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

Waterloo & City
It may be a stretch to consider Waterloo & City, a pool-shooting, darts-playing, ale-swilling, Ramones-blasting bar shoehorned into a rundown coffeeshop, to be much more than a glorified bar. The place is ostensibly a gastropub, whatever that has come to mean, and there is indeed a shepherd's pie; a burger with bacon; roast beef and Yorkshire pudding at Sunday lunch; and a maitre d' who is prepared to discuss the nuances of your glass of stout until cock's crow. But Brendan Collins is at heart a bistro chef — try the snails if they're on special — and the heart of the menu seems to lie with his terrines: complex, well-flavored masses of sweetbreads bound with pigs' trotters, rabbit with pistachios, smoked ox tongue with carrots, a smooth mousse of chicken livers whipped with foie gras. It's a virtuosic display of charcuterie. What may be most impressive is a big, seared pork chop, served medium rare ... under a huge, oozing, coagulated slab of English black pudding — not just an entrée but a clear case of meat-on-meat crime. Waterloo & City is to Culver City what Tavern is to Brentwood: the right restaurant in the right neighborhood at the right time. 12517 Washington Blvd., Culver City. (310) 391-4222; waterlooandcity.com. Dinner, Mon.-Sat., 6-10 p.m., Sun., 5-9 p.m.; lunch, Sun., 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; late night, Thurs.-Sun., 10-11 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 10 p.m.-mid. Full bar. Parking lot. All major CC. Location map here.

Wurstküche
There may be no more universal pleasure in the world of meat than a well-made sausage, plucked straight from the fire, crackling under your teeth before it gives way with a pop, and your mouth is flooded with torrents of burning juice. Such a sausage demands beer. And then another sausage. And then another beer. Repeat until full. Wurstküche is the locus of sausage consumption in Los Angeles, a stripped-brick beerhall serving nothing but sausages and fries, perfumed with smoke and sputtering meat, equipped with honey mustard by the vatful and enough beer taps to please the most hardened hophead. Rattlesnake-rabbit sausage? Cajun alligator sausage? Duck-and-bacon sausage? You've got it, dude, even if what you're into tends more toward vegan kielbasa than smoked pork. Wurstküche aims to be all things to all people, at least to all people who think it might be a good idea to down a high-proof Unibroue La Fin Du Monde or two before going back to work. 800 E. Third St., dwntwn. (213) 687-4444, wurstkucherestaurant.com. Open daily 11 a.m.-mid., bar to 1:30 a.m. Beer and wine. Street parking. All major CC. 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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Zelo
Zelo is an islet of counterculture in a conservative part of town, a poster-encrusted suburban takeout joint that vibrates to the sound of surf music and vintage punk rock; if it weren't a pizzeria, it could be tweaked into an indie-record store in about a minute and a half. Zelo's pizza is a different sort of pie, its crust enriched with a little cornmeal, packed and crimped into a high-rimmed steel deep-dish pizza pan blackened from years in the ovens and baked to a high crunchiness. A vegetarian pizza, available in both vegan and cheese-bearing versions, is piled with baked eggplant, roasted peppers and mushrooms. Even the plain-vanilla sausage pie is plumped out with marinated peppers, tomato chunks and sautéed onions. This may be the great, undiscovered Los Angeles pizza restaurant. And as the sign by the cash register says, save your fork; there's cake — specifically a delicious Florentine-style zucotto. 328 E. Foothill Blvd., Arcadia. (626) 358-8298. Beer and wine. Parking lot. AE, MC, V. Location map here.