Jonathan Gold’s 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants

A.O.C.
Los Angeles is awash in cheese at the moment, in well-sliced prosciutto, in glasses of Rasteau and Madiran. If you’d like to thank somebody for the new generation of wine bars, look to Suzanne Goin. Her pan-Mediterranean A.O.C. is a fantasy of a modern small-plates restaurant, the kind of place you drop into for a glass of Friulian Tocai and a plate of sliced prosciutto, a Cairanne and some bacon-wrapped dates with Parmesan — or basically anything that comes with Goin’s spicy Catalan-influenced romesco sauce, which would probably be irresistible even if you used it to grease down a brick. You could drink and eat like this all night if you remembered to make a reservation — and if A.O.C. didn’t unreasonably stop serving so early. 8022 W. Third St., L.A., (323) 653-6359. Mon.-Fri., 6-10:45 p.m., Sat., 5:30-11 p.m., Sun., 5:30-10 p.m. Wine bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V.

* Auntie Em’s
Auntie Em’s, which often feels less like a restaurant than a house party gone slightly out of control, has always had the grooviness thing down: the great music, the meatloaf sandwiches, the maple-syrup containers improvised from old Coke bottles, and the Eastside empathy for chefs and musicians, artists and poets, the people who don’t get around to breakfast until about 3. Terri Wahl, the chef/proprietor, once sang with the Red Ants, one of the better garage-punk bands in town. The place is a haven for the kinds of vegetarians who don’t mind sharing a restaurant with sausage fanciers, and both the enormous chocolate-chip cookies and the red-velvet cupcakes attract long lines of devotees. The food occasionally seems less put together by a cook than grabbed out of the fridge, but Wahl has acquired a serious farmers market habit, the skirt steak on focaccia is delicious, and the cheese board is unexpectedly refined. And while Auntie Em’s is still a grungy breakfast joint, it is a grungy breakfast joint where the omelets are scrambled with all manner of organic squashes, the bacon is thick-cut and applewood smoked, and the puddinglike French toast, garnished with fresh berries, is lightly scented with orange. 4616 Eagle Rock Blvd., Eagle Rock, (323) 255-0800, auntieemskitchen.com. Mon.-Fri., 8 a.m.-7 p.m., Sat.-Sun., 8 a.m.-4 p.m. No alcohol. Takeout, bakery and catering. Street parking. AE, MC, V.

Anne Fishbein

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Anne Fishbein

Spago

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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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Babita
A comfortable dinner house that just happens to have great food, Babita is one of the most vital Mexican restaurants on the Eastside, a casual corner joint whose service is burnished to a white-tablecloth sheen. Chef-owner Roberto Berrelleza, who worked as a maitre d’ at places like the Brown Derby long before he ever picked up a pan, is a modern master, especially gifted at the cuisine of his hometown of Los Mochis on the Sinaloa coast. A few of the classic-seeming dishes may have been invented by Berrelleza himself: his fish-stuffed gueritos chiles in strawberry salsa, his seared halibut with huitlacoche vinaigrette, and his habanero-inflected shrimp Topolobampo, a singularly fiery dish that can take over its victims’ bodies like the plague. The oozy, porky version of Mexico’s national dish, a chiles en nogada, lightened with dried fruit and toasted pecans, is probably the best in a chile-mad town. If you’re anywhere near the restaurant in the September-January period in which it is served, you really should drop in. 1823 S. San Gabriel Blvd., San Gabriel, (626) 288-7265. Lunch Tues.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m.; dinner Sun., Tues.-Thurs., 5:30-9 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 5:30-10 p.m. Beer, wine. Takeout. Street parking. AE, D, DC, MC, V.

Beacon: An Asian Café
Blue-neon tower visible from airplanes, a Hopperesque intimacy at night, Beacon was the bowshot that started the Culver City restaurant invasion, and marked the culinary maturity of Kazuto Matsusaka, who was chef for almost a decade at Wolfgang Puck’s Chinois in the ’80s. Do we know people who live for the giant, dripping cheeseburgers at lunch, piled with Nueske’s bacon and oozing thick soy sauce and melted Gruyère? We do, although our noontime thing is the BLT with seared albacore and wasabi mayonnaise, tempered with the occasional order of udon with braised pork belly, or grilled shisito peppers, or miso-marinated cod.

But Matsusaka is a serious chef, playing with Japanese flavors from a position of mastery of the modern California grill, and while you’d probably never find anything like his salad of perfectly ripe avocado dressed with toasted sesame seeds and minced scallions in Tokyo — or miso-braised short ribs, or kushiyaki with ume paste — the dishes follow classical principles, and they are luscious. Matsusaka’s hanger steak with wasabi is so successful, the searing tang of the horseradish interacting so well with the tart, carbonized flavor of grilled meat, that the invention seems almost inevitable, as proper art always should. 3280 Helms Ave., L.A., (310) 838-7500, beacon-la.com. Lunch Mon.-Sat., 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m.; dinner Tues.-Wed., Sun., 5:30 p.m., Thurs.-Sat., 5:30-10 p.m. Beer, wine. Lot parking. AE, DC, MC, V.