Jonathan Gold

Heavy Noodling Heavy Noodling specializes in the sort of strands 100 generations of Chinese chefs have regarded with horror: thick, clumsy noodles that run somewhere between spaetzle and pappardelle, self-consciously rustic things that taste mainly of themselves, whether fried with mixed seafood and lots of garlic or immersed with tendon......

Photo by Anne FishbeinNO MATTER HOW ASSIDUOUSLY YOU MAY FOLLOW the Chinese restaurant scene in the San Gabriel Valley, it is astonishing how easy it is to find a place that serves not just an unusual dish or two, but a whole new cuisine, a down-home Taiwanese breakfast menu, say,......

Antojitos Denise's Denise's is a small, sweet taco stand whose customer base consists largely of people waiting at the bus stop right in front. A caricature of Denise is painted on one wall, and if you poke your head into the takeout window, occasionally there's Denise herself, chopping meat, working......

Photo by Anne FishbeinTHE BEST RESTAURANT IN TOWN? WHO KNOWS? AND reasonable minds may disagree on which restaurant offers the best value per dollar spent. But Lu's Garden is hands down the fastest restaurant in Los Angeles County, a Taiwanese porridge café where your food magically appears at the table......

Photo by Anne Fishbein LOS ANGELES, IT IS WELL KNOWN, IS THE WORLD capital of the burrito. Like the giant bowls of spaghetti and meatballs prepared a century ago by immigrants translating Italian poverty cooking into the bright, vulgar language of new American prosperity, the burrito transforms the humble taco......

Photo by Anne FishbeinWHEN THE SECRET HISTORY OF CALIFORNIA PIZZA IS finally written, a greasy volume inscribed in arugula, white truffle oil and ripe goat cheese, the name popping up at every inconvenient moment, like a hard-boiled egg inadvertently stirred into a tomato sauce, will probably be that of Ed......

Chili John's (chili) This is wonderful chili, dense and comforting, lean and hearty, with a cumin wallop and a subtle, smoky heat that creeps up on you like the first day of a Santa Ana wind, flavoring your breath for half a day even if you don't pile on the......

Photo by Anne FishbeinIF YOU SPENT MUCH TIME DATING IN LOS ANGELES in the '70s, you probably ended up at least once at La Fondue Bourguignonne, a small, fondue-intensive Westwood restaurant tucked away at the top of a long flight of stairs. Post-hippie competitors like Alice's or the Aware Inn......

Al-Watan If you have a taste for meaty northern Indian cooking, Pakistani cooking is probably everything you like and more so, spicier than Punjabi and meatier, more deeply inflected by the flavors of ginger, cardamom and wood smoke. First among Pakistani stews is haleem, beef braised with something like shredded......

Photo by Anne FishbeinLa Habra, which is somwhere east of Norwalk and south of Hacienda Heights, is a distant, freewayless area that can most charitably be called "Whittier-adjacent." But when the wind is from the east, you can smell Krispy Kreme from almost half a mile away in La Habra,......