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

Marouch
I have always aspired to be one of the guys who orders the homestyle daily specials at Marouch, organizing life around Tuesday stuffed eggplant, Wednesday baked kibbe and onion-intensive Friday moujadra. Unlike a lot of the regulars, I have no particular nostalgia for old Beirut, but if I'd grown up with an Armenian grandmother who cooked like Sossy Brady, there is no amount of samka harra that could fill the emptiness in my heart. But instead we go to Marouch for the intensely garlicked tabbouleh salad, the hommos with fool, the baba ganoush suavely tinged with smoke. The falafel, made from scratch, are exemplary, crisp-crusted and practically melting inside. There is crusty, fried Armenian-style sujok sausage, eye-rollingly spiced with cumin, and the tiny, gently spiced links called makanek — pronounced like the Charles Bronson movie — served awash in oil and lemon; the toasted-bread salad fattoush and grilled quail, Turkish coffee and the complicated Lebanese desserts. Year after year, Marouch becomes nothing but better. 4905 Santa Monica Blvd., L.A. (323) 662-9325, marouchrestaurant.com. Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Sun., 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Beer and wine. Lot parking. All major credit cards. Location map here.

Mayura
Formidable mustachios, women in bright saris gesturing with scraps of dosa, a flatscreen in the corner flashing Bollywood clips — it's a scene out of Cochin, not what you might expect a block or two from the big Culver City studios. Nowhere in California will you find another restaurant specializing in the cooking of Kerala, a strip of southern India shaped by a thousand years of spice trading. And even if you are familiar with other local southern Indian restaurants, a lot of the food may be new to you: saucer-shaped rice-flour pancakes called appam; the complexly spiced fish curry with undernotes of tamarind and garlic; and ven pongal, a peppery concoction of rice lashed with cumin, cashews and ungodly amounts of melted butter. If Mayura happens to be offering its special Kerala-style biryani, order it without question. The fluffiness of the rice and the sharpness of the spicing are superb.

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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As an Indian restaurant on the Westside, Mayura is a full-service establishment, not serving alcohol but not objecting when you bring your own; offering northern Indian dishes as out of place as sauerbraten would be on an Italian menu; and preparing dull but Halal-compliant plates of chicken tikka and lamb korma but cooking them in a separate kitchen so that vegetarians need not fear the errant bit of flesh in their bisi bele bath. Have another dosa instead. 10406 Venice Blvd., Culver City. (310) 559-9644, mayura-indian-restaurant.com. Open Mon., 5-10 p.m., Tues.-Sun., 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Beer and wine. Takeout, delivery and catering. Lot parking. AE, D, MC, V. Location map here.

Meals by Genet
It just keeps expanding, Little Ethiopia, a stretch of Fairfax dense with restaurants, coffeehouses and markets, maybe the most concentrated Ethiopian neighborhood west of D.C.'s Adams-Morgan district. If you drive down the block in a convertible at the right time of day, the different shades of incense flash past like a psychedelic lightshow for your nose. But as many venues as there are on the street to get Ethiopian food, it still comes down to Meals by Genet, an Ethiopian bistro with the sensibility of a chef, Genet Agonafer, whose flavors cut straight to the 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; also about a million small vegetable dishes that seem to show up with everything. Her famous 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. 1053 S. Fairfax Ave., Mid-City. (323) 938-9304, mealsbygenet.com. Wed.-Sun., 5:30-10 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. Beer and wine. Catering. Street parking. MC, V. Location map here.

Mélisse
When Michelin decided to bypass Los Angeles this time around, the most disappointed dude in town was probably Josiah Citrin, owner of two solid rosettes, who probably more than any other chef in town plays straight into the preferences of the guide. Sometimes Mélisse almost seems like a clubhouse for the multistarred, with oceans of caviar, hillocks of foie gras and mountains of truffles; oceans of Champagne; and frequent guest chefs from the ranks of the anointed. Citrin knows what a $105 tasting menu is supposed to look like (with the aforementioned truffles, considerably more), and his followers insist to their deathbeds that Mélisse is the best restaurant in town. 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. Full bar. Valet parking. All major CC. 

Mo-Chica
Peruvian-Asian food is not hard to find here, from the meanest dives all the way up to Nobu, and a lot of the dishes that most people think of as Peruvian — lomo saltado, tallarin noodles and chaufa — turn out to be Asian dishes in disguise. So it may not be a surprise that Mo-Chica, possibly the most influential Peruvian restaurant ever in Los Angeles, has a background in sushi. What is unusual is that the chef in question, Ricardo Zarate, is a Lima native who became well-known preparing Japanese food in London, and worked for several years as the chef of a sushi bar here before opening this place. The ceviche at Mo-Chica is pretty phenomonal, cubes of sashimi-quality tuna in a thick vinegar emulsion sharp with chile, soft and tart and brutally spicy, served with the customary corn and potato. What Zarate 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 and the stir-fry lomo saltado is made for once with the traditional filet mignon. In Mercado La Paloma, 3655 S. Grand Ave., L.A. (213) 747-2141, mo-chica.com. Open Mon., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. and 6-8 pm., Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-4 p.m. and 4-9:45 p.m. No alcohol. Guarded lot parking. MC, V. Location map here.