Jonathan Gold’s 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants

Bistro LQ
Laurent Quenioux has long been the most mysterious of L.A.’s first-rank chefs, a guy who basically disappeared from the scene for almost 20 years after he left the Seventh Street Bistro, a madman at the range whose idea of French cooking expands to include ant eggs, headcheese and baby-goat burritos, frog legs in barbecue sauce served with a begonia chutney, oatmeal with lobster, and eel with grits. During his brief run at Bistro K, the faithful crowded into the tiny converted funeral parlor to taste what he was doing with hare, pheasant and grouse. If your plate of rare pigeon breast is garnished with duck hearts and gizzard confit, you know you’re at a Quenioux restaurant. And at the new Bistro LQ, there’s all of that and more, rare salmon over a chewy chicharrones ragout, pintade hen with bergamot, and a mixed grill that includes mastic-smoked oxtail. Almost everything on the menu can be ordered in half-portions, which are plated with an elegance belying a $7 price tag, and the short, obscure but exquisite wine list includes some bottles at less than their retail price. In winter, expect Quenioux’s head-scratchingly good versions of cassoulet, pot au feu and choucroute garnie. 8009 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 951-1088, bistrolq.com. Tues.-Thurs., 6-9:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 6-10:30 p.m. Beer, wine. Valet parking. AE, MC, V.

BLD
Grace chef Neal Fraser, who has been preparing impossibly complex California-style dishes around here since he was a sprout manning the range at Boxer in a CIA baseball cap, is probably best known for his ability to bounce international idioms off one another like a pool shark running the table. User-friendliness has always been the last thing on his mind. But at his diner BLD, he turns out to be a brilliant short-order dude, flipping lamb burgers, moistening sandwiches with aïoli, using smoky house-made ketchup where he can and Heinz 57 where he must, and dropping coleslaw bombs like a 40-year fry cook who has canola oil in his veins. Grace may be all his, but BLD belongs to the neighborhood, a place for quick breakfasts or long, well-lubricated brunches of fluffy ricotta pancakes and eggs Benedict; for salads and meaty feasts; for serious date-night dinners and after-movie coffee. When line cooks raid the walk-in to make themselves guerrilla after-hours dinners, it is something like BLD’s Philly rib-eye sandwiches and braised short ribs in mole that they have in mind. 7450 Beverly Blvd., L.A., (323) 930-9744, bldrestaurant.com. Open daily 8 a.m.-11 p.m. (bar food ’til mid.). Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V.

Anne Fishbein

Musso And Frank's

Anne Fishbein

The Nickel Diner

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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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Border Grill
There are other places in town now to try pescado Veracruzano and chicken panuchos, sticky Southside dives that serve perfectly good tacos of lamb barbacoa, and bakeries that actually specialize in tres leches cake. When Mexican-food purists lament the poor quality of beef used in local taquerias, it is most assuredly not to Border Grill’s succulent garlic-stuffed rib eye that they suggest you turn. Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger are unlikely Mexican heroes in what is the second-biggest city in all Aztlan. But Border Grill is a place of charro beans, of wondrous ceviche, of hot tortillas made to order. And while we may all be inured to Milliken’s and Feniger’s Mexican cooking after 25 years, they still use their impeccable technique and first-rate ingredients to transform the taco, the tostada and the homely chile relleno. The long, black dining room, an artifact of the late 1980s whose crazily skewed ceiling is still painted with rocket ships and batmen, looks even better now than it did when the place first opened. 1445 Fourth St., Santa Monica, (310) 451-1655, bordergrill.com. Sun.-Thurs., 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. ’til 11 p.m. Full bar open ’til mid. Takeout. Street and valet parking. AE, D, MC, V.

* Bottega Louie
Housed in a retrofitted Brooks Brothers flagship, a roaring, gleaming-white deli/bar/brasserie fashioned from marble, brass and tile, Bottega Louie is the most popular downtown restaurant in decades, attracting crowds whose volume you may associate more with sporting events than with meatball sandwiches — it’s what Musso & Frank might have been, had its original chef been from Italy instead of France. The dining room feels like a brasserie but serves Sam Marvin’s American-Italian classics: sliced steak, eggplant Parmesan and a big, crisp, buttery chicken-breast Milanese. The bready, crisp-edged Neapolitan-style pizzas that come out of the big wood-burning oven are decent, if not quite up to the level of the city’s best. Bottega Louie aims to be all things to all people downtown, and it more or less succeeds — open early enough for breakfast and late enough for supper after the opera, serving elaborate meals and tasty snacks, with a vast takeout counter and an elegant bar, grand enough for a birthday, but with a small-plates menu even art students can afford. Bulgarini gelato is served in all of its various manifestations, and the pastry chef’s peanut butter terrine is already the stuff of legend. If you can get over the idea of eating spaghetti Bolognese where you used to buy your socks, Bottega Louie is an easy place to be happy. 700 S. Grand Ave., dwntwn., (213) 802-1470 or bottegalouie.com. Open daily 6:30 a.m.- (about) 11 p.m. Full bar. Takeout and prepared foods. Valet parking. AE, MC, V.