The porridge and other delights at Porridge and Puffs are phenomenal! It’s great to see focus on the great restaurants/spots in Historic Filipinotown.
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Try Skafs N Hollywood location - the fatoush salad, the dips/veg platter, the kibbe balls, the daily special - all amazing!
I'm disappointed to see Pasjoli on so many LA Times lists. I had one of the worst dining experiences of my life there - the food was sub-par, the atmosphere stuffy, and the service rude. Many friends who have eaten there separately agree. Let's see something more exciting!
Looks like downtown and the beach is where the new action is...probably one reason I haven't been to most of these places!
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alta’s Fried Chicken isn’t skillet fried anymore, I asked. But a great Los Angeles dish and list!
I live in Los Angeles, read The NY Times app multiple times a day (and get the Sunday paper), and this is the first I’m hearing about you having an LA food critic. Love this list, wish the app had done a better job presenting me with her stories this past year.
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@RH
Sign up for the California Today Briefing to get email updates, including Tejal Rao's Food column.
https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters
For a second I thought the title of the article was wrong and should have read Santa Monica instead of LA.
I think Rao missed our valleys San Gabriel and San Fernando. Maybe next time.
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@LP I was thinking how weird (and great) it is that a list of the best food in the NYT would pinpoint the intersection of Slauson and Paloma. (Not to mention West Adams, Filipinotown...) But yeah, it's a big map. Lucky us!
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Thanks. You might want to cross-reference. https://www.latimes.com/food/story/2019-12-07/tasting-notes-newsletter-101-list-escarcega
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@ savvt Aliso Viejo
I like your subdivision of California into culinary regions. Is there a bilateral link between the food and social-political behavior? If there is, it would be for Mr. Frank Bruni to enlighten us.
Out of 10 dishes, how many have meat? I count 9. Come on, dude. It's California and it's 2019. Read the room.
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It's been a whole year as critic? I'm a bit disappointed at the paucity of actual restaurant reviews in that time. When I do see Rao's byline, it tends to be on recipes, rather than reviews.
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Excellent writing with rich details. But this makes me glad to be vegetarian: "The flashiest bit of French haute cuisine in the chef Dave Beran’s dining room is the goth duck press making the rounds on a trolley, creaking as it crushes bone and blood."
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Thanks for an excellent first year, and hope there are many more. I would love it if you would compile a similar list for Northern California, too.
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Congratulations to Ms. Rao on her safe and successful completion of the year in California. But there surely must be more to her findings than "Porridge with pickles and jam", featured on the head photo. I would be interested to learn, what is the quintessential Californian cuisine, if there is such.
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I lived in LA until recently. Styles depends on where you are but Tacos (especially street tacos on small corn tortillas), Burritos, Burgers, all day breakfast, and every imaginable salad and other dishes that highlight the available produce are ubiquitous through California. LA is known for Doughnuts, Pastrami, Brisket, and all things Korean, Middle Eastern, Japanese, Thai, Filipino, and Greek due to the large communities that exist in the city. San Diego, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco (and the surrounding areas) are known for sea food. Northern California is a mecca for cheese, wine, nuts, and stone fruit.
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@Tuvw Xyz I think the Vietnamese porridge is a perfect representation of where California cuisine is right now: expressing LA’s rich immigrant diversity through the principles of CA cuisine. But I’d like to see more coverage of San Gabriel Valley. I’d go as far as saying LA does Chinese food magnitudes better than any other immigrant cuisine in the city including Mexican, but there’s so little coverage of that area since the passing of Jonathan Gold. None on this list, unfortunately.
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@ Max C. Atlanta GA
Thank you for the listing of the gastronomical variety of California. I love sea food, in California one drinks Californian wines (when in Rome, do as the Romans do), but I am distrustful of all cheese made in the US.
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