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• Best Afternoon Tea

  Langham Huntington Hotel

  Augustus Gloop would never make it out alive. What makes Pasadena's Langham Huntington Hotel the best choice for afternoon tea can be summed up in one word: chocolate. On Sundays from noon to 5 p.m., the hotel's regular tea service, smashing in itself, is replaced by an all-chocolate afternoon tea. The selection of savory tea sandwiches, scones with Devonshire cream,… More >>

• Best Hotter 'n Hell Pizza

  Lucifers

  If you like life on the dark side, you'll love pizza from Lucifers, a tiny storefront that could be easily overlooked if it weren't for the orange flames painted on the façade. There, you can customize the heat/spice intensity of your pizza by specifying zero, medium, fiery or blazing. But watch out: Blazing necessitates keeping a pitcher of ice water… More >>

• Best Old-Fashioned Taco Sauce

  Taco Lita

  Without the kick to qualify as hot sauce, the tomato-based, sugary-yet-smoky topping that is the staple flavor of this decades-old gringo taco joint is simply "taco sauce," given in generous handfuls of packets with every order and even sold separately for the condiment's numerous cult followers. Taco Lita, the retro stand, is a slice of Americana: bright colors, cheerful servers,… More >>

• Best Buy-It-Before-It-Expires Deals

  Fresh and Easy

  Fresh and Easy markets have popped up all over Southern California. Promising fresh, wholesome food and a quicker shopping experience than a typical supermarket, they offer a wide selection of groceries and prepared meals. Their most notable offering is the "Today's Specials" section, which stocks items about to hit their sell-by date at prices up to 50 percent off. Stop… More >>

• Best Giant Pizza for Under $20

  Caruso's Pizza

  A great pizza is a work of art. And a great pizza for under $20? A masterpiece. The Pizza a la Andro at Caruso's is a masterpiece. Named after one of the owner's sons (son Lucas also has his own), the Pizza a la Andro comes only in "giant" size: 16 inches across, producing 12 decent-size slices. Its chewy, medium-thick… More >>

• Best Kosher Sushi

  Cambridge Farms Market

  Never run into Cambridge Farms Market in a tiny tank dress on a Friday to pick up delicious sushi and some baba ghanoush for your dinner party. Orthodox women will stare you down, Orthodox men will run from you; either way you will feel shamed. (Believe me; I know.) This is the freshest and best grocery-store sushi around, with kosher… More >>

• Best Everything Brunch

  Malibu Cafe at Calamigos Ranch

  I hate sharing this place, I really do. I am sitting outside at Malibu Cafe at Calamigos Ranch on a beautiful Southern California Sunday listening to a great band and arguing over who gets to go next at the shuffleboard table. I gaze at the romantic chandeliers hanging from the trees and the cozy couches dotting the scenery while the… More >>

• Best Coffee Shop for People Watching

  Paper or Plastik

  Paper or Plastik is the labor of love of Anya and Yasha Michelson, the husband-and-wife team who also own the adjacent Mimoda Dance studio. A bright, beautifully designed, artfully deconstructed, loftlike space, the café has an airy serenity that attracts a mix of grad students, boho freelancers and cute screenwriter boys, who may or may not be there primarily to… More >>

• Best L.A. Story With Matzo Brei

  Nat's Early Bite

  Nat's Early Bite anchors a slightly-nicer-than-mediocre mid-Valley corner strip mall, but walk inside and you immediately know it's a big step above ordinary. A spacious, down-home restaurant with just enough stripped-down country kitsch to give it that "authentic city diner" feel, Nat has two big selling points: near-perfect comfort food and an easy vibe. There's also a great backstory: Over… More >>

• Best Hawaiian Pig-Out

  King's Hawaiian

  While not everyone has the money or time to fly to the Aloha State for the sweet Pacific breezes and sun-warmed surf, most anyone can drive to King's Hawaiian in Torrance for a taste of Hawaii. South Bay denizens and Hawaiian food fans from farther afield flock to King's bakery and restaurant to delight in its saimin noodles, char siu,… More >>

• Best Place for Italian, New Jersey-Style

  Mario's

  In this age of Osteria Mozza and Giada Di Laurentiis, old-school Italian-American food has taken a backseat to authentic Tuscan, Piedmontese, Neapolitan and so on. But sometimes, especially if you're from the East Coast, you want that familiar version of Italian that you grew up with, things like a huge, hearty, filling Italian sub made with meat and cheese on… More >>

• Best Lebanese Breakfast Pastries

  Vrej

  Take a soft, warm bun rolled in sesame seeds, split it open, fill with melty sweet mozzarella-style cheese with a golden brown farina crust, douse with rosewater syrup, wrap it in paper, and you have breakfast-treat heaven with countless variations on its name: knefe, kanefeh, kunafah, künefe, kanafeh, kunfah, kataifi, kadaifi, kadayf, kadaif, knafeh bjebn. At Vrej, a Lebanese bakery… More >>

• Best Mumbai Street Food

  Mumbai Ki Galliyon Se

  Eateries in Artesia's Little India offer a rich and broad variety of South Asian cuisine. But none surpasses Mumbai Ki Galliyon Se for its authentic street food of Mumbai — that's Bombay to you English colonialist types. This simple, clean place in a strip mall has scrumptious dahi batata puri (a complexly flavored lentil-stuffed fried ball), dabeli (a spicy potato… More >>

• Best Gelato by Way of Denmark

  Paradis - CLOSED

  A recent international study concluded that Denmark is the "happiest" country on Earth. Maybe it has to do with the ice cream? In the late 1990s, Dane Thor Thoroe made a gelato pilgrimage to Rome, soaked up Italian ice cream expertise and returned to open a shop in his homeland in 2000. Selling gelato tweaked for the Scandinavian tongue, he… More >>

• Best Place to Chill With Red or White

  AzoVino Gift Gallery and Wine

  The word "wine," especially in such compound terms as wine bar, wine tasting or wine aficionado, can seem intimidating for those unschooled in the "vine arts." AzoVino Gift Gallery and Wine offers the perfect introduction for the grape-curious while simultaneously satisfying hard-core oenophiles. This modern/rustic, surprisingly spacious wine bar is all about unpretentious, relaxed fun, with knowledgeable bartenders and comfortable… More >>

• Best Smoked Fish

  Michel Cordon Bleu

  Michel Blanchet has all the markings of a pedigreed French chef, including a lingering Loire Valley accent and cherubic foie gras paunch. But the owner of Michel Cordon Bleu fell for the Scottish side of the hors d'oeuvres plate when he opened his Leimert Park smoked fish factory 15 years ago. That's no small protein defection for the former chef… More >>

• Best Dosa Night

  Woodlands Indian Cuisine

  Mention vegetarian food to most carnivores and the result is often a pained expression followed by a series of jokes about sawdust and paper. You need to get these people to Chatsworth. Woodlands Indian Cuisine features a South Indian lunch buffet and a large menu, but the real star here is on Wednesday nights, the Indo-Chinese Dosa Dinner Buffet. On… More >>

• Best Vegan Po' Boy Sandwich

  simplethings

  We like the general idea of a Po' Boy sandwich, typically interpreted as fried seafood on a French roll. But we crave an egalitarian, L.A.-ified version — one with more antioxidants and fewer calories that's still top-notch delicious. The Vegan Po' Boy at simplethings is just that. The $8.50 sandwich stars cornmeal-coated tofu, so it has the texture of a… More >>

• Best Bloody Mary

  Cole's

  A good Bloody Mary will cure your Sunday hangover, send a shock of vitamin C to your system and offer a glimpse into your future as a virile, vegetable-eating individual. Or at least the splash of vodka will make you feel like the latter. Cole's makes its day-altering Bloody Marys in-house. Created by Cole's bar manager, the Southern-raised Brent Falco,… More >>

• Best U.N. on a Plate

  House Cafe - CLOSED

  Leave it to the Turks to prove how well we really can all get along via a single plate of food. As perfected at House Cafe on Beverly Boulevard, the Turkish breakfast kahvalti has something for everyone, seemingly from every nearby country. The composed dish has small portions of French-style jam, Bulgarian feta, Greek yogurt, Turkish simit bread (a sesame-seeded… More >>

• Best Sip and Ye Shall Find

  Silverlake Wine

  Is Silverlake Wine a religion? Consider what makes it so: devoted followers, a weekly schedule and a straight-up welcoming-to-all philosophy of no pretension at this neighborhood wine shop that specializes in small-production boutique wineries. After eight years, Silverlake Wine tastings have a set ritual. Monday night is the most low-key: three wines, three cheeses and the added lure of the… More >>

• Best Flaming Dinner Gift

  Honey Pig

  There is a lot of Korean barbecue to eat in Los Angeles, and you've probably already decided which restaurant is your favorite. In fact, we think it's high time the city banished any residents who haven't formally declared their go-to galbi spot by now. Nonetheless, any healthy, committed relationship should leave room for experimentation with others. May we suggest —… More >>

• Best Craft Beer and BBQ Joint in the Valley

  Boneyard

  Boneyard owner Aaron Robbins makes some great fucking BBQ. We grew up in the birthplace of barbecue, North Carolina. Boneyard makes a pulled pork sandwich we'd be proud to take back home to Uncle Wilbur. Robbins hickory-smokes his meats for up to 18 hours or grills them over a live red oak fire. As we would say back home, "It's… More >>

• Best Joan's on Third That's Not Joan's on Third

  Charlie's Pantry

  Charlie's Pantry has taken over a formerly cursed restaurant space on Boulevard Le Ventura and turned it into a gleaming "Gourmet Eatery & Market." The place does a popular breakfast service. The eggs Benedict has a new legion of fans, and you can even get chive French toast with lox and creme fraiche. Or be like the French and have… More >>

• Best $3 Gourmet Pastry and Coffee Combo

  L.A. Baking Company

  You wouldn't expect to find a delicious and cheap wake-up off the 5 freeway at Broadway. A fleet of white Sprinter vans invokes the Helms trucks of yore, providing finer Southland establishments with wholesale a.m. bread delivery, from sun-dried tomato rounds, sourdough pagnotta and braided jalapeño olive to the more conventional pumpernickel, wheat and sourdough loaves. The only all-solar-powered bakery… More >>

• Best Punk-Rock Pastrami Dynasty

  Big Time Harvey's Big Time Sandwich - CLOSED

  What do insanely decadent and delicious slow-cooked meat, punk rock and the Fisher-Price Laugh & Learn Farm have in common? Nothing but Big Time Harvey's Big Time Sandwich, the newest adventure in self-reinvention by Matty Goodman, known to many from his career in styling, and to more still from his leadership of kick-ass punk band Soccermom but to surprisingly few… More >>

• Best Pisco Cocktail at a Non-Peruvian Restaurant

  Eveleigh's Pisco Punch

  It's no surprise when a Peruvian restaurant rolls out a slew of Pisco-based cocktails, but with the South American grape brandy in vogue these days, it's turning up at better-turned–out bars all over the city. At Eveleigh, an unexpectedly charming bar on the tackiest, most touristy stretch of the Sunset Strip, it's key to the sturdy Pisco Punch. "Punch" can… More >>

• Best Legs That Won't Quit

  The Castaway

  First let's get our terminology straight. By "brunch," we don't mean precious, prix-fixe plates of nouvelle cuisine at Champagne prices. The only thing haute about The Castaway is its incomparable altitude. We're talking the mother of all-you-can-eat weekend smorgasbords — yes, with complementary bubbly. This weekend brunch is for connoisseurs of quantity, not quality. Request the Valley View Terrace. As… More >>

• Best Dessert That Doesn't Call You the Next Morning

  Jar's Butterscotch Pudding

  Delightful, charming, playfully luscious — and since I am so in love with this dessert, I'm not ashamed to say it truly made me swoon. The acclaimed butterscotch pudding at Jar really doesn't need any more fanfare — and it knows it, the way it sits so smug and haughty in its rather cafeteria-style rocks glass; you're forgiven if you… More >>

• Best Choreographed Dining Experience

  Bottega Louie

  The service doesn't just hop at Bottega Louie. It skips, jumps and pirouettes, as a platoon of nattily dressed servers, runners, ballet-slippered hostesses and suited managers race across the marble floors. The energetic staff has a professional attitude and actual skills, both old school and uncommon to experience. No question about how all that crowd-pleasing cuisine flies out of the… More >>

• Best Thing You Will Want Immediately After Reading This

  Coffee Commissary

  Coffee or ice cream? The eternal question asked weekday afternoons around 3 p.m. by office denizens torn between their gluttony and their narcolepsy. Affogato offers the best of both worlds. Traditionally, it's a shot of espresso poured over vanilla ice cream, but Coffee Commissary amps it up by using Coolhaus' Guinness ice cream, a rich, malty blend flecked with shavings… More >>

• Best Vegetable Candy

  La Zamorana Mexican Candies

  If you've eaten those garnet-hued camote (sweet potato) nuggets and amber chunks of candied calabaza (squash) at local dulcerias, chances are they're from East L.A.'s La Zamorana. Since 1957, this tiny, family-run factory has been churning out the authentic Mexican candies you wish your abuela still stashed in your lunch sack. Founder José Mendez immigrated to Los Angeles from Zamora… More >>

• Best Frito Pie Served in the Bag

  Comal

  There is a staple of liquor stores, street fairs, school cafeterias and tailgate parties in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma (but not so much in Los Angeles) that involves a snack-sized bag of Fritos, a heaping ladle of Hormel chili and maybe some Day-Glo orange cheese shreds. Then there's the Frito Pie in a Bag you can get at Comal,… More >>

• Best Bread Pudding Party

  Schulzies Bread Pudding

  Think of your favorite ice cream flavor. It probably comes in bread pudding form. But Schulzies Bread Pudding on the Venice Boardwalk doesn't just stop at Blessed Banana Split. It has All-American Bacon Maple, Oh-La-La Orange Saffron and Trail Mix Fix, as well as the exclamatory Chai Tea for Me! and Candied Yam, Yes I Am! Not to mention a… More >>

• Best Massive Hong Kong Cafe Menu

  JR Cafe

  In the San Gabriel Valley, menus often top three digits, and if one is at a Hong Kong–style cafe, the number continues into the stratosphere from there: 225, 231, 241 ... which brings us to the JR Cafe, where the dinner menu consists of 295 items. That's right, 295! Something for everyone: surf and turf combos (New York steak and… More >>

• Best Warehouse Pizza

  Eatalian Cafe

  Keep chewing. Close your eyes and the scene is clear: You're eating pizza in Bologna, a softly lit neighborhood haunt, where in the corner rests a majestic oven built from the soil of Mount Vesuvius. Open your eyes and the illusion disappears: You're eating at Eatalian Cafe, in a cavernous warehouse in Gardena, white walls and steel mozzarella cheese machines… More >>

• Best Contrarian Brewery

  Nibble Bit Tabby - CLOSED

  When every other brewery in town is making hopped-up IPAs, you can be certain it's the one beer you won't find in the tanks at Nibble Bit Tabby. Other brewers cater to the established thirst of craft-beer fans. Brian Lethcoe seems doggedly intent on pleasing himself. Located in the still-unglamorous gut of south downtown's tittie-bar district, Nibble Bit Tabby isn't… More >>

• Best Local Limoncello

  Ventura Limoncello

  It's not difficult to make your own limoncello, as Ventura Limoncello's husband-and-wife owners James and Manuela Carling are quick to point out. But if you proclaim yours — and please, not Danny DeVito's eponymous version — the best in SoCal, we will declare you one shot over the cuckoo's nest. Ventura Limoncello's version is the sort of mesmerizing elixir that… More >>

• Best Soul Food Menu at a Non-Soul Food Restaurant

  The Foundry's Bluesy Tuesdays

  Chef Eric Greenspan once said of his food, "I'm a down-home guy who happens to roam at a high-end level." It makes sense, then, that he's found a way to take a simple soul food menu and gussy it up a little in honor of Bluesy Tuesdays, the Foundry on Melrose's weekly blues and Southern rock jam session. There is,… More >>

• Best Crispy Catfish

  Ganda Siamese Cuisine

  Most good fried food is crispy. But crispy catfish at Ganda Siamese Cuisine is an entirely different fried animal: not really crispy at all. The fish is sliced up and fried past an inch of its life and covered in a fiery red paste full of galangal, chiles and Kaffir lime leaves, becoming a chewy, crunchy, pungent catfish jerky, more… More >>

• Best Bakery That Might Have Been Named by Nabokov

  La Monarca

  Were he alive and living in Los Angeles today, writer, poet, synesthete and — lest we forget — lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov might have been found at La Monarca. Named for the Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), whose annual migration (as VN would know) takes it from Michoacán to Northern California, La Monarca churns out dozens of fresh Mexican pastries on a… More >>

• Best Old-School Shrimp Scampi

  Colombo's Italian Steakhouse

  From the outside, Colombo's Italian Steakhouse in Eagle Rock looks like a shingle-topped former car wash, exuding zero charm and even less style. Inside, the place shows promise, sporting enough padded red leather for a whorehouse. Open since 1954, it seems slyly designed to weaken your cultural defenses, lulling you into jettisoning the Dwell magazine attitude, ordering a stiff drink… More >>

• Best Thing to Come Out of a Clamshell Since Venus

  Playa - CLOSED

  John Rivera Sedlar makes tamales that seem lighter than air, and at Playa he offers a particularly playful and visually stunning version. A Chilean humita steamed with Baja surf clams, it's coated in a pungent green sauce of chives and Fresno chiles, then steamed and served in a giant clamshell. Botticelli ain't got nothing on this. With his aesthetic rigor,… More >>

• Best Do-It-Yourself Takeout

  Chego - CLOSED

  The first time you order to go at Chego and the cashier directs you to a rectangular holding cell near the kitchen, it's sort of befuddling. You survey the piles of napkins, sheets of tinfoil and biodegradable cardboard lids and think, "WTF?" The policy of having a customer bundle up her own takeout seems to flunk a Gilbrethian time-motion efficiency… More >>

• Best Sandwich Shop That Looks Like a Gas Station

  Banh Mi My Tho

  Sure, the San Gabriel Valley is home to countless strip-mall banh mi joints, and Banh Mi My Tho is no different. Almost. Walk inside this tiny, shiny Vietnamese sandwich shop, and you'll think you've been transported not to Vietnam but maybe the best gas station convenience store ever. On your right, boxed green tea peeks out from stacked cardboard boxes.… More >>

• Best Spanish Churros

  Churros Calientes

  Smaller, thinner and more delicate than their Mexican counterparts, Spanish-style churros aren't easy to find in Los Angeles. Done as well as the ones at Churros Calientes, they're not easy to find anywhere. Modeled after the cafés of Madrid, the minuscule shop next to the Royal Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard boasts baskets of petite churros, still hot from the… More >>

• Best Mexican Churros

  La Casita Mexicana

  Water, sugar, flour, butter, vanilla and cinnamon. There's nothing particularly unique or spectacular about the ingredients for their churros, yet La Casita Mexicana chefs Jaime Martin Del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu transform one of the most popular Mexican desserts into a sublime treat. Piped into 3-inch segments, they're deep-fried, filled with Jalisco-style cajeta and dusted with more cinnamon and sugar.… More >>

• Best Flight of Tacos

  Guisados' Taco Sampler

  If you are the type of person who looks at a menu and hems and haws and parses and analyzes and reconsiders, please, for the sake of the friends who must witness this agonizing display of indecision and self-doubt, let Guisados save you the trouble. The Boyle Heights eatery, famed for the braised and stewed stuffings that fill its tacos,… More >>

• Best After-Dinner Drink

  Bar Toscana

  Sometimes it's necessary to skip dessert and go for an after-dinner drink, preferably in a neighborhood where you won't be looking over your shoulder. Located in sleepy Brentwood, Bar Toscana offers — along with its charming Italian staff — an imaginative cocktail list helmed by beverage director Francesco Lafranconi. All of the drinks are worth mooning over, but it's the… More >>

• Best Nuclear Cheese Bread

  Smoke House

  The welcoming caress of the round red leather booths, martinis so potent they come with sidecars, a menu that seems largely unchanged since 1946 — there's very little that's modern about Burbank's Smoke House. Thankfully, that includes the cheese bread. The bright orange hue makes it look like it's been coated with radioactive fallout from Chernobyl, but the intense flavor… More >>

• Best Thai Appetizers With a Surfer Side

  Cholada Thai Beach Cuisine

  Some might find Cholada Thai Beach Cuisine in Malibu too terminally atmospheric, with its sea-corroded beach-hut ambience, thick oak tables and sagging wooden windows, situated next door to a working bait shop straight out of Gilligan's Island. But this isn't a façade for tourists, it's real. You sit a few feet from Pacific Coast Highway, watching surfers as they strip,… More >>

• Best Lowlifes and Thai Food

  Thai Angel - CLOSED

  There are plenty of restaurants for your after-hours Thai food needs in L.A., from Sanamluang to Nariya and more. But there's really only one place for Thai food and a party, sometimes until 5 a.m. That would be Thai Angel, a dark hole-in-a-mall that comes alive with riffraff from the bars after 2 a.m. It would be easy to say… More >>

• Best Late-Night Jolt

  LA Mill Coffee

  LA Mill Coffee always was ahead of the curve. It was here, mind you, perfecting its coffee roast in Alhambra well before a certain Chicago roaster went West, and it was using pour-over cones and siphon filters while ripples of the third wave of coffee were barely reaching the city's shores. Now, even in the midst of L.A.'s long-overdue coffee… More >>

• Best Movie Theater Samosa

  Naz 8

  Admittedly, there is little competition (read: none at all) in this absurdly specific category, but no other theater offers a savory snack as hearty or satisfying as Naz 8. These potato-filled dumplings won't stand up to the best Indian fare Artesia has to offer, but between the stale popcorn of most megaplexes and the overpriced foreign cookies of certain indie-theater… More >>

• Best Fancy French Cookies of the Moment

  Euro Pane Bakery

  With all due respect to Bottega Louie's bright little gems and Lette's fancy Beverly Hills creations, the best macarons for your money (and these are some pricey French cookies) come from Euro Pane Bakery, located across the street from Paseo Colorado. They're about twice the size of a regular macaron, so you could in theory purchase fewer, were they not… More >>

• Best of the Wurst

  Berlin Currywurst

  What a strange blessing that Los Angeles now has enough German sausage shops to spark a crosstown currywurst rivalry. Berlin Currywurst kicked off the trend's local manifestation, introducing Angelenos to the previously unknown pleasures of Germany's ubiquitous street food: grilled and sliced sausage drenched in curried ketchup. The mix-and-match menu of eight sausages and four flavored ketchups allows for continual… More >>

• Best Korean Shaved Ice

  Hwa Sun Ji Tea and Coffee

  Lost in the smoky haze of cigarettes and Korean BBQ that envelops much of Koreatown is the most civilized, most quiet, most splendidly restful tea shop in town, where straw mats hang from the ceiling, separating tables, where chairs are covered in pillows and where lanterns are strewn throughout the room, a patchwork of gentle light. And on every table… More >>

• Best Playlist With Your Morning Coffee

  Cafecito Organico

  Sick of the hipster elitism of Silver Lake coffee shops, where no one has a day job but everyone has a chip on their shoulder? Cafecito Organico on Heliotrope is the perfect alternative. Right next to L.A. City College, it has the pretentious coffee — a rich, artisanal roast — with none of the other stifling coffee shop pretensions. It's… More >>

• Best Mobile Ice Cream Bar

  Longboard's

  The frozen treats on the surf-inspired Longboard's truck start life as simple ice cream bars in one of eight common flavors, such as chocolate, coconut, strawberry and mango. After you order, that's when the magic happens. The ice cream bars are drizzled with curlicues of thick caramel, hand-dipped in Ghirardelli milk chocolate and sprinkled with chopped nuts, coconut flakes, crushed… More >>

• Best Cocktails to Set Your Mouth on Fire

  Las Perlas

  If there were a sixth taste, one that came after the elusive umami, it might be named Yrastorza after Las Perlas' manager. Inspired by both his taste for tequila and his Filipino roots, Raul Yrastorza's cocktails are characterized by ingredients like fresh curry leaves, cumin, mole, smoky chipotle and jalapeño juice. The result of his flavor play is a surprising… More >>

• Best D.I.Y. Pig's Foot Feast

  Jangchung-Dong Restaurant

  Glistening under soy-glazed skin, slices exposing alternating layers of rosy meat, creamy fat and opaque gelatin, pig's foot at Koreatown's Jangchung-Dong Wong Jokbal arrives to the table on a silver platter, looking like a prop from the feast scene of a Robin Hood movie. One look at the slices tumbling over each other like pig dominoes, resting on gigantic bones,… More >>

• Best Campfire Dogs (You Don't Have to Grill Yourself)

  Adam's Pack Station

  Food truck lines for gourmet dogs and pulled pork sandwiches got you down? Head on up to Adam's Pack Station on weekends for striking mountain views, juicy charbroiled campfire hot dogs, "Kick-Ass burgers" (so dubbed in honor of the station's four-legged residents) and a cool, cheap bottle of beer. Quite possibly the last year-round pack station of its kind in… More >>

• Best Mexican Ice Cream

  Mateo's Ice Cream & Fruit Bars

  Concealed, as so many L.A. gems are, in our ubiquitous strip malls, Mateo's Ice Cream & Fruit Bars is a small, stunningly colored ice cream shop that dishes out paletas, jugos and house-made gelados in a stunning array of flavors. Try tamarind, guanabana or smoky leche quemada (burnt milk), which tastes like the burnt caramel top on crème brûlée, if… More >>

• Best Expensive Biscuit (Half) Sandwich

  Animal

  Chefs Vinny Dotolo and Jon Shook have committed the ultimate French offense: They placed foie gras on a biscuit. The result is an oral ecstasy that's a twist on the biscuits and gravy these Floridians savored as kids. The cold slice of Canadian foie gras is liberally salted and caramelized and tastes so decadent, you'd think it's poele, the Gallic… More >>

• Best Mobile Dominican Food

  Lidia's Dominican Kitchen

  Every week seems to bring a new and ever more gimmicky food truck. Lidia's Dominican Kitchen is no pretender. Chef Lidia Ramirez ran a catering company for years, and her pork pernil is a thing of beauty. Tender and fragrant, it's pork shoulder roasted low and slow with plenty of citrus and garlic. If you want more kick, throw on… More >>

• Best Pancakes in a Supermarket Parking Lot

  Koo's Ho-tteok Cart

  "I know the perfect dessert place in K-Town." Armed with knowledge of Koo's Ho-tteok Cart, these are magic words for a 20-something on a date. In a city full of faceless, members-only bars and superclubs, there's something especially sweet about waiting in the cold outside a Korean supermarket for a piping-hot pancake wrapped in a paper plate. Here the ho-tteok,… More >>

• Best Low-Rent Loco Moco

  Aloha Cafe

  The dudes from Animal get credit for crowning loco moco with foie gras and a quail egg, but long before Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo gentrified this humble dish, it was a staple of Hawaiian cuisine. A mountain of white rice covered with hamburger patties, grilled onions, eggs and lots of brown gravy, loco moco is a starchy, meaty, hearty… More >>

• Best Farmers Market Coffee Stand

  Longshot Coffee

  Want to know how to disarm even the snootiest barista? Ask him to make you a flat white. Chances are, his carelessly but carefully groomed handlebar mustache will quiver as he, flummoxed, suggests — nay, informs you — that what you really want is a latte. Skip all that pretension and order a flat white from the proper source: Longshot… More >>

• Best Eclectic Breakfast by the Beach

  Martha's 22nd Street Grill

  I live in the South Bay, and I have some pretty specific breakfast-spot criteria: by the beach (why is this so hard to get in Southern California?); serves real coffee, i.e., espresso; and serves real breakfast food (there goes Starbucks). Martha's 22nd Street Grill is my answer. I can sit at a table, looking at the palm trees and the… More >>

• Best Creative Use of Coffee

  Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Co.

  The shmears are solid and the bagels are better than good — thick, chewy and dense, like doing a math problem with your teeth — but the real innovations at Original Brooklyn Water Bagel Co. are the frozen coffee cubes. On a scorching 100-degree day, when your iced coffee demands as much frozen matter as it does liquid, who wants… More >>

• Best Pavlova

  Hatfield's

  Unstoppable force, meet the immovable object; or so we believed when we saw that pastry chef Karen Hatfield put a chocolate mint frozen pavlova on her dessert menu. Coming from one direction is perhaps the most talented, precise and intelligent pastry chef in town. Coming from the other is sweetened egg whites. But while pavlova isn't normally thrilling, Hatfield's isn't… More >>

• Best Soda Fountain

  Jerry's Soda Shoppe

  Where most "old-timey" ice cream parlors seem like self-conscious simulacra of some Norman Rockwell fantasy, Jerry's Soda Shoppe at the De Soto Pharmacy feels unspoiled by kitsch. Tucked between a wall of vintage Life magazines and rows of blunt yet evocative ointments like Corn Husker's Lotion, everything at Jerry's — the sundaes, the shakes, the banana splits, the ice cream… More >>

• Best White Pizza

  Paoli's Pizzeria & Piano Bar

  These days, "white pizza" is no more than a pie sans red sauce — neither inventive nor worthy of consuming unless you have a tomato allergy. If you want white done right, dive into the decadently creamy-delicious Alfredo Pizza at Paoli's Pizzeria & Piano Bar. This all began 28 years ago when owner Chairon Miller went a little crazy in… More >>

• Best Moutardes

  Monsieur Marcel's Gourmet Market

  Wander the aisles of Monsieur Marcel's Gourmet Market and you can't help but notice that owner Stephane Strouk has stocked his shelves with the best of everything: vinaigrettes, chocolates, oils, pates, relishes, dried beans, you name it. Strouk's life purpose is to taste rare and wonderful foods the world over, then bring them to his shop in the Original Farmers… More >>

• Best Belly-Dancing Brunch

  Burger Continental

  Most people don't realize what's behind the doors of Burger Continental in Pasadena. Not only is the restaurant's name painfully generic, it hardly describes the vibe inside — or the food, for that matter. This charming hideaway comes with a sprawling patio that looks a little like the Enchanted Tiki Room at Disneyland. Burger Continental specializes in pita sandwiches, kebabs,… More >>

• Best Craft Beer at a Tapas Restaurant

  Mediterraneo

  Since 2003, one of the hottest hangs on Hermosa's thriving Pier Avenue bar and restaurant scene has been "Med." With an inviting indoor bar and dining room, but an even better outdoor patio for bikini- and board-short-clad people-watching, Mediterraneo was an immediate local hit for the killer tapas featuring Spanish, Italian, French and Greek inspirations and its extensive 30 wines-by-the-glass… More >>

• Best Brewery Happy Hour Not in a Bar

  Eagle Rock Brewery

  From the outside, Eagle Rock Brewery, hidden on a drab side street in a mostly industrial stretch of Atwater Village, hardly qualifies as having ambience. It certainly isn't a bar. Yet the brewery's diminutive tasting room has, in the past year, become an indispensable neighborhood watering hole. The credit goes to owners Jeremy Raub, his father, Steve, and his wife,… More >>

• Best Lubricated Boccie

  Tin Roof Bistro

  When is the last time you got your drink on and played with someone else's balls? Unless it was last night, we highly recommend you head to the asphalt jungle, uh, Manhattan Village Mall, where you will find a little bit of Napa/Sonoma hiding along the outer circle. Tin Roof Bistro, a lovely restaurant and bar wedged between PCH and… More >>

• Best Snob-Free Place to Down a Microbrew

  Beer Belly

  We're glad that beer has gained some respect since the time, 16 years ago, we first stepped foot in the late Cafe Muse in West L.A. and discovered then-rare microbrewery ales (raspberry, peach) on tap. But perhaps it has gone a little too far when people talk about the terroir of hops and the spirits-like aging process of some "sours."… More >>

• Best Craft Beer Bar in L.A.

  Beachwood BBQ and Brewing

  Twenty-four guest beers rotate. Julian Shrago brews 12 excellent in-house beers and charges less for these beers because there's no shipping. Beachwood BBQ and Brewing recently hosted its annual Sourfest with a list so good some beer geeks took vacation days so as not to miss any gems. Owner/chef Gabe Gordon puts on beer-pairing dinners with brewers who are the… More >>

• Best and Fleshiest Happy Hour

  Saddle Peak Lodge

  First of all, where else can you get rabbit confit tacos, or wild boar rillette, for $9 at happy hour? Saddle Peak Lodge, the Southern California region's most atmospheric restaurant specializing in game meat, has a kick-ass bar for carnivores. This richly appointed meat eater's lodge — set among sage and pines in the Santa Monica Mountains near Malibu Canyon… More >>

• Best Meeting Place to Question Authority

  El Tacazo

  Even before the Los Angeles Times investigation into Bell City Manager Robert Rizzo's million-dollar salary led to the arrest of Rizzo and his seven alleged conspirators, the 90 percent Latino population needed a place to organize to reclaim their town. El Tacazo, a bright, family-owned Mexican restaurant, was that haven for the Bell Residents Club. And once City Hall was… More >>

• Best Place for a Tipsy Picnic

  Malibu Family Wines

  You know how shrinks tell you to go to your "happy place"? Imagine an open field, the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, and you're in a state of complete calm. That pretty much sums up this spot, except add lots and lots of wine. Malibu Family Wines is nestled high above the town's beaches, where it always seems… More >>

• Best View From a Sidewalk Cafe at Twilight

  Un Solo Sol

  Nothing says "Fuck you, New York" like a crepuscular pupusa in December. Un Solo Sol, a Pan-American restaurant on the Boyle Heights bluff across the street from the Mariachi Plaza Gold Line Station, serves up succulent, vegetarian-friendly dishes from Central and South America, including the genial owner's native El Salvador. Wash them down with any of the delicious aguas frescas,… More >>

• Best Birthday Cake (From Chinatown, Jake)

  Phoenix Bakery

  L.A.'s a relatively young town, but we have our traditions. And they reflect our diversity: El Cholo for a family reunion. Zankou Chicken take-home for a new roommate. After-hours karaoke in Koreatown to celebrate a big account with the boss. Few Angeleno traditions are older than a birthday cake from Phoenix Bakery, founded in 1938 and the longest-surviving such business… More >>