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

Fig
The first thing you'll want to know about Fig is that it serves bacon-wrapped bacon, which is a warning shot fired over the heaving bow of S.S. Food. Fig, the lobby-level bistro in the Fairmont Miramar hotel, occupies a dining room that looks as if it could double as a cocktail bar, and is governed by the rhythms of the Santa Monica Farmers Market. There is not just butter with your bread at Fig, but army-green arugula butter; not just steamed potatoes with the grilled-tuna nicoise, but peewee Weiser Farms potatoes. Small print running along the bottom of the menu, where the news ticker would be on CNN, lists not only produce just coming into season and produce in peak season, but also produce coming soon, so that during a January cold snap, you can take comfort in the strawberries and green peas yet to come. The menu of L.A. native Ray Garcia is mostly in the straightforward, French-tinged, organic-casual style we have come to associate with dining on the Westside, with nods toward both the big-meat guys and the Gaia-worshipping yoga folk. But Garcia's cooking seems to carry within it more than a bit of aggression, and if I were a culinary therapist rather than a critic, I might take the slug of bacon in the "scorched" Brussels sprouts or the presence of tooth-cracking pig's ear in the frisee salad to be subtle cries for help. In the Fairmont Miramar Hotel, 101 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica. (310) 319-3111, figsantamonica.com. Lunch, Mon.-Sat., 11 a.m.-2 p.m.; dinner Tues.-Sat., 5-10 p.m.; Sunday brunch 11 a.m.-2 p.m. All major credit cards accepted. Full bar. Validated valet parking. Location map here.

Flame
Iranian restaurants, as any Persian is quick to tell you, completely miss the point of the cuisine. Iranian cooking is all about the intricate balance between fruit and spice, delicate breads, complex desserts and lovingly tended stews. Restaurants are for kebabs and rice. And while the stretch of Westwood Boulevard sometimes called Tehrangeles is lined with kebab restaurants, each of them serving decent polo and koobideh and tah dig, the soul of the cuisine lies at home. Yet it is hard to stay away from the shiny clay sphere at Flame's heart: the fiery tanor oven that issues smoking-hot flatbread almost continuously. Much of the produce is organic at Flame, and the meat is sustainably sourced. You will find the usual bowls of yogurt-based white-garlic dip, the vinegary Iranian pickles called torshi, and a few of the usual homestyle stews — the pomegranate-walnut concoction called fesenjon, the vegetable/salted lime stew gormeh sabzi, and the tomatoey split peas called ghemeh. But as long as you're eating kebabs, you might as well have good ones, so saddle up a rack of lamb, a shish kebab or a skewer of ground, grilled chicken, if only so you will have something to put on the enormous drifts of rice. Even at lunch, the customers tend to be better-dressed than they are anywhere this side of Spago and the Grill. 1442 Westwood Blvd., Wstwd. (310) 470-3399, flamepersiancuisine.com. Open daily 11:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m. No alcohol. Street parking. AE, MC, V. 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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Forage
Forage was conceived, it seems, as a cross between a kitchen and an agora, the kind of place where a neighbor could bring in a few pounds of Florence fennel she'd grown and trade them for a couple of scones. And although the county put a stop to the practice — there are rules even for micro-scale urban farmers, it turns out — the restaurant still relies on what it calls its Home Growers Circle, whose certification the restaurant helped secure. Forage is an informal neighborhood canteen, an anti-restaurant, basically a big, stainless-steel serving counter and a long dining room narrow enough that you can touch both walls at once, populated with exactly the sort of Silverlakistas whom you might expect to be excited about consuming the produce of each others' backyards. If there is anyone here not talking about bands, websites, or websites run by bands, I still haven't met them.

Chef Jason Kim is an alumnus of the highbrow kitchen at Lucques, but the vibe here is of a first-class potluck, a motley, exquisitely seasonal collection of vegetable preparations having little to do with one another save freshness and the mark of a conscious omnivore; intrinsic veganism expanded to include ricotta cheese and the occasional slab of organic pork belly. It is fun to imagine the place as the hub of a great agricultural region, and almost as fun to imagine a forager leaping from backyard herb garden to backyard herb garden like the mesclun-gathering equivalent of the swimmer in the Cheever story. Every café serves food; what Forage offers is a new way to look at the Los Angeles dream. 3823 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake. (323) 663-6885, foragela.com. Open Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5:30-9:30 p.m. Sunday brunch, 10 a.m.-3 p.m. MC, V. BYOB. Lot parking. Takeout. Location map here.

Giang Nan
If you have been to enough Shanghai-style restaurants, you probably could navigate your way through the Giang Nan menu by heart: braised crab with rice cake, lion's-head meatballs, preserved vegetables with bean-curd sheets, fried spare ribs crusted with garlic and sweet, caramelized soy. The chef uses salted duck-egg yolk the way an Italian might use Parmesan cheese, including grated over a cold soybean timbale that has the eerie, chunky appearance of Soylent Green. The house specialty is probably a sweet dessert soup made with slippery sticky-rice balls and house-fermented rice wine. But if you are looking for cooking that smacks you over the head with strong flavors, Giang Nan is perhaps not your ideal restaurant. Even the giant braised pork knuckle, second cousin to the infamous pork pump — defatted, carefully degreased, simmered into sweet submission — comes across as delicate. And what could be better than Giang Nan's version of fried yellow fish with seaweed? The crisp, fragile composition of battered fillets is so tender it makes Mrs. Paul's fish sticks seem as challenging as raw eel liver. 306 N. Garfield Ave., No. A-12, Monterey Park. (626) 573-3421. Lunch Tues.-Sun. 11 a.m.-3 p.m., dinner Tues.-Sun. 5-10 p.m. No alcohol. Takeout. Lot parking. MC, V. Location map here.