The Resy Guide to Power Lunches Around Los Angeles

Jon & Vinny’s is an homage to the red-sauce joints that owners Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo have loved their entire lives. Now an essential and beloved L.A. gem with two locations, the Brentwood outpost boasts an expansive outdoor dining space set up in the parking lot, plus more pizza, pasta, and soft serve ice cream for all. Breakfast and lunch are key times for quick-hitting meetings with avocado toast, porridge with strawberries, and Brentwood-only dishes like eggs with pesto, arugula, and tomato.

It really doesn’t matter which location you hit — Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, the Valley, or the South Bay — lunch at the locally born chain is quick, easy, and always affordable, making it a plum spot for work talk. The omakase (or “trust me”) menus are consistently filled with clean, sustainably sourced fish, and served with Kazonori Nozawa’s famed sweet, warm rice, and housemade soy sauce. Each location is sleek, always full, and never takes reservations or accepts tips. Think: efficiency in spicy tuna form.

There’s something super-familiar and comfortable about this Beverly Hills spot, maybe because it’s an independent concept from the Hillstone Restaurant Group, which owns Houston’s. That means it consistently delivers on all counts, from the service to the shrimp Louie salads and always-excellent burgers. It’s also a perfect quick-lunch spot for two — especially since that’s what it’s set up for in an ongoing pandemic world (larger parties may not be able to be accommodated).

Everyone knows that movies are made in Hollywood, but those that make the movies live in the Valley. That’s why Ludo Lefebvre’s all-day restaurant is a hit for breakfast and lunch meetings. Its easy-to-reach location (read: no need to drive over the hill), great patio, and that omelet all surely have been key to getting many a deal made.

For more than 30 years, this Downtown staple has served comfort food favorites like pan-fried chicken, meatloaf and mashed potatoes, and firehouse chili (it is set in a former firehouse, after all). A daytime “power lunch” deal makes many local workers — who are slowly coming back — regulars for life.

Not even a pandemic can keep people away from this iconic Beverly Hills Hotel restaurant. Once dubbed “Hollywood’s commissary,” it was one of the first places booked for primetime power lunches once everything could reopen. The legendary garden with its shady trees, green-and-white garden chairs, and player booths has pretty much seen it all. Discreet lunch meetings usually take place over insanely priced dishes that only the power elite can afford, like the McCarthy salad, a Cobb by another name, created for a regular in the 1940s. It’s so classic, reservations can be made only by phone, at 310-887-2777.

If a Parisian bistro and a Californian all-day café reproduced, their offspring would look a lot like FIG. One of the Westside’s hidden gems, a seat on the patio overlooking the Fairmont Miramar pool makes a solid choice for power breakfasting, which is now reservable (lunch is paused at the moment). Breakfast plates with scrambled egg whites, chicken sausage, and seasonal fruit is like the Santa Monica business crowd on a plate.

Hideyuki Yoshimoto spent years at the Tsukiji market, and every piece of uni, toro, and hamachi selected for his intimate Beverly Hills restaurant is treated with the same reverence as if he was still in Tokyo. Let the chef choose your lunch so you can get down to business: the donburi features slivers of the best fish of the day in one bowl, as does the sashimi platter. And although the small patio is a great option for in-person seating, takeout is as serious as omakase ordered in person, so an office lunch is just as doable as dining out.

With everyone from Amazon to Apple securing office space in Culver City, it’s the newest tech hub For L.A. Quick lunches are mandatory for this crowd, but casual doesn’t have to mean skimping on quality. While the dining room and bar offer colorful comfort for Roberta’s much-desired wood-fired pies, peak-season salads, and housemade pastas, its patio is a buzzy spot in the confines of the Platform complex — echoing the tiki garden of the Brooklyn original.

Vespertine chef Jordan Kahn’s daytime cafe is another go-to for Culver City’s tech and design crowd. Things like beef tartare with smoked egg cream, and avocado confit with burnt onion dust have become instant classics. It’s strictly walk-in, but delivery and takeout are options.

The breezy Abbot Kinney all-day cafe is elbow to elbow with Venice entrepreneurs and techillionaires who look like surfers and skate kids from the boardwalk. With extended outdoor seating, there’s even more room for fresh juices and cardamom chai at breakfast, and avocado toast and acai bowls, stone-oven pizzas, and pastas like vegan cacio e pepe at lunch.

This Venice staple is practically a morning commissary for the Silicon Beach crowd, who file in for free Wi-Fi, bike parking, and power breakfasts. The all-day menu features toasts topped with anything your heart desires (kale, mushrooms, or of course, avocado), great pastries, whole grain pancakes, and even oysters, burgers, and one fantastic roast chicken.