A Movable Beast: L.A. Weekly's 99 Essential Restaurants

Krua Thai
If you hear of any real-estate deals in North Hollywood, let us know. Because we'd really like to move a little closer to Krua Thai, a Thai noodle shop whose pad kee mao and boat noodles keep rocking until the wee small hours. "Best Pad Thai in Los Angeles," says the legend on the menu, and in a city where great Thai noodle shops are all that keep some of us going some days, Krua Thai has a pretty fair title to the claim. Krua Thai could be the Thai equivalent of a delicatessen like Canter's: cheerful, fast, popular across ethnic lines and open very, very late. 13130 Sherman Way, N. Hlywd. (818) 759-7998. Daily, 11 a.m.-3:30 a.m. No alcohol. Takeout. Lot parking. All major credit cards accepted. Also at 935 S. Glendora Ave., West Covina. (626) 480-0116. Location map here.

La Casita Mexicana
In some parts of town, you can barely turn around without encountering chefs Jaime Martin del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu, who demonstrate recipes on Univision, open supermarkets and appear on billboards advertising Mexican avocados. They are omnipresent in local chefs' groups and at sustainable-food events, where they often can be seen chatting with Mayor Villaraigosa, and they just opened a small herb shop next to their restaurant. They have the presence in the food pages of La Opinión that, say, Michael Voltaggio does in the L.A. Times, and no local discussion of mole poblano, nopalitos or chilaquiles is complete until they have had their say. The two haunt communal farms, looking for huazontle, hoja santa and nopales as fresh and beautiful as they might be in the Jalisco villages they grew up in. When the Bell payroll scandal broke, I suspect, half the reporters covered the story mostly as an excuse to go to La Casita Mexicana for lunch. But mostly there is the cooking: a half-dozen different kinds of chilaquiles at breakfast, subtle soups, a beautiful purple-corn pozole, delicious enfrijoladas, and an impeccable version of chiles en nogada, the most famous dish of haute Mexican cuisine. There is no alcohol, but ask about the aguas frescas — you may luck into the alfalfa drink, green as envy and flavored with the tiny Mexican limes that grow in Jaime's mom's backyard. 4030 E. Gage Ave., Bell. (323) 773-1898, casitamex.com. Open daily 9 a.m.-10 p.m. AE, M, V. No alcohol. Street parking. Location map here.

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Campanile's sauteed trenne

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Leo Bulgarini, gelato impresario

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Zelo Gourmet Pizzeria

328 E. Foothill Blvd.
Arcadia, CA 91006

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Foothill Cities

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La Mill
I am the first to concede that coffee can be as expressive of terroir as wine, and no one surpasses La Mill in its ability to draw finely etched flavor from beans. It is even exciting when its roasters tease notes of blueberries or tomato soup out of the coffee with the vividness of hazelnuts in great Meursault. But while the cuisine at La Mill, with menus designed by Providence's Michael Cimarusti and Adrian Vasquez, has always been wonderful, there has always been a hitch — even beyond the Bugaboo-pushing, Pilates-toned, Prius-driving, iPad-toting gentrifiers in the dining room. No matter how happy you may be to encounter a first-rate bowl of Japanese eel over rice, and no matter how eager you may be to taste a siphon of Kenya AA Wanjengi Auction Lot, you may not want to sample them together. This is why it is so splendid that La Mill, after years in the darkness, is finally licensed to sell beer and wine. As you finish off the last bites of a Tasmanian sea-trout carpaccio, eggs en cocotte with fresh Dungeness crabmeat or a $12 ham-and-cheese sandwich, you may agree. The cooking, which verges on molecular gastronomy, is among the most exciting at this price point in Los Angeles, including a hanger steak with an impossibly complicated watercress purée, seared Arctic char with beech mushrooms, and a credible frisee au lardons in a coffee vinaigrette. The desserts — liquid-center lollipops, passionfruit gelee — are basically straight out of the Providence playbook. 1636 Silver Lake Blvd., Silver Lake. (323) 663-4441, lamillcoffee.com. Sun.-Thurs., 7 a.m.-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 7 a.m.-11 p.m. Beer, wine and sake. Takeout. Parking lot. AE, MC, V. 

Langer's
It doesn't seem like that long ago that my mother was offered crack practically in front of Langer's, and it also doesn't seem like it was that long ago that the notion that the delicatessen served the best pastrami sandwich in Los Angeles, not to mention the rest of the country, was brushed off as a bit of bravado. Within the deli itself, you wait for a table with customers speaking every language but Yiddish. But Langer's has finally become the institution it deserved to be all along: patronized by big shots, home to a radio show, beloved by the national food press, occupying a corner renamed Langer's Square. It has become common knowledge that the late Al Langer was among the last of the great deli men, a guy who traced the contours of a properly steamed pastrami the way a great sushi chef does a fresh yellowtail. His son Norm Langer maintains the legacy — a lesser mensch would long ago have moved the shop to Thousand Oaks. And bite into a Langer's pastrami sandwich: thick slices of hand-sliced beef, glistening with peppery fat, as dense and as smoky as Texas barbecue; thick-cut seeded corn rye, hot, crisp-crusted and soft inside, with a slightly sour tang that helps tame the richness of the meat; a dab of yellow mustard as important to the whole as a sushi master's wasabi. The fact is inescapable: Langer's serves the best pastrami sandwich in America. 704 S. Alvarado St., L.A. (213) 483-8050, langersdeli.com. Mon.-Sat. 8 a.m.-4 p.m. Beer and wine. Curbside service (call ahead). Validated lot parking (on corner of Westlake Ave. and Seventh St.). MC, V. Location map here.