Jonathan Gold’s 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants

* Loteria Grill
In just the last few months, L.A.’s number of sleek, date-night Mexican restaurants has almost doubled, but the Lotería Grill seems as if it has been in its space forever, Jimmy Shaw’s spare, modern dining room levered into a storefront between the Geisha House and Mood; a soaring space decorated with a vast display of tequila bottles and replicas of game cards from the Mexican gambling game lotería. The restaurant has a huge tequila selection and a first-rate nopales salad; a rotating selection of aguas frescas (try the cucumber); great chilaquiles and huevos rancheros at breakfast; and a array of soups, enchiladas and stewed meats inspired by the recipes of the chef’s mentor, Diana Kennedy. Lotería Grill is one of the city’s few restaurants to prepare the “dry soup” called fideo, a staple of Mexican home cooking: thin noodles browned in oil and then simmered like paella until they soften and absorb all the tomato-laden broth. Shaw’s Mexican-style ice creams are extraordinary, and you would be foolish not to try the example studded with the sweet, curdled-milk cheese known as chongos. It’s delicious, it’s unique, and after your third tequila, the word chongos seems like the funniest thing in the world. 6627 Hollywood Blvd. Hlywd., (323) 465-2500, Sun.-Wed., 9 a.m.-mid., Thurs.-Sat., 9 a.m.-1:30 a.m. Full bar. Valet parking. All major credit cards accepted.

Lou
Lou Amdur, a connoisseur of diaper-pail Burgundies and a lover of Frappato, a man who talks more passionately about biodynamic wines than anyone who hasn’t actually buried a dung-filled animal horn at midnight during a full moon, is the proprietor of this tiny, wonderful wine bar on the south end of Vine, home to both his list of organic country wines and the supersustainable cuisine of his chef, DJ Olsen, as well as a pretty decent range of artisanal cheeses, the garlic-laced salamis of Seattle’s Armandino Batali, and house-made rillettes. Amdur has a minor specialty in both long-braised meats and tasty vegetarian soups, and the elaborate Monday-night wine dinners revolving around, say, choucroute or the season’s first Alaskan halibut should not be missed. Do we ever get past the pig candy: a chewy, crisp, smoky concoction made with Amdur’s house-cured bacon and a minor tonnage of brown sugar? Sadly, sometimes we do not. 724 N. Vine St., Hlywd., (323) 962-6369, louonvine.com. Mon.-Sat., 6 p.m.-mid. Wine. Lot parking. MC, V.

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

Lucques
The California-Mediterranean cooking of Suzanne Goin, which is feminine in all the best ways, is profoundly beautiful in its simplicity, and there is satori to be found in every bite of grilled fish, every herb salad, every roasted vegetable. When she’s on, Goin teases out the flavor from a tomato with the precision of a sushi master, while playing with bursts of acidity and the resinous flavors of fresh herbs. Lucques, named for a vivid green variety of a French olive, is located in Harold Lloyd’s old carriage house; it boasts an ultrasleek Barbara Barry design and one of the nicest patios in West Hollywood, but on loud weekend nights the restaurant can sometimes seem as if it is about 90 percent bar. Sunday family dinners are legendary. 8474 Melrose Ave., W. Hlywd., (323) 655-6277. Sunday nights feature three-course prix-fixe dinners. Lunch Tues.-Sat., noon-2:30 p.m.; dinner Mon.-Wed., 6-10 p.m., Thurs.-Sat., 6-11 p.m., Sun., 5-10 p.m. Full bar (limited bar menu available 10 p.m.-mid.). Valet ­parking. AE, MC, V.

* Ludo Bites
While bands release music directly into the ether, and writers flit from magazine to magazine without their readers becoming aware of so much as an altered URL, the most progressive of chefs still works in meat space. Even if you are megachef Alain Ducasse, whose skills are as grounded in global organization as they are in haute cuisine, there is no getting around the physicality of a parsnip. So in a sense, Ludo Bites, the restaurant of Ludovic Lefebvre, doesn’t really exist. You can’t find it in Directory Assistance, and you can’t have dinner there tomorrow night. It has no address. It served its last meal of the summer toward the end of August, in borrowed space at Breadbar, and may not serve its next until it opens in another space in October, at which point it will again be discernible from its host only by a few banners picturing tattooed roosters, a stack of signed cookbooks, and the presence of Lefebvre himself. But when Ludo Bites is there, it’s there, and your dinner is as real as the DJ set you may have heard last week from the guy they flew in from Brussels. Lefebvre was the protégé of three of the four greatest modernist chefs in France, and wonders flow from his borrowed stoves. Prices are pretty low, too, usually just $8 to $14 per dish, especially when you factor in the minimal corkage on the wine you must bring in yourself. Will there be miso soup with foie gras, a blood-sausage terrine blown out into the texture of angel food cake, or Basque-style chicken fried in duck fat? Probably not, not even the celery root carbonara or the duck confit with quivery “imaginary’’ choucroute, not even the chocolate cupcake frosted with savory foie gras whipped cream. Because, you see, the restaurant is a figment of Ludo’s imagination. And if you’re lucky, of yours, too. For location and hours go to ludolefebvre.com.