Jonathan Gold’s 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants
Between a tweet and a truck
M Café de Chaya
This is the place that made macrobiotic cuisine fashionable, partly because almost anything tastes great when it is made with vegetables bought at a decent growers market, but also because the kitchen lets kale taste like kale but has the sense to let tempeh-based club sandwiches taste like something you’d pick up at the Daily Grill. Owned by the people who run Chaya Venice and Chaya Brasserie, M Café food may be based on strict macrobiotic principles — the vegetable sushi here is made not just with brown rice but with organic, artisanally produced heirloom brown rice — but when the tomatoes are ripe, the pesto is pungent and the house-baked bread is crisp. Even a sybarite can overlook the fact that the “mozzarella” started its life as a plant. If you enjoy the spectacle of health-conscious actresses juggling an iPhone, a BlackBerry, two ex-boyfriends and a vegan Benedict, the original Melrose outlet offers some of the best people-watching in town. 7119 Melrose Ave., L.A., (323) 525-0588. Mon.-Sat., 9 a.m.-10 p.m., Sun., 10 a.m.-10 p.m. mcafedechaya.com. Beer, wine. Takeout and delivery. Limited lot parking. AE, MC, V. Also at 9433 Brighton Way, Beverly Hills, (310) 858-8459, and 9343 Culver Blvd., Culver City, (310) 838-4300.
Marouch
Marouch has been Hollywood’s Lebanese-Armenian mainstay for so long that it is sometimes possible to forget just how good it can be, how succulent the grilled quail, how zataar-fragrant the toasted-bread salad fattoush, how reliable the kebabs, which sing with spice and juice and char. I can’t count the times I’ve crushed out on some Middle Eastern dish I’d tasted in Glendale or Michigan only to find out that Marouch chef Sosy Brady had it on her menu all the time, whether fried fish with tahini; the pungent aged-cheese salad shanklish; the walnut-pomegranate dip muhammara; or the Lebanese melted-cheese dessert knafeh. If you wanted to imagine you were in Beirut, you could stop by this place a few times a day — midmornings for a piece of baklava and a thimbleful of Armenian coffee; lunch for a plate of makanek sausages and a bottle of Lebanese beer; late afternoons for the falafel, house-made from scratch, and a bowl of dense lentil soup; and dinner for one of the home-style daily specials, real Armenian mom stuff. Year after year, Marouch becomes nothing but better. 4905 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A., (323) 662-9325. Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Sun., 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Beer, wine. Lot parking. All major credit cards accepted.
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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
Meals by Genet
In Fairfax Avenue’s Little Ethiopia district, a long city block lined on both sides with restaurants, coffeehouses and markets, most of the menus feature the same half-dozen dishes; their injera are purchased from the same bakery, and their multicourse feasts are served on the same metal trays. But Meals by Genet is more or less an Ethiopian bistro, which is to say a homey, softly lit dining room that looks at least as French as it does African; which is to say Ethiopian by way of Elle Décor; and the sensibility is that of a chef, Genet Agonafer, whose flavors cut straight to the Ethiopian soul. The menu is short: a half-dozen stews and Agonafer’s delicious version of kitfo, a dish of minced, raw beef tossed with warm, spiced butter. Her version of the chicken stew doro wot is jaw-droppingly good, two days in the preparation, vibrating with what must be ginger and black pepper and bishop’s weed and clove but tasting of none of them — a jammy reduction so formidably solid that the poultry becomes just another ingredient in the sauce. 1053 S. Fairfax Ave., L.A., (323) 938-9304, mealsbygenet.com. Wed.-Sun., 5:30-10 p.m., Sat.-Sun., 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Beer, wine. Catering. Street parking. MC, V.
Mélisse
Josiah Citrin’s Mélisse may well be the most formal restaurant in Los Angeles since the 1980s, a rather stolid dining room whose luxury ingredients seem not to dissuade a local public that usually seems happy enough to eat its seared venison without the benefit of Christofle silver, velvet purse stools or airy sauces inflected with fresh black truffle. Nor do the luxury prices — $105 for an all-but-mandatory four-course menu — that are a bargain only by Parisian standards. But Citrin grew into Mélisse, and he now wears it like a custom-fitted suit. His two Michelin stars are real. The truffled corn ravioli is a revelation. And his cooking, which uses farmers market produce and modern kitchen techniques without calling attention to itself, has shed most of its baby fat — try the slow-cooked rabbit, the lobster Bolognese, and the elaborate tasting menus devoted to tomatoes, summer truffles or wagyu beef. 1104 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, (310) 395-0881, melisse.com. Dinner Tues.-Thurs., 6-9:30 p.m., Fri., 6-10 p.m., Sat., 5:45-10 p.m. Closed Sun.-Mon. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, D, DC, MC, V.
* Mo-Chica
High-quality Peruvian seafood is not hard to find in L.A. After all, it was here that Lima ex-pat Nobu Matsuhisa launched the variations that conquered the world. But the ceviche at this Peruvian lunch counter is as about good as it gets: cubes of sushi-quality tuna in a vinegar emulsion, soft and tart and brutally spicy all at once. Nobu’s version is good, but this is earthier, more sensual, more Peruvian, speaking as much of the mountains as of the sea. Ricardo Zarate, the chef-proprietor, is a Lima native who has spent most of his adult life running the kitchen at high-end Japanese restaurants, including Weekly favorite Wabi-Sabi in Venice. He knows his way around the big Japanese seafood wholesalers downtown. What he is attempting here is professional Peruvian cooking at popular prices, and while the physical space may be just a few rickety tables plunked into a corner of the community-oriented Mercado La Paloma near USC, the crab-enriched potato salad causa is as carefully composed as a three-star appetizer, the stir-fry lomo saltado is made for once with the traditional filet mignon, and his crisply roasted version of seco de cordero is arranged on an obsessively detailed bed of Peruvian canary beans with a puréed cilantro. And while the herbed, griddle-crisped barracuda with stewed chickpeas may be more classically Cal-Med than classically Peruvian, by the time you slap on a bit of Zarate’s rocoto-pepper paste or moss-green chile-huacatay compote, you might as well be in Arequipa. 3655 S. Grand Ave., L.A., (213) 747-2141, mo-chica.com. Mon., 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Closed Sun. No alcohol. Takeout. Validated lot parking. MC, V.
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