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

Park's Barbecue
As anybody who has witnessed a brawl outside the Blue House can attest, Koreans tend not to agree about much; contentiousness is as much a part of the national makeup as gritted-teeth harmoniousness is of Japan's. It's kind of what makes the culture so vital. But even with the hundreds of Koreatown restaurants serving barbecue, there is an odd consensus around Park's Barbecue, a palace of meat, all steel and glass, where the waiters resemble members of a martial-arts team more than they do restaurant workers, and the chefs source the meat as obsessively as they do at Spago. Park's Tokyo-X crossbred pork belly may be the best pig in Koreatown at the moment. At more than $30 for an order of sliced Kobe-style beef and nearly that for short ribs, this is the most expensive Korean barbecue in town, although not by as much as you might think. And the restaurant does not hold back on the array of panchan, the little egg pancakes, puréed squash, tiny fish, kimchi, spicy roots, broccoli and a half-dozen other things that are the measure of a Korean restaurant. 955 S. Vermont Ave., Koreatown. (213) 380-1717, parksbbq.com. Sun.-Thurs., 11 a.m.-mid.; Fri.-Sat., 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Beer and soju. AE, MC, V. Valet parking. Location map here.

Pho Minh
Do you know why an engineering student might drop out of college to open a restaurant specializing in pho? Neither, it seems, do his parents. But Pho Minh's Eric Lam is something like an artist, and his pho bac is clearly the finest in town, a limpid, full-flavored broth, sprinkled with slivered fresh ginger and fortified with a delicious hunk of meat that looks something like a filet mignon that had just lost a bad razor fight, a delicate broth compelling enough to make the usual add-in seasonings of basil, lime and fresh sliced chiles seem almost unnecessary. The pho dac biet is great, too, although it seems almost vulgar in comparison. This is deeply old-fashioned pho, the stuff that probably was ubiquitous in the north before Saigon pleasure seekers tried to make it fun. 9646 Garvey Ave., #108, South El Monte. (626) 448-8807, phominhvietnameserestaurant.com. Mon-Thurs., 8 a.m.-8 p.m., Fri.-Sun., 8 a.m.-9 p.m. Cash only. No alcohol. Lot 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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Providence
The local scene is going through a spasm at the moment, producing lots of chefs who know their way around the farmers market and plenty of lardcore heroes, but relatively few restaurants working within the context of what's come to be known as "fine dining.'' It makes sense in a way: Why would an ambitious chef want to work in a labor-intensive genre with high overhead and low returns, when he (or she) could be cooking the food his friends want to eat? At these times, when we think about pushing the possibilities of food forward, we are thankful for Providence and Michael Cimarusti.

At this point in his career, Cimarusti has the chef thing down cold — poised when he addresses environmental forums and genial on TV, the first chef in town to embrace the new cocktailian movement, and an advocate for the coherence of Los Angeles cuisine. If you've recently come into a small inheritance, a sum invested in Providence's tasting menu will pay higher dividends than it would in the bond market. He changes his seafood-intensive menu more often than Brett Favre changes his mind, but you can expect the Japan-by-way-of-France thing to continue, things like wild salmon with sake and matsutake mushrooms, kanpachi with tiny rice crackers, or Dungeness crab with melon and shiso. The dessert tasting menu of pastry chef Adrian Vasquez is a five-course degustation that is demanding and ambitious enough to command the attention of an entire evening, a universe of puréed avocado and hot cider foam. 5955 Melrose Ave., Hancock Park. (323) 460-4170, providencela.com. Lunch Mon.-Fri., noon-2 p.m.; dinner, Mon.-Fri., 6-10 p.m., Sat., 5:30-10 p.m., Sun., 5:30-9 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, D, MC, V. Modern American seafood. Location map here.

Rajdhani
What Rajdhani's owners like to call Gujarati dim sum might more properly be called a bottomless thali, the cooking of the Indian province overwhelming you with labyrinths of flavor and a profusion of perfumes, a 10-course combination platter constantly refilled in all of its components. After 45 minutes, your plate probably will look exactly the way it did before you started eating, save the odd drip of lentil dal. But when the waitress bearing khandvi — tart, fermented-batter crepes smeared thickly with puréed lentils and coiled into slender jelly rolls — comes around again, you probably will beg for another portion, no matter how full you are. The concept of too much khandvi simply does not exist. 18525 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia. (562) 402-9102. Tues.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m., 6-9 p.m., Sat.-Sun., 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Parking garage. All major CC. Location map here.

Rivera
John Sedlar, it is becoming clear, is something like the Roberto Bolano of Los Angeles cuisine, mind spinning off in a hundred directions at once, leaving trails to follow as well as a body of work to be admired. There are four separate menus at Rivera now, for instance, exploring Latin America, Mexico, Spain and a category that perhaps only he is qualified to parse. One of his dishes, a pre- and post-Colombian gazpacho, attempts to express 500 years of history in a few tasty ounces of soup. He treats his tortillas, with flowers pressed into them as if into a scrapbook, as seriously as he does feijoada or sweetbreads with huacatay, and if you would be pleased to try snails with vinho verde and ham, this is the place for you. One would expect no less from a chef whose blend of French haute cuisine and Southwest flavors once inspired what became known as Modern Southwest Cuisine. And past the open kitchen, past the bar, past a casual-dining area where you can stop for a tapa or three after a game at nearby Staples Center, Sedlar's inner sanctum, a hushed, intimate dining room lined with glowing tequila bottles, is populated with a healthy cross-section of the local Latino power structure. And unlike every other chef working the Latin-fusion groove, when Sedlar prepares something like a banana-leaf tamale with short ribs and exotic mushrooms, he understands that the most important thing is that the tamale itself be first-rate. 1050 S. Flower St., #102, dwntwn. (213) 749-1460, riverarestaurant.com. Lunch Mon.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m.; dinner Mon.-Sat., 5:30-10:30 p.m., Sun., 5:30-10 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. All major CC. Location map here.