(Dylan + Jeni / Yangban Society)
15 of downtown L.A.’s best restaurants from the 101 guide
There are countless reasons one might find themselves on the hunt for a great meal in downtown L.A. You might live or work in the area, be waiting out traffic, bookending a visit to MOCA or the Broad museum, or pre-gaming before an event at Crypto.com Arena.
The neighborhood’s ascent as a culinary powerhouse happened in a little over a decade; today it carries an electricity on par with other sky-scraping metropolises, with an expanded dining scene that’s substantially responsible for driving new interest and development to the area.
Whatever brings you to downtown, these 15 restaurants from the 2022 101 Restaurants guide, encompassing Bangkok street bites, Brazilian comfort food, whimsical Tex-Mex and more, will make it easy to pass the time. — Danielle Dorsey
Showing Places
(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Bar Amá
Downtown L.A. Tex-Mex $$
I imagine Josef Centeno wearing a gardener’s expression of patient concentration while dreaming up vegetable dishes in his downtown kitchen. He flashes on saffron honey drizzled over squash-blossom fritters as a color-coordinated garnish. He bakes cotija before crumbling it over sliced peaches to amplify the cheese’s saltiness and match the fruit’s ripe density. I lead with these types of very Californian pleasures because they can be easily overlooked on a menu otherwise full of Tex-Mex standards. A son of San Antonio, Centeno does his hometown proud with tart-sweet margaritas; guacamole with warm chips and nachos during happy hour; and tangy, cheesy green chicken enchiladas based on his mother’s recipe. Puffy tacos, cradling chicken picadillo or carne guisada, collapse in a cloud of masa and should be eaten in seconds. Along with his alchemist’s queso, in which traditional Velveeta fuses with three other cheeses into molten gold, these dishes make clear why Tex-Mex as a regional cuisine should be a source of national pride. If the presence of local produce prepared with global-mind imagination tangles the equation? I’m more than happy to roll with Centeno’s Tex-Cal-Mex revolution.
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(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Bavel
Downtown L.A. Middle Eastern $$$
At the top of my wish list for Los Angeles restaurants: more chefs articulating the spice-fragrant, sun-soaked flavors of North Africa and western Asia (a.k.a. the Middle East, a term many friends and peers from the area increasingly reject). Bavel is one booming, energized affirmation of the possibilities. No map can pinpoint the exact geographic influences of Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis’ second Arts District restaurant. Menashe was raised in Israel and comes from Turkish and Moroccan roots; Gergis’ family is of Egyptian ancestry. With Bavel’s menu they pay respect to their personal lineages, but the food also crisscrosses Southern California and the topography of their imaginations.
From iterations of hummus and baba ghanoush at their silkiest to chicken liver pâté sequined with tarragon leaves and pickled blueberries, the spreads with their sides of hot pita or buckwheat toast are the menu’s nucleus. Anchoring ingredients — roasted cauliflower, grilled prawns, lamb chops both charred and blushing — are canvases for brushstrokes of chile pastes, herbs and many forms of deliciously soured dairy. Of the three restaurants she and Menashe run, Gergis chooses Bavel as the most dazzling showcase for her pastry skills. Finales like licorice root ice cream bonbon (try it to understand) or clove-scented chocolate doughnuts with sherried cream deserve their due attention, even after all the amazing bread. Also, after four years and a pandemic, it’s lovely to see the vines that trail from the dining room rafters looking so healthy.
From iterations of hummus and baba ghanoush at their silkiest to chicken liver pâté sequined with tarragon leaves and pickled blueberries, the spreads with their sides of hot pita or buckwheat toast are the menu’s nucleus. Anchoring ingredients — roasted cauliflower, grilled prawns, lamb chops both charred and blushing — are canvases for brushstrokes of chile pastes, herbs and many forms of deliciously soured dairy. Of the three restaurants she and Menashe run, Gergis chooses Bavel as the most dazzling showcase for her pastry skills. Finales like licorice root ice cream bonbon (try it to understand) or clove-scented chocolate doughnuts with sherried cream deserve their due attention, even after all the amazing bread. Also, after four years and a pandemic, it’s lovely to see the vines that trail from the dining room rafters looking so healthy.
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(Silvia Razgova / For The Times)
Bestia
Downtown L.A. Italian $$$
In the decade since Ori Menashe took California-Italian cooking by the scruff and clobbered it with fermented chiles, smoked anchovies and frizzled breadcrumbs, Los Angeles and the world have changed profoundly. Bestia has matured in pace. An early emphasis on charcuterie gave way to antipasti-like scallop crudo arrayed with cured cucumbers, olives and fresh mint; the pizza crust is tangier and less doughy; and Genevieve Gergis’ tarts and other kinetic sculptures are more experimental, successfully so. Two things haven’t changed. Pastas, their flavors darting every which direction from supporting ingredients that always manage to mingle well, remain the menu’s core strength. And the concrete bunker of a dining room, housed in a converted Arts District warehouse, is as rambunctious and loud as ever.
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(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Bridgetown Roti
Arts District Caribbean $
In 2020, Rashida Holmes moved from cooking at restaurants such as Botanica and Rustic Canyon to running a pop-up selling roti and other dishes of her Bajan heritage. In a town where Caribbean cuisines often go overlooked in the zeitgeist sightlines, the excellence of her cooking shows many of us what we’ve been missing. Operating on weekends from the Crafted Kitchen commissary in the Arts District, Holmes fills her tidy bundles of roti with her mom’s recipe for chicken curry, a patchwork of sweet potatoes and fried cauliflower or, best of all, soft, ropy hunks of goat meat she buys from Jimenez Family Farms. The crust of her savory patties is improbably delicate, even when bulging with green curry shrimp or shredded oxtail meat with peppers. Start a meal with smashed cucumber salad jolted by jerk seasonings. Sometimes as a special Holmes makes chana doubles — palm-sized rounds of fried bread cradling curried chickpeas with mango relish, cilantro-ginger chutney and other garnishes that pop like flashbulbs. Treat them like tacos from a sidewalk stall; doubles were never meant to wilt in takeout containers.
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(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Damian
Downtown L.A. Mexican $$$
Damian began as Mexico City-based chef Enrique Olvera’s grandly announced entrance to the L.A. market but has settled into a restaurant that feels intentionally engaged with the city, with progressively delicious results. In a region already rich in Mexican food culture, Damian’s leadership team, led by Jesús “Chuy†Cervantes, seems to ask through its cooking: What can we bring to the conversation? Answers come in the forms of a modernist tlayuda tiled with squash and huitlacoche; elegant duck “al pastor†served with caramelized pineapple butter and hand-formed corn tortillas that taste as if they’re made of sunshine; plus a masterpiece centered around a meaty bulb of celery root that has been nixtamalized, baked, then braised in garlic, lemon and butter. At brunch, don’t book a reservation expecting a rundown of egg dishes; go for the Korean-inspired fried chicken, sheathed in a batter of rice and white corn flours. Next in Southern California from Olvera’s restaurant group: a second location of its casual all-day Mexican restaurant Atla.
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(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Holy Basil
Downtown L.A. Thai $$
There are tables at last in the Santee Passage food hall where its first tenants, chef Wedchayan “Deau†Arpapornnopparat and beverage pro Tongkamal “Joy†Yuon, opened a takeout window in late 2020. Even amid the endless expressions of Thai cuisine in Los Angeles, their versions of classic Bangkok street foods show off a level of attention that’s disarming. Eating them can feel like viewing a newly restored painting; the tiny details are both familiar and fresh. Strands of pad see ew retain unusual smokiness from the wok; lemongrass and other herbs perfume tom yum goong profoundly; the aromatics in the green curry have been stitched together so tightly you have to squint to pluck out single flavors. The menu numbers fewer than two dozen dishes, the better for Arpapornnopparat to master each of them. Yuon’s canned spin on Thai iced tea includes whole or oat milk, rather than the sweetened condensed stuff, so it’s refreshing and complex rather than cloying.
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(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)
Grand Central Market
Downtown L.A. Eclectic
There is no rush of sensation quite like entering the halls of downtown Los Angeles’ 105-year-old landmark, long a juncture of what the city has been, what it is becoming and what we’re hungry for right now. Life cycles play out among its daily throngs. The latest outpost of Broad Street Oyster Co., tidily replicating the warm lobster roll that made the Malibu original famous, replaces Prawn Coastal, the seafood stand run by legendary Campanile co-chef Mark Peel, who died suddenly in 2021. Follow one trail of neon signs for vegan tonkatsu at Ramen Hood, beef panang at Sticky Rice and a lengua taco from Roast to Go, which has been in operation since 1952. Turn nearby corners to find kimchi-braised pork belly at Shiku or a statuesque chicken katsu sando from Moon Rabbit. I have two habitual stops for manna to enjoy later: DTLA Cheese and Kitchen, for whatever the latest pungent rarity Lydia Clarke has in her case, and Nicole Rucker’s peerless Fat + Flour, for a slice of pie mounded with fruit from the best farmers in California.
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(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Pine & Crane
Downtown L.A. Taiwanese $$
Last June, Vivian Ku opened her second location of Pine & Crane, in downtown L.A. It’s larger and sleeker than the beloved Silver Lake flagship, with a calming indoor-outdoor design adjacent to a small park. Most important, the new outpost serves breakfast. Its morning menu revives many of the Taiwanese staples that Ku and her crew mastered at Today Starts Here, the takeout pop-up they operated for nine months recently in Chinatown. If you’re in a pre-workday rush, the “thousand-layer†pancake folded with egg, chile sauce, basil and melted American cheese binding the crisp-soft pastry is ideal on-the-go fuel. Or settle in for a bowl of savory soy milk garnished with youtiao (batons of fried dough snipped into crisp squares), daikon rice cakes freckled with diced shiitake and hand pies stuffed with scrambled egg, chives and vermicelli noodles. Dinner options of three-cup chicken fragrant with basil, lu rou fan (minced pork over rice with soy egg) and nourishing wonton soup? As strong as ever.
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(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Pizzeria Bianco
Downtown L.A. Pizza $$
Pizzeria Bianco’s arrival in Los Angeles, the first location outside Arizona, has been long in coming. Its first months in downtown’s Row DTLA complex coincided with a pizza-themed season of Netflix’s “Chef’s Table†series, which includes a moving episode about Chris Bianco. Dinner reservations went berserk, booking up for literal months, though a handful of tables have been set aside for walk-ins.
When you do finally inhale these pizzas, with their balanced restraint and structured crust, you understand why Bianco is the most revered pizzaiolo in the United States. The Wise Guy (a pie with rough hunks of fennel sausage covered in smoked mozzarella) and the Rosa (slivered red onion, Parmesan, rosemary, crushed pistachios) brought me the same heart-pounding joy as the first time I ate them in 1997, half my lifetime ago. Head chef Marco Angeles ably translates Bianco’s genius at the pizza ovens, and right now the man himself is spending much of his week in town. Keep checking for chance availability. We have a living master in our midst.
When you do finally inhale these pizzas, with their balanced restraint and structured crust, you understand why Bianco is the most revered pizzaiolo in the United States. The Wise Guy (a pie with rough hunks of fennel sausage covered in smoked mozzarella) and the Rosa (slivered red onion, Parmesan, rosemary, crushed pistachios) brought me the same heart-pounding joy as the first time I ate them in 1997, half my lifetime ago. Head chef Marco Angeles ably translates Bianco’s genius at the pizza ovens, and right now the man himself is spending much of his week in town. Keep checking for chance availability. We have a living master in our midst.
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(Katrina Frederick / For The Times)
Rossoblu
Downtown L.A. Italian $$$
Steve Samson’s restaurant in downtown’s City Market South complex, now in its seventh year, has been slowly moving away from its original premise as a reclamation of his childhood spent in food-obsessed Bologna. The menu of blended Italian-Californian sensibilities was never doctrinaire, but in a town teeming with pasta and pizza restaurants I valued the regional specificity. Traces of Bologna remain in two staple dishes: the wonderful minestra nel sacco, a soup of Parmigiano-Reggiano dumplings cooked in a cloth bag and served in chicken and beef broth; and tagliatelle al ragù, in which the sauce clings to the strands without smothering them. Dough maestro Francesco Allegro, a native of Puglia, ensures that the concise, seasonally shifting pasta options continue to be a focal point. Share two or three of them, followed by the grigliata — a duet of bone-in pork chop and sausage that sings of char and salt and succulence.
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(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Smorgasburg L.A.
Downtown L.A. Eclectic $$
Smorgasburg L.A. is the city’s great incubator of culinary talent. We convene on Sundays in Row DTLA’s back lot to plug in, to mingle, to eat our faces off. The lineup of vendors revolves continually, guided by general manager Zach Brooks’ curatorial mastermind. Friends and I would split up, order and reconvene to share pork belly breakfast burritos from Jonathan Perez’s Macheen, shrimp tacos dorados from Edgar Nava’s Correas Mariscos, charcoal-grilled corn on the cob and beef skewers and a couple of dessert flan tacos from Evil Cooks. And there’s so much more to try. Having a presence at Smorgasburg empowers a vital continuum. We fall in love with what we taste. We follow these chefs beyond the market as they grow their businesses. And then we return, hungry to see who and what is happening next.
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(Silvia Razgova / For The Times)
Sonoratown
Downtown L.A. Mexican
Whenever I bite into one of Sonoratown’s tortillas, my brain flickers on like the downtown skyline at dusk. I flash on the near-impossible thinness of an expert dumpling wrapper and the elusive mastery of pie crusts that are at once flaky and buttery. Never do I forget that this is a union of Sonoran wheat and pork lard, cranked out by master tortillera Julia Guerrero, in a style Teodoro DÃaz Rodriguez Jr. learned growing up in San Luis RÃo Colorado, Mexico. Nearly translucent and handsomely pocked from the griddle, it is the flour tortilla against which to judge all others in Los Angeles. Savor it in the guise of a taco, quesadilla, caramelo, chimichanga or, best of all, as the famous Burrito 2.0, swollen with pinto beans, mashed guacamole, Monterey Jack and sharply spicy chiltepin salsa. The meat of choice is costilla — a mix of boneless short rib and chuck robed in mesquite smoke. Go for the option to add poblano.
DÃaz Rodriguez and partner Jennifer Feltham rose to national prominence at the taqueria they opened in 2016 in DTLA’s Fashion District. Last year we gained a second location in Mid-City. Same menu; same brilliance.
DÃaz Rodriguez and partner Jennifer Feltham rose to national prominence at the taqueria they opened in 2016 in DTLA’s Fashion District. Last year we gained a second location in Mid-City. Same menu; same brilliance.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Sushi Kaneyoshi
Downtown L.A. Japanese $$$$
The elevator descends toward the basement of Little Tokyo’s Kajima Building. The doors open onto a waiting area. Soon the evening’s congregants will be led to a softly lit room of clean lines and blond woods, where Yoshiyuki Inoue presides over a 12-seat sushi bar. A veteran of local sushi restaurants — Mori and Sushi Ginza Onodera among them — Inoue was primed for his star turn. Two-year-old Kaneyoshi instantly became one of the city’s most coveted omakase reservations.
A few preambles might include grouper karaage; citrusy chawanmushi laced with matsutake mushrooms; and ankimo (monkfish liver) dressed in sweet miso and paired with a tiny log of green onion. Then Inoue and his assistants launch into a procession of edomae-style nigiri, each seasonal seafood aged (or perhaps cured or marinated) and lightly seasoned to magnify its flavors. At one point he’ll likely hand each person pressed sushi folded into a sheet of nori that crunches like a potato chip. By the final piece you’re in the master’s trance. This is sushi for connoisseurs, many of whom, at $300 per person, are already regulars.
A few preambles might include grouper karaage; citrusy chawanmushi laced with matsutake mushrooms; and ankimo (monkfish liver) dressed in sweet miso and paired with a tiny log of green onion. Then Inoue and his assistants launch into a procession of edomae-style nigiri, each seasonal seafood aged (or perhaps cured or marinated) and lightly seasoned to magnify its flavors. At one point he’ll likely hand each person pressed sushi folded into a sheet of nori that crunches like a potato chip. By the final piece you’re in the master’s trance. This is sushi for connoisseurs, many of whom, at $300 per person, are already regulars.
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(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
Woodspoon
Downtown L.A. Brazilian $$
Natalia Pereira’s menu expresses the flavors from many cultures (African, Indigenous Brazilian and Portuguese among them) she knew growing up in Minas Gerais, an interior state of southeastern Brazil that, like California, experienced a gold rush that triggered mass immigration and often brutal societal shifts. An appetizer of favorite Brazilian fried street snacks illustrates the cuisine’s many global tributaries: It includes an oval, minted variation on Levantine kibbeh; Portuguese-influenced bolinho de bacalhau (cod croquettes); and shrimp and coconut pastels, crackling dumplings that bring to mind both empanadas and wontons. Pereira’s most beloved dish is arguably empadão de frango, which she translates as “Brazilian chicken pot pie.†You will know why when you crack the biscuity crown and spoon out the well of creamed poultry, olives, corn and hearts of palm. Lately I’ve been even more drawn to the complete meals she calls grelhas, especially the skewered, bacon-wrapped chicken arranged among ribboned collards, soft plantains, rice, beans and the ubiquitous Brazilian condiment of toasted cassava flour, farofa. Unwind in Woodspoon’s cozy Bohemian dining room full of mismatched chairs and pillows — an individualistic space that conveys Pereira’s artistic soul nearly as well as her cooking does.
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(Dylan + Jeni / Yangban Society)
Yangban Society
Downtown L.A. Korean $$
Katianna and John Hong met working at Mélisse in Santa Monica. After years in the fine-dining realm, the couple opened their first restaurant with a retuned philosophy; they’ve mined their personal narratives as a reclamation of their Korean American identities. So much of the cooking lands in the sweet spot of smart, surprising combinations and abject pleasure. A rippling, flaky square biscuit covered in curried gravy with ground beef and pork has been an early signature; same with the avocado and Shinko pear salad with its head-clearing hot mustard vinaigrette. The congee pot pie is incredible: Its chicken stock porridge hints of ginger and its pastry cap brings to mind crackling youtiao. Add roasted abalone to the pot pie and you have one of the city’s great new luxury dishes.
The flow of Yangban Society’s tiered Arts District space has been a work in progress. Should the restaurant and its separate upstairs market area that the Hongs call the “Super†— where customers purchase beverages separately and maybe shop for Korean snacks — eventually merge into an easier-to-navigate experience? Probably. Most significantly, the food is immediately accomplished and, in its freshness and individualism, beautifully of Los Angeles.
The flow of Yangban Society’s tiered Arts District space has been a work in progress. Should the restaurant and its separate upstairs market area that the Hongs call the “Super†— where customers purchase beverages separately and maybe shop for Korean snacks — eventually merge into an easier-to-navigate experience? Probably. Most significantly, the food is immediately accomplished and, in its freshness and individualism, beautifully of Los Angeles.
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