(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Where to get dinner on a Monday night from the 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. guide
There’s something magical about a Monday dinner out. The city hums at a lower volume, offering the chance to walk into some of L.A.’s buzziest restaurants sans reservation and score a spacious booth. You can linger over your food without worrying about turning the table over to another party.
But many restaurants take Monday off and it can be a pain trying to figure out what’s open. To make your search easier, here are 15 options from the most recent 101 Best Restaurants guide by our critic Bill Addison for a delicious start to your week.
— Danielle Dorsey
Showing Places
(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Bavel
Downtown L.A. Middle Eastern $$$
When Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis opened their second Arts District restaurant in April 2018, their menu pulled the vague, 1980s-era notion of “Californian Mediterranean cooking†into the new millennium. In their hands the term becomes more personal, and more specifically defined by their imaginations. Menashe was raised in Israel and comes from Turkish and Moroccan roots; Gergis’ family is of Egyptian ancestry. Dishes draw on their respective lineages, our region’s unparalleled agriculture and a certain creative fluidity.
At the table, it means the weightless hummus swirled into a moat filled with duck ’nduja is as wonderful as ever, as are the hulking lamb neck shawarma over laffa and Gergis’ leaf-shaped strawberry pastry balanced with tart sumac and sweet cheese. Anchoring ingredients — market vegetables, grilled prawns, lamb chops both charred and blushing — are canvases for chile pastes, tufts of herbs and deliciously soured dairy in many forms. Some counsel: The dining room, always full, rattles from the extreme decibels. Ask in advance for a patio table for a quieter experience. If you’re into wine, sommeliers can pull you down a rabbit hole of Grecian obscurities and older vintages of all sorts they might have stashed in the back.
At the table, it means the weightless hummus swirled into a moat filled with duck ’nduja is as wonderful as ever, as are the hulking lamb neck shawarma over laffa and Gergis’ leaf-shaped strawberry pastry balanced with tart sumac and sweet cheese. Anchoring ingredients — market vegetables, grilled prawns, lamb chops both charred and blushing — are canvases for chile pastes, tufts of herbs and deliciously soured dairy in many forms. Some counsel: The dining room, always full, rattles from the extreme decibels. Ask in advance for a patio table for a quieter experience. If you’re into wine, sommeliers can pull you down a rabbit hole of Grecian obscurities and older vintages of all sorts they might have stashed in the back.
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(Silvia Razgova/For The Times)
Sonoratown
Downtown L.A. Mexican
The magnificence of Teodoro DÃaz Rodriguez Jr. and Jennifer Feltham’s taqueria rests first on the flour tortillas cranked out by their master tortilla maker, Julia Guerrero. Their thinness belies their durability, and like the best pie crusts they manage to be at once flaky and buttery. Nearly translucent and handsomely pocked from the griddle, it is the flour tortilla against which to judge all others in Los Angeles. I am quick to recommend Sonoratown’s famous Burrito 2.0, swollen with pinto beans, mashed guacamole, Monterey Jack and sharply spicy chiltepin salsa; among meat options that include grilled chicken, tripe and chorizo, the standout choice is costilla, a mix of boneless short rib and chuck robed in mesquite smoke. Lately my order also has included at least one chivichanga, mini-bundles swaddling shredded chicken or beef cooked down in a thick guisado of tomatoes, Anaheim chiles, cheddar and Monterey Jack. They are deeply comforting, and they’re equally excellent at the couple’s second, larger store in Mid-City.
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(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)
Tsubaki
Echo Park Japanese Restaurant $$
Courtney Kaplan and Charles Namba’s 32-seat Echo Park bastion brilliantly spans the divide between neighborhood izakaya and date-night restaurant. With each year I more appreciate Namba’s repertoire, honing two dozen or so raw, steamed, fried and grilled dishes with a native Angeleno’s knack for scouring the farmers markets. One week he’s searing skewers of duck breast that nearly smoke over binchotan and painting them with brandied cherry glaze. The weather turns and he composes a kabocha squash salad with soy-pickled enoki mushrooms and chicories. I can’t recall once skipping the mainstay chicken oysters dotted with yuzu kosho.
Between Tsubaki and the couple’s next-door bar, Ototo, Kaplan maintains the most enlightening and thrilling selection of sake on the West Coast. It too changes with the seasons, as brewers release effervescent nama sakes in the spring and fuller-bodied counterparts in the fall. On the plate and in the cup, the duo’s combined sense of experimentation makes the place (and those eating there) feel alive with possibility. Ever wondered where a food critic chooses to celebrate his own birthday? Here’s the answer.
Between Tsubaki and the couple’s next-door bar, Ototo, Kaplan maintains the most enlightening and thrilling selection of sake on the West Coast. It too changes with the seasons, as brewers release effervescent nama sakes in the spring and fuller-bodied counterparts in the fall. On the plate and in the cup, the duo’s combined sense of experimentation makes the place (and those eating there) feel alive with possibility. Ever wondered where a food critic chooses to celebrate his own birthday? Here’s the answer.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Pizzeria Sei
Pico-Robertson Pizza $$
Through the plexiglass that separates the counter from the open kitchen in his tiny Pico-Robertson dining room, watch William Joo and his cooks spin and crimp the dough for his neo-Neapolitan pizzas. When pulled from the almond-wood-fueled oven, the crusts will have flared into singed starburst patterns — an homage to a geometry popularized by Tokyo pizzaiolo Tsubasa Tamaki. On the whole, though, Joo forges his own style. He nods to the Neapolitan canon but avoids soupy centers; his pies slide from the paddle to the plate bubbling in the center. Start with a Margherita to appreciate the calibrated sweetness of the tomato sauce, the pleasing ratio of fior di latte (or a frequent special with an upgrade of buffalo mozzarella), the head-clearing basil leaves and the amplifying sprinkle of sea salt. The Bismarck, with its egg in the center bleeding yolk over surrounding slices of prosciutto cotto, is the only pizza in Los Angeles I’ll order that includes truffle oil; I loathe the stuff but its usage here is as understated as a pheromone. Fans since the restaurant’s inception in early 2022 will note that Sei, which Joo owns with Jennifer So, changed its hours of operation recently and opens for lunch now only on weekends.
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(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Pasjoli
Santa Monica French $$$
Dave Beran’s Santa Monica haute bistro opened only six months before March 2020. Its two rooms, after shutdowns and months of sidewalk dining, still gleam like new. While sipping a cocktail made with persimmon puree or walnut milk, take in the hand-painted silk wallpaper depicting flowers swaying in a springtime breeze, the mossy-green velvet fabrics, the mix of marble, shiny woods and red brick. It’s one of the loveliest spaces in Southern California.
During the pandemic, Beran closed his tiny, cerebral tasting-menu restaurant, Dialogue, so he can be spied in Pasjoli’s open kitchen almost every night. As a chef he’s always been a precisionist brainiac, geeking out on laborious technique and symbolist presentations. The autumn season finds orange and brown micro-flora scattered like fall foliage over a buttery crab crêpe, and loamy duck rillettes in a tart shaped like a leaf and surrounded by black-green lettuces.
The food is evolving. Initially the restaurant aimed to re-create canonical Gallic dishes: steak tartare, a trembling onion tart that subbed for soupe a l’oignon, the gory and glamorous pressed duck that was, at first, tableside theater and now is prepared in the kitchen. Now there are dishes like a pork chop in a reduction sauce made from trotters and ham hocks and finished with a hazelnut vinaigrette, or gorgeously seared halibut over yuzu beurre blanc and a tumble of sautéed broccoli, spinach and pine nuts. It comes off as less controlled and more pleasure-centered. French is still the default shorthand for the cooking. “Beranaise†would be more accurate.
During the pandemic, Beran closed his tiny, cerebral tasting-menu restaurant, Dialogue, so he can be spied in Pasjoli’s open kitchen almost every night. As a chef he’s always been a precisionist brainiac, geeking out on laborious technique and symbolist presentations. The autumn season finds orange and brown micro-flora scattered like fall foliage over a buttery crab crêpe, and loamy duck rillettes in a tart shaped like a leaf and surrounded by black-green lettuces.
The food is evolving. Initially the restaurant aimed to re-create canonical Gallic dishes: steak tartare, a trembling onion tart that subbed for soupe a l’oignon, the gory and glamorous pressed duck that was, at first, tableside theater and now is prepared in the kitchen. Now there are dishes like a pork chop in a reduction sauce made from trotters and ham hocks and finished with a hazelnut vinaigrette, or gorgeously seared halibut over yuzu beurre blanc and a tumble of sautéed broccoli, spinach and pine nuts. It comes off as less controlled and more pleasure-centered. French is still the default shorthand for the cooking. “Beranaise†would be more accurate.
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(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Antico Nuovo
Larchmont Italian $$
Late last year Chad Colby slid in a new addition to the short list of pastas he serves at his restaurant on the edge of Koreatown. Ten or so ridged tortelli share a plate, some perched on their sides and others looking as if they’ve been playfully tumbling around. Scoop one up and some toasty pine nuts roll onto the fork’s tines. You taste them first, and notice the eggy dough’s silken yield, and then the filling’s dominant flavors pervade: ricotta and lemon, soft and bright. If meals were written in sheet music, these would elicit whole note rests. Appreciating them demands a silent beat.
Opened in 2019, Antico Nuovo has steadily found its footing and its audience among the crush of fine-dining Italian restaurants in Los Angeles. It might just be the best of them now. Bold or tenuous, each of the pastas stands out with such distinct personalities; they are the meal’s holy center. Begin by swiping crisp, lofty hunks of focaccia through roughly pureed green chickpeas rich in garlic and olive oil, or go lighter with impeccable amberjack crudo. Whether you’re nearly full after spinach and tomato cannelloni, or move on to crisp-skinned roast chicken, or share a massive tomahawk steak in Marsala jus that recalls Colby’s days as Chi Spacca’s founding chef, prioritize dessert. The seasonal ice creams deserve their renown, and the kitchen has lately been fashioning pistachio and chocolate cannolis that rival those I’ve had in Sicily.
Opened in 2019, Antico Nuovo has steadily found its footing and its audience among the crush of fine-dining Italian restaurants in Los Angeles. It might just be the best of them now. Bold or tenuous, each of the pastas stands out with such distinct personalities; they are the meal’s holy center. Begin by swiping crisp, lofty hunks of focaccia through roughly pureed green chickpeas rich in garlic and olive oil, or go lighter with impeccable amberjack crudo. Whether you’re nearly full after spinach and tomato cannelloni, or move on to crisp-skinned roast chicken, or share a massive tomahawk steak in Marsala jus that recalls Colby’s days as Chi Spacca’s founding chef, prioritize dessert. The seasonal ice creams deserve their renown, and the kitchen has lately been fashioning pistachio and chocolate cannolis that rival those I’ve had in Sicily.
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(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
Soban
Koreatown Korean $$
Noodles in cooling broths and cloudy beef-bone soups; bossam feasts and plate-size seafood pancakes; sizzling dolsot bibimbap, sustaining stews and bars lit by neon and soju: Koreatown, our civic jewel, overwhelms with its hundreds of culinary possibilities. Jennifer Pak’s small, welcoming institution remains both a wonderful introduction to the community’s food culture and a place to return again and again. Beyond the superior variety and quantity of banchan, three vital dishes keep Soban’s reputation intact year after year. Ganjang gejang, speckled raw crab bathed in soy-based marinade and dressed with green chiles and a sliced clove of garlic, reigns supreme. Extracting its musky, briny-sweet flesh is a full-sensory pleasure. Follow it with eundaegu jorim (gochujang-spiced braise of black cod and mu radish) or galbi jjim, its short ribs and root vegetables lacquered in a sauce that tastes of chile, garlic and dried jujubes grown on the family’s farm.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Lasita
Chinatown Filipino $$$
At their Filipino rotisserie and natural wine bar in Chinatown’s Far East Plaza, Chase Valencia, his wife, Steff Barros Valencia, and chef Nico de Leon have created one of the most heartening community hubs to emerge from the last two years. There is indoor and outdoor dining, but most of the action happens alfresco. On most nights Lasita’s courtyard tables are filled with couples and groups of six or eight, half-empty bottles of Chenin Blanc or Carignan among nearly polished-off plates, with would-be diners milling on the periphery as they wait for the next available seats. The menu, which has become ever more mercurial, remains centered on two dishes: inasal na manok, a chicken specialty of the western Visayan Islands in the central Philippines that soaks up a pungent cocktail of lemongrass, ginger, garlic, calamansi juice, achiote seeds and butter before being grilled; and pork belly lechon rolled like porchetta and filled with similar herbs and spices. Vegans can feast on pancit dishes threaded with vegetables and a sizzling mushroom variation on sisig. Chase freely gives advice on wines: He looks for ones that he thinks of as “cutters†— high-acid whites and meant-to-be-served-chilled reds that especially slice through the salty, garlicky density of the rotisserie meats.
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(Ricardo DeAratanha/Los Angeles Times)
Yangban
Downtown L.A. Korean American $$$
When Katianna and John Hong opened their Arts District restaurant early in 2022, the cooking was personal and persuasive right from the start: an exploration of identity from two accomplished Korean American chefs, grafting cornerstone Korean ingredients and dishes with, among other influences, the Ashkenazi Jewish flavors they both knew growing up. (Katianna’s adopted father is Jewish; John was raised in Highland Park, Ill., in a long-standing Jewish community.) Their initial impulse to frame Yangban as a reimagined delicatessen made sense for the 5,000-square-foot space they took over after the COVID-19 crisis felled Lincoln Carson’s Bon Temps, its previous tenant. But in reality, the ordering experience could be disjointed and confused.
Everything has changed. During a brief closure in August the Hongs finished making over the restaurant into a clubby room: all coal-black banquettes, rich woods and white cloth light fixtures that resemble friendly, floating ghosts. The renewed format is table service with a structured menu of appetizers, mains and desserts. Many of the Hongs’ original ideas still inform the food. Smoked trout schmear, a favorite from the opening deli case, reappears on wonderfully dense potato bread as a standout appetizer. Matzoh ball rendered to the texture of ricotta fills Korean mandu, set in an almost velvety, triple-strength chicken broth. Rounded out with pickles and black rice, the crackly-sticky chicken wings glazed with garlic and soy make for an exuberant entree, and the buffalo milk soft-serve sundae with pine nut caramel only strengthens the feeling. Now is an ideal time to become acquainted, or reacquainted, with Yangban.
Everything has changed. During a brief closure in August the Hongs finished making over the restaurant into a clubby room: all coal-black banquettes, rich woods and white cloth light fixtures that resemble friendly, floating ghosts. The renewed format is table service with a structured menu of appetizers, mains and desserts. Many of the Hongs’ original ideas still inform the food. Smoked trout schmear, a favorite from the opening deli case, reappears on wonderfully dense potato bread as a standout appetizer. Matzoh ball rendered to the texture of ricotta fills Korean mandu, set in an almost velvety, triple-strength chicken broth. Rounded out with pickles and black rice, the crackly-sticky chicken wings glazed with garlic and soy make for an exuberant entree, and the buffalo milk soft-serve sundae with pine nut caramel only strengthens the feeling. Now is an ideal time to become acquainted, or reacquainted, with Yangban.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Saffy's
East Hollywood Middle Eastern $$$
It took no time for Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis’ third blockbuster to feel essential to Los Angeles. Housed in an Art Deco space across from the big blue Church of Scientology building in East Hollywood, Saffy’s is smaller in scale and slightly more casual than the couple’s downtown successes, Bestia and Bavel. It is just as loud as its siblings inside and out, but most important the food brims with earthy goodness. I can’t recommend either version of hummus above the other. One leans on the lemon and cumin and pulls in ful (slow-simmered dried fava beans) for texture. Its counterpart amps up the tahini, crunches with pine nuts and shoots off sparks with green zhoug. I love them equally. Other small plates center on seafood and vegetables, many of them rowdy with herbs, citrus and pickles. They precede smoky kebabs and Menashe’s winningly upmarket take on lamb and beef shawarma. Cocktails match the boisterous mood. A conversation with a sommelier underscores the wine list’s tempting depths. A recent addition to point out: the excellent breakfast of shakshuka, chopped salad and grilled challah served on weekends at the restaurant’s next-door bakery.
Read the full review of Saffy’s.
Read the full review of Saffy’s.
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(Dino Kuznik / For The Times)
Bar Chelou
Pasadena French $$
Housed in the same 98-year-old Spanish Colonial Revival complex as the Pasadena Playhouse, Bar Chelou brings welcome eccentricity and some accomplished cooking to the City of Roses. I remember Douglas Rankin’s modernist plates at the now-closed Bar Restaurant in Silver Lake, and I’m happy that he’s reunited at Bar Chelou with Raymond Morales, his pastry chef from that era. Grasp Rankin’s style in his bravura approach to vegetables. Not all of them purely shout “plant-based.†Snap peas arrive in anchovy cream under a shower of grated cured egg yolk and crumbled chistorra, a thin Basque sausage. The gist is “bacon bits and vitello tonnato meet up for a farmers market run.†The result is uncanny and delicious. A magnificent rainbow trout entree is presented sauced in twinned nouvelle cuisine squiggles of garlic-chive oil and pil pil (traditionally made by blending salt cod, garlic and olive oil) and served over rice pilaf caramelized in corn juice to achieve a ragged sort of crispness. For a finale: Morales’ lemon-chamomile semifreddo beautifully crowned with a rosette-shaped fritter. Kae Whalen, one of my favorite sommeliers in Southern California, shepherds diners through her natural-leaning, something-for-everyone wine list.
Read the full review of Bar Chelou.
Read the full review of Bar Chelou.
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(Silvia Razgova / For The Times)
Holy Basil DTLA
Downtown L.A. Thai $$
Chef Wedchayan “Deau†Arpapornnopparat’s pad see ew — smoky wok-fried flat noodles tossed with pork, shrimp or tofu — hold up in to-go containers as a miracle of resilience. Even better: wolfing them down, straight from the heat, at one of the tables in the Santee Passage food hall downtown to best appreciate their silky, singed textures. Holy Basil’s versions of classic Bangkok street foods exhibit his command of technique, but in the past year he’s also been experimenting more with his repertoire. Clams in gingery broth or noodles tangled in beef curry can vanish from the menu as soon as they appear. On Friday and Saturday nights, under a spinoff umbrella he calls Yum Los Angeles, he often presents splendid Thai seafood specialties, including his family’s recipe for crab curry, but occasionally departs to improvisations like shrimp aguachile. And to drink? Arpapornnopparat’s partner, beverage pro Tongkamal “Joy†Yuon, makes a canned spin on Thai iced tea using whole or oat milk, rather than the sweetened condensed stuff, so it’s refreshing and complex rather than cloying.
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(Andrea D’Agosto/For The Times)
Mariscos Jalisco
Boyle Heights Mexican Seafood $
Sometimes I worry that it’s redundant to declare a visit to Raul Ortega’s white lonchera in Boyle Heights to be a worthy first meal in Los Angeles. It’s been asserted, by me and other critics, for years. But then I am surprised time and again by the number of people who’ve never heard of Mariscos Jalisco. So I will repeat the magic words: tacos dorados de camarón. Picture corn tortillas that grip a mixture of spiced, minced shrimp. Ortega and his team don’t quite seal the tortilla, so in the fryer the filling sizzles around its edges while the interior becomes improbably creamy. The first bite will be lava-hot, but garnishes of sliced avocado and thin red salsa bring a flood of cooling relief. It’s the textural equivalent of your life flashing before your eyes: It’s every possible experience all at once.
Ortega operates three additional outposts, including a counter restaurant in Pomona, with the same menu, and a lonchera on the Westside. If none of them quite reaches the pinnacles of the Boyle Heights truck, it still might be the most amazing seafood taco you’ve ever had, and a fast-track entry into the city’s culinary culture.
Ortega operates three additional outposts, including a counter restaurant in Pomona, with the same menu, and a lonchera on the Westside. If none of them quite reaches the pinnacles of the Boyle Heights truck, it still might be the most amazing seafood taco you’ve ever had, and a fast-track entry into the city’s culinary culture.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Pine & Crane
Downtown L.A. Taiwanese $$
The Taiwanese menus at Vivian Ku’s three restaurants — the original Pine & Crane in Silver Lake, its second location in downtown L.A. and her slightly more casual spinoff Joy in Highland Park — share rooted themes. Their changing array of salads, beloved noodle and rice dishes and adaptations of Taipei-style street foods point to Ku’s frequent travels to Taiwan, and also memories of meals at Taiwanese restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley, where she gathered with relatives growing up. Her penchant for lighter, cleaner flavors honors the cooking style of her grandmother, who immigrated to Taiwan from China in 1949 before the family moved to America. Her personal twists have sweeping appeal: Each of her restaurants can be mobbed at any time of day. The DTLA outpost is arguably the calmest, and also my favorite. This is the one that serves breakfast (the crunchy-soft fan tuan wrapped tightly with soy egg and pork floss and the “thousand-layer†pancake sandwich make great on-the-go morning meals) and has invested in an extensive beverage program centered around, but not limited to, Taiwanese whiskies.
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(Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
Crossroads Kitchen
Calabasas Vegan $$
Given Southern California’s agricultural riches, I seek out vegan restaurants that place as much importance on regional produce as on plant-based foods that mimic meat, dairy and eggs. Chef-owner Tal Ronnen’s Crossroads Kitchen models such balance. Plus, in the restaurant’s 10 years in Los Angeles they have managed to crack the code on meat-free dining that also carries a sense of occasion. Come to eat the seasons: Through the year, inspirations segue from artichoke and shaved asparagus tartare to a meditation on corn that includes chicharrón-like chips and roasted honeynut squash with pomegranate, yogurt and black garlic. Ground lion’s mane mushroom evokes the texture of short rib as a ravioli filling on the fall menu. The restaurant has grown to three locations that include Calabasas and Las Vegas. I will forever favor the clubby Melrose Avenue original that doubles as an entertainment industry hangout.
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