Kayvan Gabbay

Mizlala quietly opened recently, hidden in plain sight in the shadow of the perpetually congested intersection of the 101 and 405 freeways in Sherman Oaks It's located in a small, inconspicuous storefront sandwiched between Cucina Bene and Little Izaka-ya by Katsu-yu. A Whole Foods supermarket sits directly across the street......

Los Angeles now has its very own Sunday-only Smorgasburg (the original Smorgasburg used to be the exclusive domain of Brooklyn), a collection of food vendors doling out various prepared dishes from $20 Connecticut-style lobster rolls on griddled Pepperidge Farm buns to $8 Instagram-ready gelatin "cakes" in the middle of downtown's......

Tucked into an inconspicuous corner of a mini-mall, dwarfed by Rite-Aid, and across the street from the iconic South Pasadena Fair Oaks Pharmacy and Soda Fountain, Fanta-Sea Grill has provided reasonably-priced, healthy seafood dishes to locals in the know. Open since 1999, this deceptively simple, no-frills cafe still bears vestiges......

Shanghai Diamond Garden, a Chinese-American restaurant, has been around in one incarnation or another for the better part of 50 years. It serves what's colloquially called "Chinese takeout" cuisine — a specific genre of Chinese cuisine completely disparate from the regional gastronomic temples of San Gabriel Valley — in the vein......

Los Angeles is experiencing something of a fried chicken renaissance. Top chefs are putting their playful, idiosyncratic spin on the dish at places like Howlin' Ray's, which opened its Chinatown storefront in April to hungry hordes eager to wait in long lines to try Nashville “hot” chicken in Los Angeles. And......

You won't find sushi power players like Nobu, Urasawa or n/naka anywhere except the West Side of Los Angeles. But if you're willing to travel into the San Fernando Valley — gasp! — you'll find a wealth of exceptional sushi, much of it tucked away in unassuming strip malls.  Truth......

Simi Valley probably isn't the first place you think of when you're craving sushi. But Sushi Tanaka, which opened quietly in a suburban strip mall more than two years ago and has since built a devoted local following, could soon change that.  The unpretentious sushi bar, sandwiched between a fish......

Hagop is a deceptively simple Armenian-Lebanese restaurant hiding in plain sight on a relatively busy stretch of Ventura Boulevard, next door to a neighborhood liquor store named Cheers. Step inside the homespun joint and you might feel like you're sitting in someone's home in the rural outskirts of Beirut. Each......