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

Rustic Canyon
Like so many other restaurants on the Westside, the food at the wine bar Rustic Canyon owes less to the standard bistro playbook than it does to the kind of cooking that French guys don't consider cooking at all: basically a compendium of what happens to be on the farmers market A-list that week, collated with artisanal cheeses, sustainable meats and lovingly handcrafted pastas. As cynics might say, that's not cooking, that's shopping. On the other hand, it is also more or less the strategy followed by places like Lucques and Chez Panisse. And when executed by a chef as skilled as Rustic Canyon's Evan Funke, whose goat cheese tortellone with fresh mint, duck breast with cherries, sliced sunchokes sautéed with garlic are so fine, it seems like the only possible way to eat. His roasted root vegetable shepherd's pie couldn't have been better if it were made with hare or blood sausage rather than roasted turnips and parsnips, and I don't think I have a higher compliment I can pay. Zoe Nathan is the hot young pastry chef in town at the moment, and when you taste her rustic tarts or hot doughnut spheres with stone-ground hot chocolate you will understand why. 1119 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica. (310) 393-7050, rusticcanyonwinebar.com. Open Sun.-Thurs., 5:30-10:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 5:30-11:30 p.m. Beer and wine. Valet parking. Location map here.

Salt's Cure
Salt's Cure — how can one begin to consider Salt's Cure? You could think of it as a rarefied butcher shop specializing in charcuterie, I guess, if one that tends to sell its wares to people sitting at tables in the dining room rather than to people looking for something to bring home for supper. It also could be a meat-intensive bistro with a tiny menu that happens to contain a lot of things like pork rinds, grilled marlin and goat chili with grits. The tiny deli counter is stocked with things like strong lamb-liver pâté and potted duck with blueberries; at weekend brunch, the evanescent grapefruit pie, delicate buckwheat pancakes and tall sticky buns haunt the brunch dreams of West Hollywood.

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Campanile's sauteed trenne

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Leo Bulgarini, gelato impresario

Location Info

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Zelo Gourmet Pizzeria

328 E. Foothill Blvd.
Arcadia, CA 91006

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Foothill Cities

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Although the house-cured corned beef in the weekend hash, the house-made chorizo and the silky house-smoked black cod are of extremely high quality, I can scarcely imagine what Chris Phelps and Zak Walters, recently of Hungry Cat, intend to pass through their curing chambers next. All I can say is that it would be a shame to endure even a single extra day without having experienced Salt's Cure's sweetly smoky bacon. I can't believe I'll have to wait until summer for another BLT. 7494 Santa Monica Blvd., W. Hlywd. (323) 850-SALT, saltscure.com. Lunch Mon.-Fri., 11 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner 5:30-11 p.m. (closed Tues.); brunch Sat.-Sun., 11 a.m.-3 p.m.; butcher counter Wed.-Mon., 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Location map here.

Sapp Coffee Shop
There may be no end of Thai cafés in the neighborhood claiming to serve the best, the most authentic version of boat noodles, but the homely virtues of Sapp become more apparent by the year. Because Sapp's dense, gamy, blood-thickened broth with its payload of meatballs and sliced organ meats always emerges victorious — even if one of its competitors happens to have blown-up photographs on the wall of its founder selling the version from an actual boat. Sapp may be the best lunchroom in Hollywood, crowded at noon not with revelers but with people who have come to Thai Town to shop and eat the boat noodles, the grilled chicken and the bright-green "jade" noodles tossed with bits of Chinese barbecue. 5183 Hollywood Blvd., Hlywd. (323) 665-1035. 7 a.m.-8:30 p.m. Closed Wed. No alcohol. Takeout. Lot parking. Cash only. Location map here.

Spago
The original Spago on Sunset was to New American Cooking what Meet the Beatles was to rock & roll: the one that changed the rules. Designer pizza got its start in that Sunset Strip dining room, as did fusion cooking, the notion of the celebrity chef and the idea that fine dining could be fun. In Wolfgang Puck's glamorous Beverly Hills space, bolstered by imaginative executive chef Lee Hefter and pastry chef Sherry Yard, he's redefined our idea of what Spago might be — and the roasted-beet cake with goat cheese, the pan-roasted cod with chorizo and the 10-spice roast squab are good enough to make you forget the duck-sausage pizza and the chopped vegetable salad that originally made Spago famous. If a tasting menu is within your budget, it's probably the best way to experience what the restaurant can do. 176 N. Cañon Drive, Beverly Hills. (310) 385-0880, wolfgangpuck.com. Lunch Mon.-Thurs., Sat., noon-2:15 p.m., Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2:15 p.m.; dinner Sun.-Fri., 6-10 p.m., Sat., 5:30-11 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, D, MC, V. Location map here.

Square One
It is hard to go wrong with bacon, but Square One, a cheerful, brightly painted breakfast place in the L. Ron Hubbard district of East Hollywood, may have the city's best: Nueske's bacon, the well-regarded artisanal product from northern Wisconsin, sliced thick, laid on a rack and slow-roasted until it becomes crisp but pliable, sweet and deeply smoky, exploding under your teeth into gushers of fragrant juice. Still, even without the bacon, Square One is a pretty good place — epochal breakfasts; big salads for lunch made with roasted beets or house-cured salmon; pressed ham-and-cheese sandwiches; organic grits; fragile chocolate-chip cookies as big around as dinner plates. The chefs shop the same way you do, or at least the way you would like to think you would if your life were devoted to cooking breakfast rather than to such unimportant concerns as work, television and sex. 4854 Fountain Ave., Hlywd. (323) 661-1109, squareonedining.com. Open daily 8 a.m.-3 p.m. No alcohol. Valet parking on weekends. All major CC. Location map here.