Tomorrow you'll be able, finally, to pick up this year's edition of the Weekly's 99 Essential Restaurants. After which, of course, you can start from the top, alphabetically (yes, all the A's are included this time), or just close your eyes and stick a chopstick to see where to start eating. Lucky you. Here's a little preview of Jonathan Gold's introduction, just to get you even hungrier than you already were, I suppose:

When is a restaurant not a restaurant? It's not a rhetorical question, actually, not this year. I really don't know. Because just as parts of Los Angeles have become familiar, through the miracle of film, as suburban Connecticut, the African jungle, Gotham City and a Korean battlefield circa 1954, to the point that it is impossible to go to the actual DMZ and not be a little disappointed that it doesn't look enough like the Malibu hills, some of the most interesting Los Angeles restaurants at the moment are as illusory as light on a screen.

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