Where to eat
The restaurants locals actually recommend.
Ori Menashe's rustic, house-cured Italian serving pizza, pasta, and charcuterie in the Arts District. It's been LA's toughest reservation since 2012 and still fully deserves it.
Open since 2008 and still turning out some of the city's best vegetable-forward cooking and charred, thin-crust pizzas. The quintessential Abbot Kinney meal.
Walter and Margarita Manzke's brasserie-bakery lives in a 1929 building originally built by Charlie Chaplin. Come for the pastry-forward daytime counter service, return for the reservations-only dinner.
A James Beard Award-winning Oaxacan institution famous for its mole flights and live music. The strongest argument in the city that LA's best Mexican food goes far beyond tacos.
Chef Niki Nakayama's one-Michelin-star, multi-course tasting in an unmarked house with a zen garden. A destination meal, and one of the hardest, most rewarding reservations in LA — book far ahead.
Chef Kris Yenbamroong's loud, fun, party-plastic-tablecloth room built around fiery northern Thai dishes and a serious natural-wine list. The opposite of takeout pad thai.
A tiny taqueria doing San Luis Río Colorado-style tacos and burritos with flour tortillas made from Sonoran flour and mesquite-grilled carne asada. Cheap, specific, and beloved — order the Burrito 2.0.
The food-truck-turned-storefront that started LA's hot-chicken obsession in 2015. Five heat levels up to 'Howlin' Hot' — a slightly sweet, genuinely punishing cayenne burn. Expect a line; it's part of the ritual.
Nancy Silverton's flagship, anchored by a mozzarella bar that draws nightly crowds. A restaurant that helped define modern LA Italian cooking.
Open since 1917, this is the edible autobiography of LA. Legacy stalls like Roast to Go (1952) and China Café (1959) share a historic roof with 40-plus vendors and some of the city's most exciting newer chefs.
The rooftop cocktail bar and pool deck atop the Freehand hotel in the historic 1924 Commercial Exchange building. A James Beard Award finalist and a destination in its own right.
Every Sunday, 10am–4pm at ROW DTLA, dozens of rotating food vendors gather — this is where LA's future restaurant stars often start. Free entry.
A greenhouse restaurant inside the design-forward LINE hotel in the heart of Koreatown, the city's best late-night eating district. Central to both Hollywood and Downtown.