Garrett SnyderThe number of food-delivery options currently available in Los Angeles is downright mind-boggling. Take your pick: Postmates, Caviar, Eat24, GrubHub, Seamless, ChowNow, DoorDash, Delivery.com, LAbite, Amazon Prime, UberEats — and that’s not including the places you can just pick up the phone and order from.
The reason for the delivery service boom is obvious. If you’ve been sitting in traffic on the drive home from work and the refrigerator is empty, the temptation to pay a little extra to have somebody bring you all the food is strong indeed.
Obviously, the best delivery options in L.A. will depend heavily on where you live, how long you’re willing to wait and how much you’re willing to pay. The list below is far from all-encompassing, but it does include places you might not be aware will bring their food to your doorstep. Sure, there’s pizza, Chinese, Thai — what many Angelenos might call the “usual” delivery foods — but there’s also corned beef sandwiches, sushi, healthy wraps and poké. You live in the greatest food city in the country, after all, why shouldn’t it come to you sometimes?
Credit: Zach Brooks
Joe’s Pizza
Pizza is a classic delivery staple. After all, it’s better to go with a sturdy, New York–style pie that can survive the long car ride than to go with, say, a fancy-pants pizza. Joe's, which has expanded to three locations in L.A. (downtown, Santa Monica and Hollywood,) is known for its impossibly thin and crunchy crust and minimalist layering of mozzarella and sweetish tomato sauce, which makes it ideal for folding in half.
Credit: Anne Fishbein
Luv2Eat Thai Bistro
A little more than a year in, Luv2Eat already has emerged as a powerhouse on L.A.’s expansive Thai scene — and it happens to be a place with robust delivery service, too. Options include the stunningly spicy crab curry, papaya salad, Hat Yai fried chicken and a wide array of noodle dishes, including the ever-popular dry jade noodles topped with crispy pork, barbecued pork and roasted duck.
Sugarfish
There are those who might consider “delivery sushi” heresy. To them we say: Have you tried Sugarfish? Though the markup for the “Trust Me” omakase ends up being around $10 before tip, it’s a reasonable premium for a meal from an upscale sushi chain that serves quality seafood and operates like a finely tuned machine. Most impressive is the aesthetically pleasing packaging, which arranges all the sauces and sides in neat, bento-like fashion inside a simple white box.
Credit: Timothy Norris
Canter’s Deli
Most people don’t realize that this 24-hour Fairfax institution delivers (though only from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m.) — and doesn’t matzo ball soup in bed during a nasty cold sound like a brilliant idea? There’s the famed pastrami reuben too, along with all sorts of diner favorites such as scrambled eggs and lox, chopped salad, pickled tongue, tuna melts and the three-decker club sandwich. The only thing you’ll miss is the tufted vinyl booths.
Credit: Yelp/Sunmi K.
Lee’s Noodles
At Lee’s Noodles in Koreatown, you’ll find a crowd-pleasing array of Korean-Chinese dishes: bouncy noodles in black bean sauce, spicy seafood soup, crunchy sweet-and-sour pork and plump steamed or pan-fried dumplings. The ace in the hole, though, is the juicy Korean fried chicken, which comes either unadorned or glazed with a spicy-sweet sauce. Dumplings and chicken wings? Sounds like a winning delivery combo.
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Credit: Noah Galuten
All About the Bread
Aside from the rare occasion when UberEats is doling out Bay Cities sandwiches, All About the Bread is our preferred choice for Italian cold cuts in a hurry. Using the online delivery portal (the delivery range is larger than you might expect), you can choose between the popular Godfather sandwich layered with prosciutto, capicola, mortadella and other meats, or options like burrata, meatball or roast beef.
Credit: Courtesy Kye's
Kye’s
Most of us think of delivery food as greasy, overindulgent stuff, but Kye’s in Santa Monica specializes in health food that is both portable and satisfying (and, this being the Westside, a little pricey). The main offering here is the KyeRito — essentially a low-carb burrito with a funny name — that's wrapped in things like dried seaweed or collard leaves and filled with options such as pulled pork, vegan mushroom bulgogi, chicken bacon pesto and seared salmon with “macro vegetables.”
Credit: Yelp/Winnie L.
Master Chef
There are plenty of options for delivery in Chinatown, but we’ve always had a soft spot for Master Chef, which offers a fairly large delivery range and is open very late. The best route is to stick to the “classic” Chinese-American staples: honey walnut shrimp, X.O. fried rice, pork chops with spicy salt and garlic string beans. Bonus: If you're in their delivery range, orders of $25 or more will get you free delivery.
Credit: Courtesy Kaya Street Kitchen
Kaya Street Kitchen
Of all the build-your-own Asian bowl concepts that have popped up over the past few years, our favorite might be this Indonesian-leaning shop near CBS Studios. You choose between bases like coconut-lime rice or roti bread tacos and pile on options like chicken satay, lemongrass steak or pork-shrimp meatballs, then customize them with a colorful array of sauces, slaws, relishes and other crunchy bits.
Credit: Besha Rodell
Ohana Poké Co.
Los Angeles is in the midst of a poké explosion, so of course you can have a bowl of marinated sashimi dropped off at your door. With locations in Silver Lake and downtown, Ohana serves sashimi-grade, sustainably sourced poké bowls topped with lots of delicious crispy things (wasabi peas, furikake, fresh scallion) on a foundation of vinegar-seasoned heirloom sushi rice. You can order seaweed-wrapped Spam musubi rolls to round out your meal, too.
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