Jonathan Gold And Michelle Huneven

In the South, a New Year’s bowl of hoppin’ john, black-eyed peas simmered with rice, guarantees a happy and prosperous new year. In New Orleans, red beans and rice is a sacrament on New Year’s Day, also on Mondays. Will gallo pinto, moros y cristianos or plain old arroz y......

Chichén Itzá. Chichén Itzá, a small counter restaurant in a communal mercado south of downtown, is the most serious Yucatecan restaurant in town at the moment, its menu a living, habanero chile–intensive thesaurus of the panuchos and codzitos, sopa de lima and papadzules, banana-leaf tamales and shark casseroles that make......

Border Grill. Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger don’t re-define Mexican food; they just prepare it well, transforming the taco, the tostada, the homely chile relleno — here a freshly roasted poblano crammed with Mexican cheese and fried in an egg-batter crisp and lacy as the coating on tempura shrimp......

Ambala Dhaba. On a stretch of Westwood Boulevard thick with student coffeehouses and Iranian hair salons, Ambala Dhaba is an outpost of the Punjab, a branch of a restaurant on Artesia’s Little India strip noted for its fiery goat curries and the boiled-milk ice cream called kulfi. It’s probably the......

Koi. It is widely believed that the post-Matsuhisa-style cuisine at Koi is an afterthought, that the avocado-laden tuna tartare on crispy won tons, the tuna sashimi with jalapeño, and the infamous albacore Italiano are secondary to the rush, the scene, even the steak. Many of the customers are impossibly good-looking,......

Baby Blues Bar-B-Q. There have been gun battles fought in the Carolinas between partisans of mustard-based barbecue sauce and those who prefer their pork doused with vinegar. Certain barbecue cooks in beef-loving Texas would just as soon throw your mother-in-law on the grill as a pork rib. But Baby Blues......

Beacon. An Asian café conveniently located in the middle of Culver City’s new gallery district, Beacon marks the triumphant return to form of Kazuto Matsusaka, who was chef for almost a decade at Wolfgang Puck’s Chinois in the ’80s. You’d probably never find anything like Matsusaka’s salad of perfectly ripe......

Art’s Delicatessen. Pastrami guys come and pastrami guys go, but what remains constant is the ancient secret of the Wedge, which is to say the time-honored configuration of bread and mustard and meat that makes an ordinarily overstuffed delicatessen sandwich look like a sandwich that could eat you for lunch......