to the ArcLight Theater that it shares its parking lot, Los Balcones del Peru lies at the precise border of redeveloped Hollywood and its shadow, a breath of garlicky authenticity a few steps south of the velvet-rope district. Los Balcones also may be the only Peruvian restaurant in town without tapes of Andean panpipe music, which is almost a miracle. It is easy to spend hours here after a movie, eating fried fish, fried-chicken “chicharrones” and scallops broiled with Parmesan cheese, drinking Peruvian beer from the Inca city of Cuzco. The standard Peruvian-Chinese dishes, the saltados and taillarines, aren’t that good here — ceviche is pretty much the specialty: shrimp ceviche; fish ceviche; shrimp, squid and octopus ceviche; and the camarones a la piedra, a spicy, sharp shrimp ceviche from the north of Peru, which is properly served warm. Los Balcones is much cheaper than Nobu. 1360 N. Vine St., Hlywd., (323) 871-9600. Sun.-Thurs., 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Beer, wine. Validated parking at ArcLight Cinema. AE, MC, V.