Los Angeles

Lu’s Garden: Congee Craftwork

At lunchtime, a line starts to form in front of Lu’s Garden in San Gabriel. Right in front of the entrance is a narrow walkway and a long counter with a line of buffet trays filled with braised pork, lap cheong (a type of dried, sweetened Chinese sausage) and more. Stacked behind them are bowls filled with more dishes like sautéed string beans and bok choy. The kitchen staff can be seen replenishing the various buffet trays seemingly every five to ten minutes, keeping them full as hungry patrons file through. Both dine-in and takeout customers choose their dishes based on what’s at the counter – there are more than enough options, as Lu’s Garden generally has fifty different dishes at a time.

Los Angeles

Sei-Ko-En: The Grill Deal

Inside Sei-Ko-En, a small strip mall restaurant on Sepulveda Boulevard in Torrance, smoke rises from the small grills. Japanese and English conversations can be heard over the sizzle of meat cooking. Just like at yakiniku joints around Japan, customers at Sei-Ko-En grill their own meat, which is accompanied by plates of kimchi and steaming bowls of yukgaejang (a spicy Korean soup with shredded beef). Yakiniku has its roots in Korean barbecue and this style of grilling meat was introduced to Japan by Korean immigrants, so it’s very common to see traditional Korean dishes served at yakiniku restaurants as well.

Los Angeles

Lu’s Garden: Congee Craftwork

At lunchtime, a line starts to form in front of Lu’s Garden in San Gabriel. Right in front of the entrance is a narrow walkway and a long counter with a line of buffet trays filled with braised pork, lap cheong (a type of dried, sweetened Chinese sausage) and more. Stacked behind them are bowls filled with more dishes like sautéed string beans and bok choy. The kitchen staff can be seen replenishing the various buffet trays seemingly every five to ten minutes, keeping them full as hungry patrons file through. Both dine-in and takeout customers choose their dishes based on what’s at the counter – there are more than enough options, as Lu’s Garden generally has fifty different dishes at a time.

Los Angeles

Sumac Mediterranean Cuisine: Hollywood Beginning

For Eli Berchan, it certainly seemed like the universe was telling him to open his Lebanese restaurant, Sumac Mediterranean Cuisine, in Hollywood. Prior to coming to Los Angeles, Berchan was living in Lebanon and working in event management and organizing destination weddings. At the end of February, 2020, he had come to Southern California to attend an industry conference. “The last day of the conference was Covid day one, and I ended up being stuck here,” Berchan recalled. Since he wasn’t able to go back to Lebanon, he rented a place in Hollywood, and soon found out the owner happened to be Lebanese. Berchan was doing some private cooking to get by and sent his landlord, Ferris Wehbe, some traditional Lebanese food he had prepared to thank him.

Los Angeles

Yama Sushi Marketplace: Forty Years of Fresh Fish

Scott Kohno knows when a new customer is about to come into Yama Sushi Marketplace because he hears the locked front door rattling. As the store’s regulars are already well aware of, the front door isn’t used at Yama. There’s a sign out front that directs customers to enter through the back door, where the parking lot is located. The small store is divided into two rooms. Upon entering from the back door, there’s a small table in the center with cute Japanese stationery items, and pantry items and bottles of sake line the shelves to the right. A refrigerator on the left is full of cold drinks, nigiri sushi, and sushi rolls that have been packed that day. The second room is where one finds the heart of Yama Sushi Marketplace: the fish counter. Hungry customers take numbered tickets and wait their turn to get freshly sliced sashimi.

Los Angeles

Best Bites 2024: Los Angeles

It has been another great year of dining in Los Angeles, with new restaurants to explore and old favorites to revisit. The L.A. food scene is going as strong as ever and we’ve had a lot of outstanding meals this year. It’s always a difficult task to narrow down the best bites of the year, but looking back at the past year, these are the dishes that left a strong impression and live rent free in my head. Los Angeles has a dearth of Portuguese restaurants, but that changed with the opening of Barra Santos, a tiny restaurant in the Cypress Park neighborhood. I would happily return to Barra Santos for one thing on the menu: bifana, the classic Portuguese pork sandwich.

Los Angeles

Eastside Italian Deli: A Century of Sandwiches

In a relatively young city like Los Angeles, not many places have been open for more than 90 years, and even fewer have been open that long while staying relatively under the radar. Eastside Italian Deli is a delicious exception, having been around in the neighborhood that is now known as Victor Heights since 1929 (though it originally opened as Eastside Market). A small neighborhood between Chinatown and Echo Park, Victor Heights is often called the “Forgotten Edge,” but it was once home to a community of Italian immigrants who shopped at places like Eastside Market on a regular basis. These days, Eastside Italian Deli gets a steady stream of diners on weekday afternoons, from blue collar workers to high school students on summer break.

Los Angeles

Summer Slurps: The Best Cold Noodles in L.A.

For a large part of the world, eating cold noodles is one of the best ways to beat the sweltering heat of the summer, whether the strands are served with a dipping sauce or sitting in an ice cold broth. The history of cold noodles may not be as well studied as the history of the noodle itself, but we can imagine people have been eating cold noodles for as long as noodles have been around when the weather warms up. Somen is believed to be the oldest Japanese noodle (circa the 700s) and is typically served cold with a dipping sauce. In Korea, a cold noodle soup called naengmyeon has been around since the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897).

Los Angeles

Jose Chiquito: Grand Central Breakfast

The historic Grand Central Market in downtown Los Angeles looks very different today than it used to. Opened in 1917, Grand Central Market began as a public market with a variety of vegetable stands and meat and poultry shops, a place for people to get their daily groceries. Over a hundred years later, the market still stands, but a big revitalization project that started around 2013 has transformed this local landmark. While the architecture and interior of the market remains mostly the same, the project has drawn new, hip food vendors to the historic space, now lit with vibrant neon signs. On weekends, long lines form around popular stalls like Eggslut and Broad Street Oyster Co. Among the new vendors, legacy businesses are still holding on, serving both longtime and new customers.

Los Angeles

Neighborhoods to Visit: Thai Town, Los Angeles

Thai Town, a six-block stretch of Hollywood Boulevard between Western and Normandie, has long been a destination for food-loving Angelenos – a pilgrimage, even. This neighborhood is home to some of the city’s best Thai restaurants – most of them tucked inside strip malls that get so busy at night they need valet parking. In 1972, Bangkok Market opened on the eastern edge of Melrose Avenue. It was the first Thai market in the United States, owned by the parents of celebrity chef Jet Tila, who has appeared on various U.S. food television shows.

Los Angeles

Azay: Japanese Breakfast (and More) in Little Tokyo

Whether it’s a weekend morning or weekday dinner, the 20-seat Azay in Little Tokyo is packed. On a nice day, extra tables are set up on the sidewalk, also filling up quickly. Inside the restaurant, chef Akira Hirose and his son, Philip, work the kitchen, while Akira’s wife, Jo Ann, greets customers. Azay only opened in Little Tokyo in 2019, but the legacy of chef Akira Hirose and his family goes much further, both in the Los Angeles food scene and in Little Tokyo in general.

Los Angeles

Best Bites 2023: Los Angeles

Eating in the city of Angels is always exciting, with new restaurants and pop-ups continuously appearing and long-time restaurants still holding their own. Cliché as it may sound, Los Angeles is a true melting pot of cuisines where you can find food from pretty much every corner of the globe, as well as a new generation of third-culture chefs creating dishes inspired by their experiences growing up in a global city like L.A. It was no easy task to narrow our choices down, but these are the memorable meals that made it onto our Los Angeles Best Bites list for 2023.

Los Angeles

Mirak: The GOAT of Goat Stew

It’s no secret that Los Angeles has an amazing Korean food scene. L.A.’s Koreatown is the largest in the United States, with over 500 restaurants, so Angelenos are lucky enough to find restaurants that specialize in less common dishes, beyond the popular Korean barbecue or bibimbap. One such dish is yeomso tang (also spelled yumso tang), a stew traditionally made with Korean black goat meat, which we tracked down at Mirak. Black goats get their name, naturally, from the black hair that covers their body. They are native to Korea, where eating black goat is believed to have numerous health benefits. Not only is it a leaner meat, it’s also believed to be very nutritious.

Los Angeles

Banana Leaf: South India Express

Perusing the menus of most Indian restaurants in Los Angeles, one may forget that India is the seventh-largest country in the world, with over 30 states and union territories. A limited handful of the same recipes – chicken tikka masala, tandoori, naan – repeat themselves time and time again. These are the dishes most commonly found on Indian restaurants’ menus across the U.S., including Los Angeles, and they all hail from North India. Sridhar Sambangi is looking to change this at Banana Leaf, which serves regional specialties from South India. Sambangi spent more than 30 years working in technology startups, which included a cloud-based food ordering service for restaurants. Food has always been his passion, though, and he finally took the leap to start his own restaurant with Banana Leaf.

Los Angeles

The Perfect Spring Day: Los Angeles

Los Angeles winter is typically mild, sunny and dry (notwithstanding this past winter), so here it isn’t the warmer weather we await for every spring. Still, for a multitude of reasons, spring is a season many Angelenos celebrate. For me, spring signals the arrival of wildflowers and the beginning of spot prawn season, two uniquely Californian events that I anticipate each year. As California’s official state flower, the poppy flowers in Antelope Valley are the most popular wildflowers, but the poppy reserve tends to be way too crowded – especially on superbloom years. I like to head to Malibu instead for my wildflowers. The drive north along the ocean on Pacific Coast Highway is one of the most beautiful in L.A. – we could even already see some wildflowers along the way.

Los Angeles

Ayara Thai: Noodles, With a Kick

Every few months, a small part of quiet West 87th Street near the Los Angeles International Airport turns into a scene of nighttime street food. On these evenings, Ayara Thai – a family-owned restaurant that has been around for 19 years – sets up a makeshift kitchen on the street and puts tables out on their sidewalk and the street patio that was originally installed during the pandemic shutdown. Thai hotpot, barbecue and street food popups are among the special events Ayara Thai holds throughout the year, but there is one that is the most unique and perhaps the most popular: the kancha boat noodle. Thai boat noodle is a noodle soup with a rich broth made from pork or beef, dark soy sauce, herbs, and typically thickened with cow or pig’s blood.

Los Angeles

Ayara Thai: Noodles, With a Kick

Every few months, a small part of quiet West 87th Street near the Los Angeles International Airport turns into a scene of nighttime street food. On these evenings, Ayara Thai – a family-owned restaurant that has been around for 19 years – sets up a makeshift kitchen on the street and puts tables out on their sidewalk and the street patio that was originally installed during the pandemic shutdown. Thai hotpot, barbecue and street food popups are among the special events Ayara Thai holds throughout the year, but there is one that is the most unique and perhaps the most popular: the kancha boat noodle. Thai boat noodle is a noodle soup with a rich broth made from pork or beef, dark soy sauce, herbs, and typically thickened with cow or pig’s blood.

Los Angeles

Sumac Mediterranean Cuisine: Hollywood Beginning

For Eli Berchan, it certainly seemed like the universe was telling him to open his Lebanese restaurant, Sumac Mediterranean Cuisine, in Hollywood. Prior to coming to Los Angeles, Berchan was living in Lebanon and working in event management and organizing destination weddings. At the end of February, 2020, he had come to Southern California to attend an industry conference. “The last day of the conference was Covid day one, and I ended up being stuck here,” Berchan recalled. Since he wasn’t able to go back to Lebanon, he rented a place in Hollywood, and soon found out the owner happened to be Lebanese. Berchan was doing some private cooking to get by and sent his landlord, Ferris Wehbe, some traditional Lebanese food he had prepared to thank him.

Los Angeles

The Joint Seafood: Dry-Aged Fish Revolution

When The Joint first opened on Ventura Boulevard in the summer of 2018, the concept of dry-aged fish was still very much unknown in Los Angeles, even though master sushi chefs typically age their tuna for a few days and have been doing so for some 400 years. At The Joint, though, owner and fishmonger Liwei Liao takes this a few steps further by dry-aging different types of fish and sometimes aging certain fish for up to three months. From salmon to mackerel to branzino, Liao has perfected the art of dry-aging fish over the years, and now he’s spreading the word.

Los Angeles

Summer Slurps: The Best Cold Noodles in L.A.

For a large part of the world, eating cold noodles is one of the best ways to beat the sweltering heat of the summer, whether the strands are served with a dipping sauce or sitting in an ice cold broth. The history of cold noodles may not be as well studied as the history of the noodle itself, but we can imagine people have been eating cold noodles for as long as noodles have been around when the weather warms up. Somen is believed to be the oldest Japanese noodle (circa the 700s) and is typically served cold with a dipping sauce. In Korea, a cold noodle soup called naengmyeon has been around since the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1897).

Los Angeles

Otomisan: A Slice of L.A. Japanese History

Stepping into Otomisan in Boyle Heights feels like a step back in time. It’s a cozy diner with just three red booths to the right of the entrance, and a counter with five stools to the left. Along the walls are a mixture of old Japanese paintings, photographs of family and friends, and more recent news clippings about the restaurant. There is usually at least one table of Japanese customers chatting with the current owner. Boyle Heights sits just east of downtown Los Angeles and is known for having a large Chicano community and some of the best Mexican food in the city, but it once was also home to a large Japanese community, due to the neighborhood’s proximity to Little Tokyo, just across the L.A. river.

Los Angeles

Simpang Asia: Street-Style Indonesian

Leni Kumala and her husband Welly Effendi didn’t plan on opening an Indonesian restaurant when they first came to Los Angeles from their home country. When Simpang Asia first opened in 2002, it was a small grocery store in Palms selling Indonesian products. Leni and Welly live in Palms, and they noted that there was nowhere to get these items without going to the San Gabriel Valley. These days, Simpang Asia is a full service restaurant with two locations in LA and is one of the most popular places in the city to get Indonesian food. I sat down over a meal with owner Leni Kumala to hear about how Simpang Asia first started.