Jonathan Gold

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Lucques: 99 Essential Restaurants 2011

Jonathan Gold
It's slightly embarrassing, but after all these years and all these meals, it is still hard to describe exactly what defines a Suzanne Goin dish, typically but not always a three-comma construction fashioned from farmers market produce, perhaps given a slightly mysterious edge with a touch of Catalonia, Morocco or......
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Nem Nuong Khanh Hoa: 99 Essential Restaurants 2011

Jonathan Gold
Most people know central Vietnamese cooking strictly through the noodle soup bun bo Hue. But in the Kanh Hoa region, the emblematic dish is nem nuong, a kind of bouncy pork meatball impaled on a skewer, grilled over an open flame and served smoky, sizzling and naked on a plate......
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Angeli Caffe:99 Essential Restaurants 2011

Jonathan Gold
If you wanted a pure blast of Los Angeles in the 1980s, you could listen to an X album. Or you could visit Angeli Caffe, the restaurant home of food-media czar Evan Kleiman, whose menu of roast chicken, tagliata and spaghetti alla checca has barely changed in 25 years, because......
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Chego: 99 Essential Restaurants 2011

Jonathan Gold
Looking for a good time on the Westside? Stop by the back room at Chego sometime, where customers assemble their own takeout packages with the ease and grace of Keystone Kops. You really haven't lived until you've seen a young corporate attorney trying to fit his Ooey Gooey Fries into......
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Euro Pane Bakery: 99 Essential Restaurants 2011

Jonathan Gold
Sumi Chang's Euro Pane Bakery is the center of civilized life in Pasadena, and you probably could set your watch by the appearance of its regulars. It's a place to find excellent to superb scones and baguettes and pains au chocolat, of course, but also the heart of a certain......
Credit: ANNE FISHBEIN

Son of a Gun: 99 Essential Restaurants 2011

Jonathan Gold
 Whatever the current style in Los Angeles restaurants ends up being named, from the small-plate thing to the fixation on local, organic produce; the off-center proteins to the international palette of flavors; and the resistance to even modest customer requests, it may have its origins in the cheeseburger conspiracies of......
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LudoBites: 99 Essential Restaurants 2011

Jonathan Gold
A pop-up, you think. How ... 2008. Because here we are again, walking through an industrial district with a bottle of Arbois in each hand, a reservation that was harder to get than a spot in the freshman class at Brown, and no actual idea of what you are about......
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Angelini Osteria: 99 Essential Restaurants 2011

Jonathan Gold
It's time, I think, to stop trying to explain my indifference to Angelini Osteria in the first years of its existence, which may have lain more in my reverence for Gino Angelini's skills with alta cucina, which this is not, than with any inherent flaw in the restaurant. Where osterie......
Credit: PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Chichén Itzá: 99 Essential Restaurants 2011

Jonathan Gold
You should probably be going to Mercado La Paloma anyway, because it's as close to a utopian Los Angeles as you're going to find, a cooperatively run marketplace whose second floor is home to nonprofits and neighborhood tutoring facilities, and its first to a warren of regional, Mexican crafts markets......