Besha Rodell

Credit: Anne Fishbein

Best Restaurant in Silver Lake

Besha Rodell
The competition for the distinction of best restaurant in Silver Lake gets tougher all the time — great new restaurants are opening in the neighborhood practically weekly. But Alimento still holds the crown. Zach Pollack's Cali-Italian storefront spot is both a perfect neighborhood restaurant and a worthy destination eatery. It's......
Credit: Anne Fishbein

Best Affordable Hot Spot

Besha Rodell
Where to begin? The menu is scrawled in marker on greasy brown paper bags. It's BYOB. It has a phone number and a website, but neither is currently functional. Your server might not remember that he's already taken your order, but he will confer "blessings" upon you multiple times. The......
Credit: Anne Fishbein

Best Restaurant-as-Lifestyle

Besha Rodell
The decision to start a magazine and a restaurant that are based on one another speaks volumes about Botanica and its owners, food writers Heather Sperling and Emily Fiffer, and also about the state of restaurants in L.A. right now. This is an intellectual pursuit as well as an aspirational......
Credit: Anne Fishbein

Best New Italian-American Restaurant

Besha Rodell
Chef Zach Pollack has already helped to define L.A.'s Italian food scene, first at Sotto and then at Alimento, his fantastic restaurant in Silver Lake. Now at Cosa Buona he's helping to define the new school of Italian-American food, serving pizzas and classic pizza-parlor fare with a cheffy spin. That......
Credit: Anne Fishbein

Best New Izakaya

Besha Rodell
It's only its tiny size that keeps Tsubaki from being a drinks-first izakaya, because if people used this place even remotely like a bar, the economics of the enterprise would fail spectacularly. The drinks, however, are what make Tsubaki so exciting, thanks to sommelier Courtney Kaplan, who co-owns the restaurant......
Credit: B. Rodell

Best Mall Food

Besha Rodell
A giant shiny upscale American mall is probably the last place you'd expect to find fantastic food, but in recent years the Americana at Brand has made a vigorous push to change that. You can still eat at the Cheesecake Factory if you want to, but you also can eat......
Credit: Anne Fishbein

Best Modern Indonesian

Besha Rodell
Upon its opening in February, Pasadena's Bone Kettle was touted as "a bone-broth concept." This description buried the lede significantly: The far more interesting thing about Bone Kettle is its chef, Erwin Tjahyadi, and his use of Indonesian flavors on this menu. Bone Kettle is not a purely Indonesian restaurant......
Credit: Anne Fishbein

Best Restaurant Atmosphere

Besha Rodell
What restaurant makes you feel fabulous and stylish and wonderful just because you were smart enough to walk in the door? Kismet does. The all-day restaurant from chefs Sarah Hymanson and Sara Kramer and restaurateurs Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo has a way of charming you so much, you become......
Credit: B. Rodell

Best Late-Night Thai Food

Besha Rodell
Despite the fact that Hollywood Boulevard is a place where many people find themselves stumbling around drunk late at night, until now we would have been hard-pressed to heartily recommend late-night food to help with that drunkenness. But all of that changed earlier this year when Crying Tiger opened a......