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

Chichén Itzá
It lost its MacArthur Park showcase this year, to the regret of the locals hungry for stuffed balls of gouda and the guys at the Mexican consulate down the block. But at the back of the Mercado La Paloma, sharing table space with a Michoacan loncheria and a Oaxacan ice cream stand, Chichén Itzá is still the most serious Yucatecan restaurant in town, fresh as a marketplace stall in Merida, its menu a living, chile-intensive thesaurus of the citrusy, fragrant, sometimes searing-hot cuisine of the Mayas: panuchos and codzitos, sopa de lima and papadzules, vaporcitos and banana-leaf tamales and a proper cochinito pibil. The Cetena family, who own the restaurant, occasionally mount elaborate dinners of pre-Colombian cuisine. But even during the day, people come for its complex antojitos, its shark casseroles and its occasional specials of baked deer. The first time I ate at Chichén Itzá, I liked the cooking so much that I booked an air ticket to Mercado La Paloma. 3655 S. Grand Ave., dwntwn. (213) 741-1075, chichenitzarestaurant.com. Open daily 8 a.m.-9 p.m. MC, V. Validated parking. 

Chung King
There are fancier Sichuan restaurants now, more specialized Sichuan restaurants, and funkier Sichuan restaurants. A subset of bloggers thinks Chung King is passe. But there is no doubt: Chung King is still the gritty, grungy, pickle-spiked star of the local Sichuan restaurant community, the best source among many for Chinese bacon fried with leeks, for the cold, hacked chicken with chile, for the great, multiflavored beef casseroles that are so spicy they attack the nervous system like a phaser set to "stun." Chung King's brand of Sichuan cooking, sizzling with four or five different kinds of chiles and smacked with the cooling, numbing sensation of Sichuan peppercorns, lies halfway between dentist's-chair Novocain and the last time you could afford a lot of blow. Get the water-boiled fish, get the frog small pot, get the chile-red squishies from the cold case, but don't miss the fried chicken with hot peppers, a knoll of crunchy dark-meat cubes subsumed under a blizzard of dried chiles that are the red of silk pajamas, the red of firecrackers, the red of the Chinese flag. 1000 S. San Gabriel Blvd., San Gabriel. (626) 286-0298. Open daily 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m. Beer. Takeout. Lot parking. Cash only. 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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Comme Ça
Squarely in the tradition of destinations like Brasserie Balzar on Paris' Left Bank, Comme Ça aims to be all things to all people, open early for croissants and coffee and late for oysters and Champagne, serving both a hand-chopped steak tartare and mussels steamed in a killer broth enriched with cream and Pernod, formal entrees like roasted pork chops with apples and sole meuniere and bistro classics like steak-frites and lemony skate Grenobloise with capers and brown butter. The Alsatian tarte flambee, a brasserie classic, is especially good here, a sort of puff-pastry pizza smeared with crème fraiche and sprinkled with cubes of smoky bacon. The brasserie is a few degrees off-kilter, and I think the chef likes it that way, a sleek, theatrically lit restaurant lined with mirrors, halls lined with chalkboards, tables filled with smartly dressed citizens of the local design community. Comme Ça is loud, young and cocktail-driven. Is there good onion soup? A great one, informed but not overwhelmed by its gooey mantle of melted Gruyère. And the cheeseburger, made from the chef's mom's recipe, is often considered the very best in town. 8479 Melrose Ave., W. Hlywd. (323) 782-1178, commecarestaurant.com. Lunch Mon.-Fri. 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m.; dinner nightly 5:30-11 p.m.; brunch Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking. AE, MC, V. Location map here.

Cut
You are at one of the great high-design restaurants of the world, Tom Cruise is sitting across the room, and the bottle of Napa Cabernet on your table costs more than your first car. A beef sommelier cradles first-quality Japanese beef wrapped in ninja-black cloth, which he unswaddles with the pride of a new father. An enormous lobster is paraded through the room, and you can smell the black truffles in the sabayon from 20 yards away. And what is the amuse-bouche? A knish! But Cut is a study in contradictions, a restaurant whose stark Richard Meier interior suggests less a dining room than a museum of contemporary art, a steakhouse whose strengths lie in things like warm veal-tongue salad and bone-marrow flan rather than in its prime Nebraska beef, in its potato "tarte tatin" rather than cottage fries, its marvelous Austrian reds rather than its California cabs. It's Wolfgang Puck's most glamorous restaurant, but its sensibilities mirror those of Lee Hefter, filtered through the chef Ari Rosenson. And there's that A-5 Kobe steak: richness upon richness, smoke and char and animal dancing across your consciousness like sunlight rippling on a pond. A small ribeye runs more than $150, but as a shared appetizer, it easily feeds four. 9500 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. (310) 276-8500, wolfgangpuck.com. Mon.-Thurs. 6-10 p.m., Fri.-Sat. 6-11 p.m. Full bar. Valet parking a half-block south of Wilshire on Rodeo Drive. AE, D, MC, V. Location map here.