Jonathan Gold

El Chamizal The basic unit of currency at El Chamizal is the parrillada, a squat iron brazier shimmering from the heat of the charcoal within, brought to your table piled high with thin grilled steaks, pork chops marinated in chile, hunks of chorizo sausage, fried bananas and whole jalapeños burnt......

Photo by Anne Fishbein"The happiest place on Earth," the bartender burbles when he answers the phone. He sounds as if he means it. And when you are in a particular frame of mind, or a few Buds into the wind, the Venice Room may actually be the happiest place on......

Illustration by Peter Hamlin There is nothing quite like Pioneer Boulevard on a clear Saturday afternoon, a fragrant Indian welter of sari merchants and jewelry artists, snack shops and bhangra-blasting boutiques, Bollywood posters and signs that advertise Parsi-Gujarati spectaculars. Music pours out of Jeeps, out of restaurants, out of music......

Carlito's Gardel The most famous dish here must be the baked-garlic appetizer, a naked, halved bulb on a plate, ready to pulp onto the house's quite decent bread. There's also melted provolone cheese, laced with tomatoes and pungent Argentine oregano, for eating with almost Vermont-style Argentine crackers, and an appetizer......

Photo by Anne FishbeinMost of us think of shabu shabu as a distinctly Japanese food, saturated with a dozen levels of ritual and a rigid politesse, flavored with spare condiments and the Japanese habit of finding the greatest possible pleasure in a gram and a half of raw protein. Anyone......

Cha Cha Chicken Cha Cha Chicken is Caribbean poultry with attitude: a luscious, crisp-skinned bird gritty with spices and painted with dense, black sauce, slightly sweet and intricately spiced -- not precisely a beginner's bird. The pepper heat starts burning about midway across your palate and works its way to......

Photo by Anne Fishbein Gallo's Grill is the kind of sweet Mexican steak house you've always dreamed of finding in East Los Angeles, a tiled patio furnished with oversize wooden tables, shaded from the sky by a canopy, and decorated with citrus trees and the sort of opera-set "peeling" brick......

Antojitos Denise's In a land dominated by carne asada, Denise's is where to go for pork, a bagful of one of three or four different kinds of house-made chicharrones (fried pork rinds), the pickled pigskin called cueritos, or a pound or two of roast pork. If you have a buck......

Photo by Anne FishbeinBehold the Sichuan hot pot, a pint or so of scarlet liquid frothing in a chafing dish, spitting up bloody geysers, roiling and bubbling around bits of meat and tofu like a sulfurous brimstone pool. You have tasted hot Asian food, no doubt, searing Thai curries and......

Photo by Anne FishbeinIn a year when the biggest story in the local restaurant scene has been the emergence of health-department letter grades, certain gastrosurfers of my acquaintance see a "C'' grade as an emblem of authenticity in restaurants, a sign that the owners aren't going to change their ways......