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Delmy's Pupusas is a popular vendor at Atwater Village farmers market, where locoro and cheese pupusas run just $4 apiece.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

20 of the most affordable picks from the 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. list

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Los Angeles is a place where two tacos al pastor in hand can feel like as much of a culinary event as a two-hour tasting menu. Sometimes more. In a month of overt spending for many of us — and in a year when the entertainment industry’s slow recovery reverberated through the restaurant community, which saw dozens of closures in 2024 — we have suggestions for incredible, affordable meals.

Our recommendations draw from the recently released guide to the 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles, published annually by The Times and written this year by me and columnist Jenn Harris. Some of the new entrants on the list include a favorite San Gabriel Valley food court for dumplings, roti wraps filled with goat or shrimp curry in East Hollywood, and a gargantuan, pudding-like Nicaraguan-style tamale in Huntington Park. — Bill Addison, restaurant critic

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INGLEWOOD, CA - OCTOBER 22, 2024: A trio of the tacos de desebrada "Chikali Style" (with beans and guacamole) on house made flour tortillas at Asadero Chikali in Inglewood. (Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)

Asadero Chikali

Inglewood Mexican $
Earlier this year, I described the carne deshebrada with refried beans from the East Los Angeles Asadero Chikali stand for our guide to the 101 Best Tacos in the city. It was the taco I was handed when I asked the taquero to surprise me with his go-to order. It’s still the taco that comes to mind when someone asks for my favorite in all of Los Angeles. The meat is tangled with stewed tomato, onion and peppers. It’s my preferred filling for the exemplary flour tortillas, rolled by hand and cooked on a flat-top until mottled with toasty brown bubbles. They’re buttery, slender and surprisingly sturdy; I could eat a stack on their own. Asadero Chikali (Chikali is the locals-only nickname for the border city of Mexicali) recently opened its first bricks-and-mortar restaurant in a small strip mall in Inglewood, not far from SoFi Stadium. There, the tacos come with a tray of salsas and pickled onions. Though I can’t seem to quit the deshebrada, I always get at least one carne asada “Chikali style,” with the bits of smoky meat served under a dollop of guacamole and beans. And I never leave without a dozen tortillas to go.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 04: Kofteh tabrizi at Azizam in Los Angeles, CA on Friday, Oct. 4, 2024. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Azizam

Silver Lake Persian $
The cooking of Iran has historically been a cuisine with distinct expressions inside and outside the home. Family settings often involve dishes that can be exceptionally labor-intensive or stews so nuanced and subtle they defy professional kitchen standardization. Most restaurant menus are purposefully designed around crowd-pleasing, fire-kissed kebabs, creamy dips and snowdrifts of seasoned rice heaped on platters. Cody Ma and Misha Sesar have poignantly narrowed the divide at the Silver Lake cafe they opened in March. The star among their concise mix of mazeh (cold small plates), sandwiches and mains is the kofteh Tabrizi, a giant beef-and-rice meatball riddled with herbs and steeped in a tomato-based sauce electric with Persian dried lime. Your spoon soon finds its sweet, secret heart: a filling of dried apricots, prunes, barberries and walnuts. Look to turmeric-marinated chicken over rice for sheer comfort. In the several years that Azizam previously ran as a pop-up, Ma and Sesar mined an exploratory streak in their cooking, finding the similarities and differences in their individual families’ regional recipes. I’m betting as they settle into the restaurant’s early success, we’ll see more intricate khoresht (seasonal stew) specials like a brothy June stunner of lamb neck with apricots.
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ARLETA, CA - OCTOBER 27, 2024: Slow-roasted lamb barbacoa tacos on housemade torillas at Barbacoa Ramirez, a roadside Taqueria in Arleta . (Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)

Barbacoa Ramirez

Arleta Mexican $
Steamy, fragrant, supple-ropy lamb barbacoa, when done right, is such a painstaking art that most local practitioners sell it only on the weekends. Some standouts must be mentioned: in Lincoln Heights, Josefina Garduño serves spicy consomé bobbing with chickpeas and wisps of meat alongside barbacoa tacos, and in frequent Boyle Heights pop-ups Petra Zavaleta of Barba Kush unwraps her Pueblan-style barbacoa from a swaddle of maguey leaves. Conversations around sublime lamb barbacoa should start up north, however, at the stand that Gonzalo Ramirez sets up on Saturday and Sunday mornings in the north San Fernando Valley, near the Arleta DMV. You’ll see him and his family wearing red T-shirts that say “Atotonilco El Grande Hidalgo” to honor their hometown in central-eastern Mexico. Ramirez tends and butchers lambs in the Central Valley. The meat slow-cooks in a pit overnight and, cradled in plush made-to-order tortillas, the tacos come in three forms: smoky, molten-textured barbacoa; a pancita variation stained with chiles that goes fast; and incredible moronga, a nubbly, herbaceous sausage made with lamb’s blood.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 24: Cocobread cutter sandwich, left; callaloo, top; curry shrimp roti and mac and cheese pie at Bridgetown Roti in Los Angeles, CA. Photographed on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Bridgetown Roti

East Hollywood Caribbean $
Free the shrimp roti from its wrapper paper and you notice the bundle has already been cut in half. Its colors and patterns mesmerize for a few seconds: The flaky folds of paratha seem to barely contain spice-crusted shrimp, a saucy aloo (potato) sofrito, streaks of bright green herb-chile sauce and purple veins of turmeric-tinged cabbage slaw. The flavors are as blinding as the colors; crunchy textures bump against smooth ones. Fans of Rashida Holmes’ Caribbean American cooking have waited nearly three years for moments like this — when her breakthrough pop-up finally transitioned to a permanent location. Bridgetown Roti debuted in July in a cheering East Hollywood storefront, with Joy Clarke-Holmes (Rashida’s mother) and Malique Smith as partners. Holmes channels the richness of Bajan and Trinidadian cultures in not only rotis but also delicate cod fish cakes dabbed with garlic aioli, callaloo simmered to melting surrender in coconut broth with peppers and her inimitable savory patties (curried oxtail for the win). Oh, and hands down the creamiest, crustiest, most superlative baked macaroni and cheese in Los Angeles.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 01: Fried plantains and queso and loroco pupusa at Delmy's Pupusas in Los Angeles, CA on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2024. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Delmy’s Pupusas

Atwater Village Salvadoran $
Ruth Sandoval started Delmy’s Pupusas in 2007, named for her mother, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1980s during the Salvadoran civil war. She serves variations on El Salvador’s national dish, popping up weekly at farmers markets including Silver Lake, Atwater Village, Echo Park, Torrance and Hollywood. In a city like Los Angeles, there’s a pupusa for every persuasion. I’m partial to Sandoval’s harina de maiz, which is almost cake-like in the middle. The pupusas bake on the hot griddle until they’re splotchy with crisp brown spots and the insides are ready to burst. A filling of ground chicharrón takes on the consistency of creamy grits. There’s even a blue corn masa plant-based pupusa stuffed with vegetables from the surrounding farmers markets. My go-to order at any pupuseria, including Delmy’s, is the cheese and loroco, which features the bitter flower buds that are native to Central America. A splash of red salsa and a scoop of zesty curtido complete the pupusa trifecta of cheese, acid and crunch. And after pupusas, there are sweet, fried plantains with a black bean puree for dipping.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 27, 2024: Mangu Con Tres Golpes and Santana's Chicken with sides (Ensalada Rusa and Red and Black Beans) at El Bacano in North Hollywood (Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)

El Bacano

North Hollywood Dominican $
Siblings Deany Santana and Jonathan Santana worked together years ago in their family-run Dominican restaurant in Anchorage; in summer 2023 they reunited to serve their mother’s and grandmother’s recipes from a 16-seat storefront in a North Hollywood strip mall. They unlock their doors at noon but plate a quintessential Dominican breakfast that greatly comforts at any time of day: mangú (mashed plantains) with los tres golpes, or “the three hits” — two fried eggs, slices of griddled salami and thin rectangles of queso frito. A staffer will ask if you prefer the plantains green or ripe, and my answer is the one the Santanas recommend: a smooth yet textured mixture of the two. Deany often can be viewed through the kitchen window tending pots of various meats infused with lime juice, onions, garlic, oregano and other spices. I’m especially partial to Santana’s chicken, Jonathan’s renaming of the classic Dominican pollo guisado. The bird is richly browned and simmered with thinly sliced peppers in a bit of liquid that forms a brothy, potent gravy. Start with an empanada, its half-moon shape shattering into flakes to unleash a lava flow of yellow cheese and diced salami.
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HUNTINGTON PARK, CA - NOVEMBER 02: Nacatamale with bread and quesillos at Las Segovias in Huntington Park, CA on Saturday, Nov. 2, 2024. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Las Segovias

South Gate Nicaraguan $
Brick-sized Nicaraguan tamales, known as nacatamal, are superior to just about every other steamed leaf- or husk-wrapped tamale. I’m confident that you’ll reach the same conclusion with your first bite of nacatamal at Las Segovias in Huntington Park. Green olives and raisins peek out from the masa filled with bone-in pork ribs or chops. Once you dig a little deeper into the center, there’s a lump of rice, potato and slivers of tomato. All the components, including the pork bones, take on a decadent, custardy texture and the bittersweet taste of sour orange. The quesillo is served in a plastic bag, similar to the way it’s sometimes packaged on the streets of Nicaragua. The corn tortilla is thick and almost cake-like, blistered and folded around a blob of soft, mild white cheese and crema that oozes out the back. There are bowls of indio viejo, with strands of shredded beef suspended in a thick, savory gravy, and big platters of grilled meats alongside mounds of gallo pinto and triangles of fried cheese. Everything is better with a spoonful or three of the house condiment, diced onions soaked in a vinegar chile sauce that tastes a lot like Tabasco. After you eat, you can browse the sandals, clothing and snacks in a small marketplace at the rear of the dining room. The refresco of choice is cacao, a tall glass of milk flooded with crushed, whole cacao beans that drinks like a slightly grainy chocolate milk. “It’s very nice,” my server says, handing me a Big Gulp-sized cup with a straw. Yes, it really is.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - October 30, 2024: Plate of foldies (Bean and Cheese, (Beef and Smoked Chicken) and an Oxtail plate with yams, collard greens and cornbread at Locol in Los Angeles (Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)

Locol

Watts Soul Food $
What is the purpose of a restaurant? Is it purely sustenance? Does it exist to serve the people of its neighborhood? These are questions I find myself pondering while digging into a piece of fried chicken at Keith Corbin and Daniel Patterson’s Watts restaurant. Patterson, who founded the Michelin-starred San Francisco restaurant Coi, and Roy Choi originally opened Locol in 2016 with a menu full of reimagined fast-food favorites and a mission to create employment opportunities for the surrounding community. It closed in 2018 but recently was reopened by Patterson and Corbin, a former Locol kitchen manager who is now the executive chef and co-owner with Patterson of Alta Adams. Locol operates under their nonprofit, Alta Community, and aims to employ Watts residents and trainees from a nearby youth center. This means that service is always youthful and friendly, and you’ll likely spy a patient manager training team members during your visit. The two chefs have commented that economic empowerment, not food, is the highest purpose of the business. But the new menu, which may not always reflect the day’s offerings (they may be out of a few things), still satisfies with smoked brisket and ribs, oxtails and fried chicken sandwiches. Corbin is making dishes inspired by the food he’s now known for at his California soul destination Alta Adams, but at a lower price point. The sentiment behind Locol can best be described in a quote featured above the front doorway: “We are here!” And that is a very good thing, since the foldies, the stuffed tortillas the original Locol was known for, are still griddled to toasty, cheesy perfection.
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ALHAMBRA, CA - OCTOBER 09: Shanghai pan fried small bao (sheng jian bao) at Kang Kang Food Court in Alhambra, CA on Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Kang Kang Food Court

Alhambra Chinese $
When I wait in line to order at the Kang Kang Food Court in Alhambra, I like to chat up the people around me. Usually there’s someone who has driven from Westwood, Long Beach or maybe even Palos Verdes, willing to make the trek for a plate of Kang Kang’s sheng jian bao. The small pan-fried bao, as you’ll find the dumplings listed on the menu, are a popular street food in Shanghai. Part yeasted bun, part potsticker and a juicy pork dumpling all in one, they’re notoriously difficult to make, which may be why there are only a handful of versions around Los Angeles. The bao at Kang Kang are the gold standard, with crusty bottoms, thin chewy tops, fluffy midsections and a generous filling of juicy pork and hot soup. Each person at the table is given their own styrofoam ramekin of vinegar for dipping. Co-owner Chin Yu Yeh posted a poem on the dining room wall that includes instructions on how best to eat the dumplings. First, make a small bite. Then “blow up” the heat by blowing on the dumpling. Slowly sip the juice from the small hole, then enjoy. I once saw an impatient diner take a big bite and send hot juice flying across the table. Not me, though. It definitely wasn’t me.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 25, 2024: Quesadilla with Squash Blossoms at Komal in Los Angeles. (Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)

Komal

Historic South-Central Mexican $
The tortillas at Fátima Júarez’s new restaurant and molino in the Mercado La Paloma are a revelation. Delicate but supple, they taste of the sun and soil, earthy and bursting with the sweetness of summer corn. Júarez sources, nixtamalizes and grinds different heirloom Mexican corn varieties to make fresh masa for a short menu of antojitos. Chalqueño corn from the state of Mexico and Oaxacan blue bolita are featured in tlacoyos, griddled corn cakes stuffed with ayocote beans and generously garnished with nopales and salty crumbles of queso fresco. The best way to appreciate Júarez’s fresh masa (besides a stack of tortillas you can order by the dozen) may be the flor de calabaza quesadilla. The folded tortilla is brimming with Oaxacan cheese and a corn sofrito. Júarez’s mole, the culmination of a childhood spent in Oaxaca, is dusky and intricately spiced, noticeably sweet and redolent with toasted chiles. After I finished my molotes de platano, I took a warm tortilla, rolled it into a loose cigar and dipped it into the leftover mole for dessert. There’s already talk of a weekly tasting menu. But for now, sampling all the antojitos is a great way to spend a lunch break.
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The Brussels sprout breakfast taco from Macheen, photographed for the 101 Best Tacos 2024 on Thursday, July 18th, 2024 in Los Angeles, CA. (Andrea D'Agosto / For The Times)
(Andrea D’Agosto/For The Times)

Macheen

Boyle Heights Mexican $
Breakfast burrito culture in Los Angeles is as limitless as tacos. Do you want yours bursting at the seams and crusted with cheese? With equal parts pastrami and eggs? There are thousands of places to indulge your particular craving for egg and cheese in a tortilla. The place contributing the loudest to the breakfast burrito conversation may be Macheen, siblings Ana and Jonathan Perez’s daytime restaurant inside Milpa Grille in Boyle Heights. The soft-scrambled eggs and Swiss cheese form a creamy, cheesy base for chile-dusted tater tots and brisket, longaniza, fried chicken, mushroom al pastor or Brussels sprouts. The flour tortillas are griddled until just charred but never really toasted, still stretchy and chewy. It was Jonathan’s tacos that first drew me to his roaming taqueria nearly a decade ago. The menu is more streamlined now, with blue corn tortillas you can fill with the same crispy pork belly, birria and fried chicken at lunch. I would jump at the chance to taste his taco de pollo en mole blanco again but appreciate the groove he’s settled into since becoming a permanent location in 2023. Knowing there is a breakfast burrito waiting for me, whenever I want one, is a luxury.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 27, 2024: Original Thai Boat Noodle with Beef, Kanom Tuay (steamed coconut milk) and Thai Iced Tea at Mae Malai in Los Angeles. (Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)

Mae Malai House of Noodles

Los Feliz Thai $
Malai Data began serving her superlative version of boat noodles — a recipe gleaned from her mother-in-law, who’s made the dish professionally in Bangkok for decades — from a stand in front of Silom Supermarket in Thai Town in late 2022. By year’s end she had a lease for a space two blocks away, in the shopping complex at Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue. The short menu, including basil-scented egg rolls and respectable pad see ew, is roundly satisfying, but the boat noodles are the irrefutable star attraction. Data’s servings are small and under $10, as is customary: In Bangkok part of the fun is going from stall to stall, tasting each cook’s tweaks. My order at Mae Malai: thin rice noodles (among five options), as the server recommends; pork over beef; and “spicy” rather than “Thai spicy.” At this level, the chile heat races across the taste buds as a big first sensation and then retreats, balancing the broth’s sweetness and vinegary thwack. Spices like star anise and white pepper glint like fireflies at dusk. Green onions and fried crumbles of pork skin rustle against the teeth, and bites of the bowl’s solo pork meatball bounce around the palate. The noodles feel squiggly, and they’re gone quickly, until only the must-sip liquid dregs remain, tingly and the color of black coffee. Other worthy bowls of boat noodles exist in Los Angeles, but this one rates as a master class.
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NEWPORT BEACH, CA - OCTOBER 29, 2024: Drizzling chimichurri on the famous steak sandwich at Mario's Butcher Shop in Newport Beach. (Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)

Mario’s Butcher Shop

Newport Beach Butcher Shop Sandwich Shop $
The feelings I harbor for the sandwiches at Mario’s Butcher Shop in Newport Beach border on obsession. I can’t help but feel a certain way about a place that blasts Anita Baker and the Whispers and piles thick slices of smoked bologna onto a soft roll with an obscene amount of yellow mustard and white onion. Chef-owner Mario Llamas approaches your paper-wrapped lunchtime sandwich with the same bravado you’d expect from someone who cares about stars from that tire company, smoking his own pastrami and curing the various meats for his Italian sub. He prepares Niman Ranch steaks to your liking on a wood-burning grill for the “special” steak sandwich. Dressed with chimichurri and served on good, crusty bread, it’s an homage to the time the chef spent cooking at an Argentine steakhouse in Guadalajara. Mario’s is the busiest place in the Plaza Newport shopping center, with many people stopping in for a sandwich and supplies for dinner. There’s a refrigerator full of Wagyu Bolognese, fresh pasta, smoked salmon candy dip and other grab-and-go items next to vacuum-sealed packages of beef cheek, spleen and marrow bone. And I appreciate any place that prioritizes Have’A corn chips over those neon orange triangles.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 05: Cod dosirak, left; avocado and mentaiko rice, right, with various banchan - rolled egg, bottom left, fermented cucumber and melon and sesame green beans at Perilla LA. Photographed at Perilla LA in Los Angeles, CA on Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Perilla LA

Chinatown Korean $
If you could eat lunch from only one Los Angeles restaurant for the rest of your life, where would it be? My answer comes easily: Perilla LA. Jihee Kim’s banchan, so full of geometries and colors and so urgent in flavor, brings this class of Korean dishes center-stage. Eaten collectively, they land in the Venn diagram linking light, nourishing and compelling. Expect straight-from-the-farmers-market produce prepared in intuitive variations of freshness and fermentation — garlicky eggplant, sesame-speckled green beans, complex kimchi made from collard greens or daikon — and perennials like her stunning seaweed-rolled omelet cut into circles with hypnotic, spiraling centers. Small portions of the day’s banchan selection also come over rice as part of a compartmented dosirak tray, served with warm doenjang-marinated chicken or cod. My dream hack: Swing by on a Monday, enjoy a dosirak at one of the shaded tables outside Perilla’s tiny gabled home in a converted garage, then take home four or five banchan to eat midday for the remainder of the week.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 25: Poncho's tlayuda with three meats - chorizo inside, asada and moronga (blood sausage) at Poncho's Tlayudas in Los Angeles, CA on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Poncho’s Tlayudas

Historic South-Central Mexican $
It is Friday night. It is time to head to South L.A. for the once-a-week pop-up serving one of our city’s defining dishes. Among billows of mesquite, under a tent in a shrubbery-filled yard, Alfonso “Poncho” Martínez will be grilling and folding tlayudas in the style he grew up loving in Oaxaca’s Central Valley. He begins by swabbing his masa canvas (always imported from his home state) with asiento, a toasted lard he renders himself, before spreading over frijoles refritos, shredded cabbage and cheese yanked into short strings. Choose among three meats: chorizo; tasajo, a thin cut of flank steak salt-cured overnight before grilling; and moronga, a miraculously light, herb-laced blood sausage made from a family recipe of Martinez’s wife and business partner, Odilia Romero. (She co-founded the organization Comunidades Indigenas en Liderazgo, or CIELO, which hosts Poncho’s Tlayudas weekly.) I like all three meats combined, which Martínez and his crew cheerfully accommodate. Soft and crackling, fragrant and dense, this tactile masterwork coaxes all your senses into play.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - NOVEMBER 01: Caramelo at Sonoratown in Los Angeles, CA on Friday, Nov. 1, 2024. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Sonoratown

Mid-Wilshire Sonoran $
Jennifer Feltham and Teodoro Díaz-Rodriguez Jr. shifted their phenomenal Sonoran-style taquerias into expansion mode over the last year. Crowds never let up at the tiny eight-year-old original in downtown. This summer, they debuted a michelada bar at their Mid-City outpost, where you can also snack on loaded nachos alongside your tacos and quesadillas. They opened a third location in Long Beach in September. What hasn’t changed is their attention to quality and consistency. Julia Guerrero ensures the excellence of Sonoratown’s flour tortillas: thin, flaky, durable yet delicate, almost buttery with lard. My order usually involves the famous Burrito 2.0 and at least one chivichanga, a mini-bundle swaddling shredded chicken or beef cooked down with tomatoes, Anaheim chiles and cheese into a dense, gooey guisado. Another prize on the concise menu: the caramelo, elsewhere sometimes fashioned from two tortillas bound by cheese. In this case, a large-format taco engulfs Monterey Jack, pintos and cabbage for crunch, plus avocado and spicy red salsas. Meat options make for the toughest decision: Classics include costilla (short rib and chuck robed in mesquite smoke), grilled chicken, tripe and chorizo. Cabeza, a new entrant, simmers to such tenderness that the clove-scented molecules transform into beefy custard.
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SHERMAN OAKS, CA - OCTOBER 25: Chicken shawarma plate from Sincerely Syria on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023 in Sherman Oaks, CA. (Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)

Sincerely Syria

Sherman Oaks Syrian $
Adham Kamal, raised in As-Suwayda (sometimes also spelled Sweida) in southwestern Syria, brings to Los Angeles the surprisingly delicate, deep-down-marinated shawarma he learned to make as a teenager. He now operates in four locations: Sherman Oaks, Pasadena, Anaheim and the first local stand he ran near the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Vine Street, then called Hollywood Shawarma. The menu at his operations comes down to two choices: spiced lamb and beef, referred to as lahme (meat) in Arabic, or lemony chicken, called djej. Each has a traditional sauce: tahini-based tarator for lahme, toum (whipped garlic paste) for djej. The hardest decisions concern size and form. There are three options: a handheld stuffed pita or 12- and 24-inch versions, made using flour tortillas, that come with fries. Think small is my advice, and ask for the wrap to be rolled using only one round side of a pita. It’s about proportions. A shawarma wrap is not a burrito. It is meant to be compact and intense. A crowning touch: Kamal and his staff finish them on the griddle, searing every angle until they’re browned and crackling.
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The mixto vampiro plate at Tacos La Carreta on Tuesday, July 16th, 2024 in Paramount, CA. (Andrea D'Agosto / For The Times)
(Andrea D’Agosto/For The Times)

Tacos La Carreta

Whittier Mexican $
Late in 2020, José Manuel Morales Bernal began serving tacos from a food truck on the northern fringes of Long Beach. They mirrored the style his father had learned growing up in a town called El Verde in Mexico’s Sinaloa state. The quick success his son found led to the opening of a taqueria, its menu nearly identical, in a Whittier strip mall in early 2023. The foremost Sinaloan glory: a chorreada, which begins by crisping a corn tortilla on the comal and sprinkling on Monterey Jack and, crucially, asiento, a rendered paste made from the remnants of frying chicharrones. Its taste crisscrosses the nutty, caramelized purity of homemade ghee with the explicit richness of pork. Morales makes three meats: carne asada, adobada and tripa. Mixing the asada or adobada with tripe lands the flavors in a sweet-spot juncture of smoke, seasoning and funk. Consider the same combination when ordering the Sinaloan pellizcada, a medium-large round of masa, thicker than the average tortilla but thinner than a sope. Morales drives to Tijuana weekly to pick up pellizcadas made by a vendor in Mazatlán. The number he needs to order, he told me recently, keeps growing and growing.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 29, 2024: a 3 piece chicken plate with sides of rice and collard greens at Tokyo Fried Chicken in downtown Los Angeles. (Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)

Tokyo Fried Chicken

Downtown L.A. Fried Chicken $
For years, Tokyo Fried Chicken Co. was a tiny operation in a strip mall in Monterey Park. Visits required advance coordination with friends and a volunteer to arrive an hour early to get on the waitlist. I experienced a pinch-me moment last year when owners Kouji and Elaine Yamanashi closed the original location and opened a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles with counter service and ample seating. Now, you walk up to the counter and trays of chicken appear in less than 10 minutes. Kouji’s chicken is never changing: giant pieces of bone-in karaage battered and fried like one might find all over the American South. Scabrous and golden, the batter cracks to release the flavors of soy, garlic and ginger emerging in a flood of hot juice from the chicken. Thighs, drumsticks and wings are served in sets with rice polished with chicken fat, pickles, a side and dipping sauce. I favor the shredded cabbage salad, craving the cool freshness of the cabbage and the ginger tang of the dressing. Chicken is always the priority, but lately I’ve been starting lunch with an order of potato chips and onion dip and the chicken skins dusted with chile.
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LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 24, 2024: Villa's Trio taco plate and Vegan Trio taco plate at Villas Tacos in Los Angeles. (Ron De Angelis / For The Times)
(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)

Villa’s Tacos

Highland Park Mexican $
No two queso tacos ever look exactly alike emerging from the griddles at Villa’s Tacos. Sometimes the blue corn tortillas fuse with cheese to form the jagged rhombus shapes of continents. On others the cheese runs like thinned crêpe batter that seizes into lacy edges. But at either location — the always-busy taqueria in Highland Park or the popular counter in Grand Central Market — the result is salty-crisp deliciousness. Then taqueros pile on cotija, onion, squiggles of crema and guacamole. Among meats, I will always favor the hashed chicken thigh meat bathed in mesquite smoke. For second and third tacos, look to fragrant chopped asada, nubbly chorizo or a nicely piquant vegan option of half-pureed black beans scattered with cactus salad. “Tacos estilo Los Angeles” is Victor Villa’s motto for his more-is-more taco philosophy. Like the city he invokes, the closer you look, the more stories you find. Among a half-dozen or so salsas, for example, look for a ruddy mulch labeled “jiquilpan.” It’s based on a recipe dense with smoked chiles that Villa’s father was taught in Michoacán.
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