Want to feel like the King of Hollywood? More specifically, want to feel like the Japanese King of Hollywood? Technically that would make you emperor. Or do you just want to chill out in one of L.A.'s most opulent and fortuitously situated restaurant/lounges? Do all of the above at Yamashiro, a decent Japanese restaurant and drinking establishment blessed with an… More >>
Let 'em have Larchmont. Never mind Melrose. Who needs Montana? Folks who live or hang in the Southeast San Fernando Valley have their own small, fairly well-hidden enclave right near where Tujunga meets Moorpark, a stretch that's leafy, quiet and upscale enough to attract the well-heeled professionals, yoga moms and working screenwriters you might find in those other areas. And… More >>
There's nothing that says "Hollywood cocktail party" quite like mango chutney and corn relish. Or so it was in the '30s and '40s, when pillows of cream cheese were piled on top of just about every appetizer, and cocktail hour wasn't complete without canapé trays from the best private chefs and caterers. Viola Rowland's mango chutney and corn relish were… More >>
Every spring, Angelenos enter into that sweet madness known as tomato mania: They want tomatoes, they need tomatoes — the fruit, the plant, the seeds, in as many varieties as possible. The savviest of those who have survived the frenzy and lived to tell about it rely on a woman named Laurel Garza to see them through. Garza runs Laurel's… More >>
Visionary and renovator extraordinaire Andrew Meieran is responsible for giving a wake-up call to Los Angeles. "I fell madly in love with the Higgins building the day it won the award for ugliest, dirtiest building by the L.A. Times in 1995," he says. "I saw a mixture of the future and the past. Inside there was so much detail worth… More >>
A good piece of pie often will remind you of your childhood or, at the very least, give you a glimpse into a childhood you wish you'd had. Apple pie tends to get a lot of credit in this arena, and despite an old, popular saying, blueberry pie may actually be the most American. But when it's all said and… More >>
As much as our daydreams may run toward the coffee milk you find in Rhode Island and the root-beer milk popular in the greater Wichita area, we have nothing against chocolate milk, really we don't. The sticky concoctions in most supermarket dairy cases don't do much for us, but we remember fondly Alta Dena's brief flirtation with Guittard, and we… More >>
It's not easy to find an authentic Argentine empanada in L.A.: a baked savory pastry filled with seasoned ground beef (the O.G. Argentine empanada por excelencia), or ham and cheese, creamed corn, cheese and onions, chicken, tuna or, only very occasionally, vegetarian-friendly fare. Some stores, even bona fide Argentine restaurants run by people who should know better, will sell you… More >>
The late 1930s and early 1940s were kind of a grim time in Southern California. The Great Depression hit Los Angeles as hard as it hit practically anywhere in the country, and the vast influx of penniless retirees from cold states put an unusual burden on the state. Although the agricultural bounty was still unmatched in the world, a huge… More >>
When out-of-towners are in for the weekend and request to see movie stars, you want to make them think you're tapped into the Hollywood scene, don't you? So you get in your Ford Focus and sputter by the Ivy, which is too pricey to eat at and way too swamped by the paparazzi to actually discern whether it's Maria Shriver… More >>
On your way out of Corina Weibel's Atwater Village restaurant, Canelé, after a dinner of lamb stew and pissaladière, maybe, you will be given a little gift, in the tradition of mignardise: a smaller-than-usual canelé, one of the pretty bordelaise cakes from which the restaurant takes its name. Weibel will be the first to admit that her canelés are not… More >>
L.A.'s oldest juice bar, the Beverly Hills Juice Club has been squeezing the nutrient-rich moisture out of fresh fruits and vegetables for its health-conscious clientele since 1975. Despite its name, the Juice Club is actually a nonexclusive, open-to-the-public sort of operation, provided said public brings cash to trade for juice. There are seasonal specials (Cheremoya, Tangerine) in addition to old… More >>
Jax has survived the whipsaws of economic ups and downs and store closures on Brand Boulevard in Glendale since 1984 because it's got great food as a mere backdrop to a never-ending series of fine, straightforward jazz acts. You can return to Jax again and again, and it's fresh, excellent and worth it. It's a skinny space, set up to… More >>
The Varnish isn't the obscurest of bars; far from it. You'll find no secret entrance, obscure protocol or whiff of illegality; you don't have to walk through a coat closet or trip down the stairs off an alley. But even on a block crowded with bars, there is a sense of adventure every time you stumble into the tiny, dimly… More >>
Clementine's chicken salads are the sexy girl next door of chicken salads. The summer version, composed of grilled chicken-breast slices, cucumber, yellow and red cherry tomatoes, sweet corn, haricot verts, feta crumbles and vinaigrette, is wholesome, fresh, basic and kind of sassy. You can go back to it every day, as many people in the neighborhood do during the summer… More >>
Janet Jarvits' Cook Books is more like a casual museum than an ordinary bookstore: a dusty, cluttered, literally voluminous space, vertically loaded with rows and rows of cookbooks, all of them used, many of them published long before most of us picked up our first whisk. It is the kind of store where you will want to spend hours, perhaps… More >>
Cupcakes are so, like, yesterday. And if you think that Pinkberry is a healthy way to satisfy your sweet tooth, read the fine print: up to 28 grams of sugar for a measly half-cup, not to mention a sky-high price tag. For a mere $1.50, do what the Parisians do. Indulge in a decadent bite. Nab a sidewalk table at… More >>
There was a time when art in restaurants signified more than the $3,000 ceramic dildo for sale at the gift shop of Bazaar. We have fond memories of the downtown art bar dominated by John Chamberlain's crumpled-automobile sculpture, the big Jonathan Borofsky at the original Katsu, and the rolling art installations at the old West Beach Café. But Michael's —… More >>
Sometimes we build an entire outfit around a new pair of shoes, and in the same vein, occasionally we end up pairing a meal with a beverage, instead of the other way around. If that six-pack of microbrew is burning a hole in your fridge, consider carrying it down to The Fix Burger in Silver Lake, a BYOB joint that… More >>
The "SPQR" in Café Bella Roma SPQR stands for Senatus Populusque Romanus, or, "the Senate and Roman People." It's that welcoming populist sentiment that fuels this Italian café bar, an intimate collection of highlights of the Roman café experience: romance, patience, languorous immersion in Italian cuisine. Highlights: cloud-soft and flavorful gnocchi, the deeply angelic tagliatelle al limone and the espresso… More >>
Before yuzu vinaigrettes, before acai margaritas, before pigs whose lineage is better-traced than the Queen of England's, there was ham and eggs, which so powerfully signified contentment in Los Angeles that a Depression-era political movement was named for it. Ham and eggs on Thursdays — what more could a man want? So it is not much of a surprise that… More >>
For some people, "breaking out the bubbly" means uncorking fine Champagne. For others, it means popping the top of excellent soda pop. Fans of sweetened, carbonated goodness flock to Galco's Soda Pop Stop in Highland Park to pick up the rare, the delicious and the downright weird. Peruse the aisles of this small-supermarket-sized structure, with its down-home, Middle American feel.… More >>
Way up yonder in the northernmost reaches of the outskirts of the hinterlands of town, legend has it that a powerful big man once swaggered through the doors of a little hole-in-the-wall joint and said, "Gimme your best pizza." They did the man's bidding, and it was good — so good that he left a $900 tip before he strode… More >>
Best Place to Get Wasted Away Again in Chile Rellenoville
If Jimmy Buffett or Ron Reagan ever suggest a place to eat in L.A., you'd better take their advice, even if the restaurant in question looks like just another Mex hole-in-the-wall from the outside. Both are fans of The Talpa, a family-run Mexican neighborhood joint that'll make you think seriously about moving to this neighborhood. The food is basic, Mexican… More >>
In the '60s, Tony's was a classic Valley dive bar, attracting the kind of folks who'd start drinking at 6 in the morning. More than 40 years later, the Burbank watering hole has been treated to a face-lift by its new owner, who just so happens to be named Tony. These days, Tony's Darts Away is less gin joint and… More >>
Best Place(s) to Fill Your Recycled Tahini Jar That Doubles as a Water Bottle
Because water likes glass, you love your planet, and plastic bottles leak dioxin, which renders penises tiny and useless, you bring your own water bottle with you wherever you go. Where, oh where, is a well-hydrated superhero to find happy, healthy, living water when she's out and about, moving mountains and manifesting miracles? Nature Well in Silver Lake keeps a… More >>
Like any good back lot, greater Los Angeles may be most like itself where it resembles anywhere else, from the Pasadena backstreets that have spent a century standing in for suburban Connecticut, to the jungly corners of Griffith Park, to the Spanish villas grander and more formally designed than anything in Seville. So when Lawrence Frank opened Lawry's the Prime… More >>
Best (Raw, Vegan) Ice Cream That Won't Make You Fat, Lethargic or Sugar-Loopy
L.A.'s raw-food fanatics — what with their radiant complexions, their sparkly eyes and their sustained energy, screamed a collective whoop of giddy hurrah when Kind Kreme opened this spring. Kind Kreme serves raw, vegan ice cream that it makes on the premises, and despite hard-core purist-steeped honey controversy, no bee flesh is actually used in the crafting of its sweet,… More >>
For all the spit-polished, impeccably shiny storefronts you'll find in Manhattan Beach or Hermosa, you'll also find a bar like Naja's Place. Facing the docks on the lower level of the Redondo Beach Pier, Naja's is the kind of place where a regular Joe or Jane can order off a huge list of excellent beers ("the largest in Los Angeles,"… More >>
Every dive has its history, but when it comes to bars in Southern California, it's nearly impossible to top Long Beach's Joe Jost's — one of the oldest continually operating taverns west of the Mississippi. Jost, a Hungarian immigrant, opened the eponymous business in 1924, running it as a combination barbershop and pool hall that served food — including the… More >>
Musso & Frank Grill, although it is perhaps most famous for serving steaks and impeccable martinis to character actors, is a rare conservatory of early-20th-century American cooking, and if the EPA cared as much about threatened dishes as it does about endangered species, it would protect the kitchen with the same vigor it protects wetlands. Once the finnan haddie, kidneys… More >>
Why do they call old-time-soda-fountain clerks "jerks"? Was Lana Turner really discovered in a drugstore? And what's a phosphate? You may not learn the answers to these and other important old-timey-drugstore questions at the timeless Fair Oaks Pharmacy & Soda in South Pasadena, but you definitely will get a taste of the good ol' days. FOP&S was built in 1915… More >>
No, you can't dance here, but after you scarf up the best samosas this side of Mumbai under the watchful eyes of bronze Hindu deities perched on high, you'll feel like donning a kurta and clinking zills. History abounds in the elegant Indian establishment Bombay Palace, which is currently in its 25th year. Deep Sethi bought the place 19 years… More >>
Is it the cheese bread? Is it the bacon-wrapped filet mignons? Is it the thrilling sensation you get when a waitress asks if you want the Daily Double, minutes before bringing you what looks like a glass Big Gulp cup filled with bourbon? Is it the fact that on race day the restaurant's customers tend to include both big-spending big… More >>
Though it's typically not advisable to buy your pastries from the grocery store, most of us have done so in a pinch — and subsequently apologized profusely to those we subjected to stale mounds of sweetened margarine vaguely recognizable as some sort of breakfast Danish or birthday cake. The next time you go the grocery-store route, Gelson's has one of… More >>
Bacon jumped the shark. Cupcakes are passé. But put them together, and now you've got something. Something good, that tastes a lot like breakfast. Yummy Cupcakes, one of the first bakeries to enter into the city's long-running cupcake wars, presents the atomic bomb of cupcakery: the sweet and salty "Pancakes 'n' Bacon." Vanilla maple cake is frosted with maple buttercream,… More >>
Most cafés draw a feather or a leaf in the foam on the top of your latte. Flying Saucers Caffeine and Art puts a little gray alien design on top instead. It also offers art installations that rotate on a regular basis, a cozy darkness and one of the most inviting premises of any café since the Onyx/Sequel. It's not… More >>
You're walking Western Avenue when you suddenly notice an old-timey cruise ship coming at you from the back of a narrow lot set back from the road. Don't worry, you've stumbled upon Café Jack, another in the myriad of oddly luxuriant and adventurously decorated joints around Koreatown. A huge Titanic fan, Jack Chin started building a scaled-down replica back in… More >>
This diner opened in 1887, making it one of the oldest restaurants still operating in Los Angeles County. Before moving to its present location in 1898, the Saugus Café was situated next to the Saugus Train Station. Photos lining the walls reveal how much California history this little place has witnessed. Theodore Roosevelt was among the customers to Tolefree's Saugus… More >>
Professional knife sharpener is a beautifully atavistic profession, not unlike being a cobbler or a Shaker chair maker. Gary Silverstein, who has operated Gary's Knife Sharpening Service for the last six years, came late to his calling, switching careers after he realized he enjoyed sharpening his wife's catering knives rather more than he enjoyed being a medical biller. Silverstein says… More >>
When it comes to late-night adventures, Koreatown's Dan Sung Sa has plenty. With its dark-wood walls scrawled with love notes, and central grill wafting barbecue plumes, this cozy dive is a gateway to another world. While the exterior features a prominent image of Kim Jong Il facing off against former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, the interior feels like a… More >>
Edwin Waldo Ward Sr. was on a marmalade mission when he opened his namesake Sierra Madre canning and preserving company in 1917. The former New York-based luxury food salesman planted navel orange trees on his 30-acre property when he moved to California, and later imported Seville orange trees from Spain to make a tangier English-style marmalade. Nearly a century later,… More >>
Made by Justin Polgar, a self-proclaimed genie/alchemist, Yes Cacao is raw, vegan chocolate infused with healing herbs (ayurvedic, Taoist, Amazonian), superfoods, medicinal mushrooms, crystal elixirs, flower essences, binaural beats, prayer, neural reprogramming frequencies and ... and ... and ... whew! Rich and complex, with layer after layer of earthy flavor and nuance, it's the perfect balance of chocolate and herb,… More >>
Brothers Jim and Frank McGuire got the idea in 1957 of mounting a 7-foot-long, 4-foot-high plastic cow on the roof of their new barbecue restaurant, My Brother's Bar-B-Q, in the West San Fernando Valley. Back then it didn't seem so strange in a rural community where real cows grazed in nearby pastures, and storefronts and homes only occasionally dotted the… More >>
There's a reason that the painted bears at the Bear Pit B-B-Q are prancing all over the walls. They've eaten the garlic toast at this down-home family barbecue restaurant. At first, you might think it's the Missouri-style 'cue, all wood-smoked in a brick oven (that's the pit). And judging from the lines of customers waiting to be seated for succulent… More >>
Sure, there are farmers markets with more high-profile chefs trailing carts and, often, camera crews (Santa Monica Wednesdays); there are markets with stalls featuring more Asian or Hispanic produce (Torrance); or markets scheduled early enough and close enough to the beach so that you can hit the waves after shopping (Venice). But there is possibly no area market quite as… More >>
Imagine if your favorite bakery — blissful croissants, perfectly made canelés, crusty boules, an egg-salad sandwich so exactly rendered that it would cause an Old Town riot if it were ever removed from the menu — reappeared, a few blocks down the street, with most of the menu reworked in whole-wheat flours instead of the more traditional white. An alternate-universe… More >>
There is a piece of advice that veteran bartenders will occasionally give to young ones: Make someone a blue drink, and you'll be making blue drinks all night. The same, it turns out, is true of flaming margaritas. Need proof? Stop into the original El Compadre in Hollywood, and hear the first-time patrons ask their dates, "Wow, did you see… More >>
Greek immigrant George Panagopoulos learned to cook fast, tasty food as a chef in the Air Force. Following World War II, he worked at several SoCal restaurants before he and his wife, Rena, opened Pann's Restaurant in 1958. The place remains virtually untouched today, with hearty food, friendly service and down-home ambience. It's the real thing, not like the ubiquitous… More >>
A place that's charming for its lack of charm, with décor, menus and prices that make you certain somebody stopped updating things when the San Fernando Valley still had orange groves, Bobby's Coffee Shop is a great breakfast for the cash. And the time-machine feel is worth the 20-minute early–Saturday morning drive to the far west San Fernando Valley from… More >>
Circa 1900, legendary filmmaker D.W. Griffith built what is currently known as Silver Lake restaurant and club El Cid. Years later he used the venue to screen his highly controversial Birth of a Nation. Rumor has it moviegoers were charged two bucks to see the flick, an outrageous price in those days, so you can imagine what those same audiences… More >>
There's something satisfying about diving into a plate of sausage and biscuits — surely an entire day's worth of calories judging by the sheer number of biscuits alone — first thing in the morning. Even more so on a Saturday morning at Snug Harbor when you're surrounded by egg-white-omelet types (still glistening from their 25-mile bike ride), who can't help… More >>
Ride the Angels Flight Railway 298 feet over the steep slope between Hill and Olive streets for 25 cents a turn while consuming a giant mango-beet-cauliflower juice from Tropical Zone and a Jose Chiquito taco the size of two burritos from Grand Central Market. The total expenditure for such an adventure comes to about $5. At the market, people on… More >>
Polly's Coffee is a slice of Northern Europe plunked down into the set of Prairie Home Companion, by way of Vermont. This place doesn't fool around when it comes to a cuppa java. The woody, homespun interior features an imported German Probat LNIS coffee roaster, which can roast up to 30 pounds of beans at a time. Polly's also has… More >>
Everybody knows who makes the best French dip in town. It's Cole's, which serves a chopped-and-channeled version of the venerable sandwich in L.A.'s oldest restaurant. Or it's Philippe's, the sawdust-floored diner that also claims to have invented the sandwich. But if you like gravy with a little heft to it, gravy that will stick to the ceiling if you want… More >>
This charming Spanish hacienda estate and olive-processing plant, open to hungry visitors since 1894, offers free tours and gobs of mouthwatering Graber olives for sampling and sale. The best time to go is late fall or early winter, when the packing process is in full swing. Unlike other brands, Graber's olives are pitted only when they're completely ripe, and some… More >>
You might think crêpes are spongy, sweetly wholesome alternate-universe pancakes. But after witnessing La Petite Crêperie's attention to detail and loyalty to the preparation, you will change your mind. What's more, the lemonade isn't sweet — it tastes like lemon instead of Yellow No. 5 — the espresso is exemplary enough that by default it becomes that legendary drink "expresso,"… More >>
Scottish writer Robert Burns introduced the character of Tam O'Shanter in a poem in 1790, and the term has since come to be associated with a voluminous Scottish-style wool hat worn by men. It's also the name of a historic tavern in Atwater Village, and after Lawrence Frank and Walter Van de Kamp opened the Tam O'Shanter Restaurant and Pub… More >>
Eating with one's hands can be messy, but it's also extremely sultry, especially when you're sitting on satin pillows and a voluptuous torso is undulating in front of you. Of course, sheiks and the gals from the last Sex and the City movie know what that's like, but if you don't plan to make the all-day flight to an Arabian… More >>
Founded in 1937 by Loyal Adelbert Damon, Damon's Steak House endures among few remaining relics of classic Glendale. Many human relics of the neighborhood have been dining there for 40 to 50 years. The island decor began with a palm tree in the original dining room, saw the addition of a tropical artifact here and there, and eventually three aquariums,… More >>
The deity to worship at SugarFISH is not the holy mackerel but the holy albacore. As part of the "Trust Me" combination set, it arrives after the tuna sashimi, and before the halibut, at the beginning of the meal while you're still hungry enough to eat a whale. Butter-smooth, SugarFISH's albacore is a fish so tender it must never have… More >>
I know many purists who will not order gyoza, serene in the conviction that any restaurant dumpling cannot compare to those they make (or their mothers make) in their own kitchens. But it would be a shame to forgo the gyoza at Daikokuya, that insanely popular Japanese noodle palace where you can find excellent ramen, possibly better rice bowls and… More >>
You're craving flesh: bloody ligaments marbled with fat, woven with lesser-known threads of connective tissue and un-sucky karma. You want it grass-fed, you want it free-range, you want it fresh, raw, kosher, resting in peace and blessed by whirling, twirling dervishes who sacrificed Animal X's well-lived life with conscious intention while the Aquarian moon was full and fat, and the… More >>
Tiki Ti may be diminutive, but the drinks and atmosphere are anything but. With its 90 different concoctions to choose from and décor brimming with tropical tchotchkes, entering this little shack can be overwhelming, to say the least. Add to that the bounteous boozy body bunches and giddy smokers (a loophole in the law regarding owner-operated-and-staffed establishments allows them to… More >>