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

Casa Bianca
Casa Bianca, hard as it is to believe, has its detractors, usually ex-New Yorkers incorrectly assuming that the pizza is an inelegant take on the slices they grew up on rather than a brilliant re-creation of Chicago's thin-crusted bar pies. If you show up during prime dinner hours, you are going to wait for a table. There are lots and lots of kids, many of whom are the children and grandchildren of customers who also grew up with the taste of Casa Bianca pizza on their lips. But Casa Bianca, neon sign glowing "Pizza Pie" in nursery pink and blue, whomped with garlic, set with checked tablecloths, is the best neighborhood pizzeria in Los Angeles. Sam Martorana, the soul of the family-run restaurant, recently passed away after more than half a century in the kitchen, but his mandate endures: burnt, chewy, bubbly, pizza, dusted with gritty cornmeal and sliced in the odd manner of Chicago South Side, which is where Martorana learned his trade. The mushrooms are canned, if that sort of thing bothers you, but anybody who orders his pizza topped with anything but homemade sausage or fried eggplant is kind of missing the point. 1650 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock. (323) 256-9617, casabiancapizza.com. Tues.-Thurs. 4 p.m.-mid., Fri.-Sat. 4 p.m.-1 a.m. Beer and wine. Takeout. Street parking. Cash only. Location map here.

Chang's Garden
Is it all about the dong po pork here? Very well then: It's about the dong po pork, a dish beloved by Chinese poets, a shining, burnished square of pork belly braised until it is pudding-soft. Chinese cooking in the San Gabriel Valley still leans toward authenticity more than polish, but Chang's Garden is a rare chef-driven restaurant, serving the elegant Hangzhou-style cooking of chef Henry Chang, although in a fairly spartan dining room. His dish of pork ribs steamed in lotus leaves figures so prominently in Nicole Mones' novel The Last Chinese Chef that it is practically a character of its own. The crisp rolled beef pancakes, the candied lotus root stuffed with sticky rice, the fresh Chinese bacon with chiles and the whitefish fried into seaweed-enhanced beignets, are worthy of volumes of their own. 627 W. Duarte Road, Arcadia. (626) 445-0606. Open daily, 11:30 a.m.-10 p.m. MC, V. Beer and wine. Lot parking. Location map here.

PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Charbroiled sour pork patties from Nem Nuong Khanh Hoa

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Zelo Gourmet Pizzeria

328 E. Foothill Blvd.
Arcadia, CA 91006

Category: Restaurant > Italian

Region: Foothill Cities

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Chaya Downtown
When I think of Chaya cuisine, it is hard not to flash back to the late La Petite Chaya in the earliest 1980s, and a tasting dinner, in the rigorous Japanese-French style in vogue at the time, that seemed to include five consecutive courses with buerre blanc. Whatever fusion cooking might be, it has come a long way since then — and the Chaya group has been doing it longer than anyone else in Los Angeles, including the serene Asianized bistro food of Chaya Brasserie. The newly remodeled Chaya Venice, with its small plates and Mediterranean touches, is definitely worth a trip. But Tokyo-chic Chaya Downtown, looking out on the same bank plaza as Drago Centro, is still the Chaya of the moment, a starkly beautiful restaurant decorated with vintage posters and a chandelier that seems to be fashioned from plastic beach detritus. Its raw-fish dishes neatly split the difference between sashimi and crudo, and you'll find grilled octopus with wasabi aioli, pan-seared albacore toro with Meyer lemon and balsamic vinegar, and a paella that channels Valencia by way of Osaka. Still, what we dream about is the Monday-only bento box, a rare combination plate that seems to contain everything best in the kitchen. 525 S. Flower St., dwntwn. (213) 236-9577, thechaya.com. Lunch Mon.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m.; dinner, Mon.- Fri. 5:30-10 p.m., Sat., 5:30-10 p.m. AE, MC, V. Full bar. Validated valet parking. Location map here.

Chego
A dinner at Chego, Kogi auteur Roy Choi's rice bowl café, can be like bumbling into a Kyrygyz production of Hamlet: You understand what's going on, more or less, but you never quite know whether the guy in the corner is yelling at you or at Gertrude, or why. If you eat by yourself, look sad and order two desserts, you are entitled to a love letter written by Alice Shin, the great Kogi blogger. You are more likely to find out what the specials are by looking up the Twitter feed on your iPhone than by looking at the menu board. If your experience with rice bowls is limited to what you've had from the drive-through at Yoshinara, you may be befuddled by Choi's weighty, baroque constructions that splice all the flavors of the city into great splooshes of combinatorial DNA — rice with pickled watermelon radish, sautéed ong choy, peanuts, crumbled cotija cheese, a fried egg and a crisp, spurting slab of pork belly rubbed as lovingly with Korean chile paste as a '64 Impala show car has been with lacquer. The Korean/Thai/Chinese/Japanese/Indonesian Chego specialties are complex enough to make the loco moco seem as simple as a waltz. Choi isn't elevating Los Angeles street cuisine to the level of fine dining; he's using the language of fine dining to exalt the food of the street. Pastry chef Beth Kellerhals is something of a marvel, but her desserts sell out fast. Order dessert first. 3300 Overland Ave., W.L.A. (310) 287-0337. Open Tues.-Sat., 6 p.m.-mid., eatchego.com. MC, V. No alcohol. Limited lot parking. Location map here.