Babita
When local aficionados get together to discuss serious Mexican restaurants, Babita doesn't always come to mind. Although it preceded the first wave of local cenadurias by several years, and was the first place in town to feature good Mexican wines, Babita is a casual family-run joint in a part of town that has become thoroughly Chinese, a converted house with a few tables in the former living room and kitchen that opens up onto the sidewalk. If you're looking for a cheap, sticky-table Eastside dive, you're in the wrong place: The prices reflect the cost of the ingredients, and a certain percentage of its customers commute here from the Westside. But chef-owner Roberto Berrelleza, who worked as a maitre d' at places like the Brown Derby long before he ever picked up a pan, is a modern master of Mexican cuisine. He is especially gifted at the cuisine of his hometown of Los Mochis, on the Sinaloa coast — on the rare occasions his machaca is on the menu, don't hesitate — and a few of the classic-seeming dishes may have been invented by Berrelleza himself: his salmon-stuffed gueritos chiles in strawberry salsa, his seared halibut with huitlacoche vinaigrette, and his habañero-inflected shrimp Topolobampo, a singularly fiery dish that can take over its victims' bodies like the plague. The oozy, porky version of chiles en nogada, a sweet, festive chile relleno lightened with dried fruit and toasted pecans, is probably the best in a chile-mad town. If you're anywhere near the restaurant in the September-January period in which it is served, you really should drop in. 1823 S. San Gabriel Blvd., San Gabriel. (626) 288-7265. Lunch Tues.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.; dinner Sun. & Tues.-Thurs., 5:30-9 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 5:30-10 p.m. Beer and wine. Takeout. Street parking. All major CC.Location map here.
Beacon: An Asian Café
Several years after it launched the Culver City dining boom, Beacon has settled into a comfortable, steady groove, feeding local studio workers at lunchtime and the neighborhood people after dark, when the high-ceilinged dining room assumes a kind of Hopperesque intimacy. Kazuto Matsusaka has seen decades of L.A. restaurant history from behind his stoves, from the birth of fusion cooking at Chinois in the early 1980s to the first days of the velvet-rope thing at Barfly, playing with Japanese flavors from a position of mastery of the modern California grill, and while you'd probably never find anything like his green-tea soba salad in Tokyo — or the tempura catfish, or the avocado dressed with toasted sesame seeds and minced scallions — the dishes follow classical principles, and they are delicious. Some of our friends treat the restaurant as a delivery system for the giant, dripping teriyaki cheeseburgers Matsusaka serves at lunch, piled with Nueske's bacon. They are easily the equal of the more famous cheeseburgers at Father's Office next door. Matsusaka's hanger steak with wasabi is so successful, the searing tang of the horseradish interacting so well with the tart, carbonized flavor of grilled meat, that the invention seems almost inevitable, as art always should. 3280 Helms Ave., L.A. (310) 838-7500, beacon-la.com. Lunch Mon.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m., dinner Tues.-Wed. and Sun. 5:30-9 p.m., Thurs.-Sat. 5:30-10 p.m. Beer and wine. Lot parking. All major CC. Lunch for two, food only, $18-$35. Dinner for two, $30-$60.Location map here.
PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN
Braised beef pot roast at Lazy Ox Canteen
PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN
Kogi's tofu taco
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Big Mista
The best barbecue, it is sometimes said, comes from the smokers and the rigs that cruise the competitive barbecue circuit, where pride and often a great deal of cash depend on the ability to produce a perfect plate of ribs. There's nothing wrong with a patinated 50-year-old pit, but you can produce awfully good barbecue without one. But to a regular of such rib shrines as Woody's, J&J and Phillip's, it is still surprising that some of the best barbecue in town issues not from firepits far south of the 10, but from Big Mista's smoke-puffing trailer at a suburban farmers market, around the corner from the kale and winter squash. Brisket! Pig candy! Burnt ends! E-mail a couple of days in advance if you plan to pick up more than an order or two — the pig candy and the brisket sell out in a flash. Sun. at the Atwater farmers market, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.; Tues. and Sat. at the Torrance farmers market, 8 a.m.-1 p.m.; Thurs. at the El Segundo farmers market, 3-7 p.m.; Fri. at the Echo Park farmers market, 3-7 p.m. Menus, hours and pre-ordering information at bigmista.com.
Bistro LQ
Laurent Quenioux has long been the most mysterious of L.A.'s first-rank chefs, a madman at the range whose idea of French cooking expands to include ant eggs, sea urchin oatmeal, foie gras tostadas and eel sliders. He uses duck hearts the way some chefs use parsley. His cassoulet, served for some perverse reason only on Tuesdays, is the real thing: creamy tarbais beans walloped with garlic, garnished with first-quality housemade duck confit, braised pork belly and Toulouse sausage. He puts bone marrow in his macaroni and cheese — writing this, I am suddenly getting very hungry. Like any good Frenchman, his fancy turns toward game when the weather gets cold, and Quenioux may be at his best with game: partridge and grouse, but especially the strong, dark meat of wild boar, with its divine stink of the woods in fall. Almost everything on the menu at Bistro LQ can be ordered in half-portions, which are plated with an elegance belying a $7 price tag, and the short, obscure but exquisite wine list includes some bottles at less than their retail price. 8009 Beverly Blvd., L.A. (323) 951-1088, bistrolq.com. Tues.-Thurs., 6-9:30 p.m., Fri.-Sat., 6-10:30 p.m.; cheese cart and dessert until 11:30 p.m. Beer and wine. Street parking. All major CC.Location map here.
