The Resy Hit List: Where In L.A. You’ll Want to Eat Right Now

Bar di Bello turns Silver Lake’s Milanese aperitivo daydreams into a meal you can actually book. Set in a snazzy new Sunset Blvd. strip mall, burgundy curtains part to reveal this stylish new Italian restaurant from the teams behind Gigi’s and Wexler’s Deli. In Milan, you’d start with a spritz or a Negroni, and Bar di Bello doesn’t care to argue: the Splendido Spritz is a bittersweet, slightly sharper cousin of the Aperol spritz, while the $44 Negroni di Basso arrives in an almost comically gigantic goblet that feels tailored for toasts. The kitchen’s putting in work, too, with briny Sicilian anchovy toast, ribbons of 24‑month prosciutto di Parma, and breaded chicken cutlets glossed in a shallot–guanciale–caper sauce. Eastsiders used to dream of restaurants like this; now they’re finally here.

Once upon a time, Angelenos chased Anna Sonenshein and Niki Vahle’s coveted fried fish sandwich pop-up across the city like it was a rare celestial event, but with their second permanent outpost—this time, in trendy Melrose Hill—the duo proves Little Fish is not only here to stay, but that it has more to offer than just a really good lunch. Compared to its Echo Park counterpart, Little Fish’s Melrose Hill location is more grown up: locally sourced seafood is served in a stylish bistro, where warm wood glows in the daytime and marble tabletops shine at night. While you can—and should—order that panko-encrusted icon during the day, stay for dinner, when the kitchen flexes its fine dining muscles with rotating dishes like bay scallop crudo, lobster grilled with a persimmon glaze, and pan-fried skate wing with brown butter and sauerkraut.

The latest restaurant from Last Word Hospitality, Hermon’s joins siblings Found Oyster, Barra Santos, Queen’s, and Rasarumah in a bid for East Side supremacy. Named after the tiny neighborhood it’s situated in, tucked between Highland Park and South Pasadena, Hermon’s is a rustic, 89-seat space that combines Art Deco vibes with the area’s prevalent Craftsman style. The menu is defined by chophouse-style dishes with modern twists, like loaded potato fritters, two-sheet lasagna vongole (inspired by the clam toast at Dudley Market, where chef DK Kolender previously worked), and mushroom Bourguignon with a dash of miso. The bar program, created by Eric Alperin and Angus McShane, centers on classic, ice-cold martinis served in freezer-stored glasses, available in both regular and “tiny” portions, proving that good things can indeed come in small packages.

At the edge of Chinatown, right before the L.A. River ushers you into Lincoln Heights, sits Mitsi, a new cocktail bar that’s returning the neighborhood to its former after-dark glory. (Cafe Triste, Café Tondo, Grand Star Jazz Club, and Evangeline Swamp Room also come to mind.) Backed by Mumford & Sons’ Ben Lovett, Mitsi somehow threads the needle between serene tea house and afterparty at the hotel bar. Cavernous ceilings soar overhead, and mismatched chandeliers cast a warm, gentle glow over the lime-washed walls. You’re here for both cocktails and sushi, with a tight counter of nigiri and crisp temaki hand rolls — bluefin tuna, hamachi, saba, sea bream, halibut — all built to be eaten with a drink in hand. The cocktails riff on the classics (there’s a 50/50 martini sharpened with tomato and cilantro), backed by a natural‑leaning wine list, sake, and thoughtful zero‑proof options, including a surprisingly elegant sparkling apple tea.

Raquel Rodriguez walked away from a microbiology PhD because she could not stop thinking about green pozole. For nearly six years she threw herself into pop-ups until the time felt right to launch Seedy: a teeny, mostly plant-based diner in Lincoln Heights where Mexican comfort food goes through the looking glass. Call it bruja cooking: Rodriguez coaxes Erewhon-caliber dishes out of the earth itself, working seeds (pepitas, sesame, tahini) and memories into her signature pozole verde, a remnant of Christmases past that swaps pork for oyster mushrooms. A bay-leaf coffee cake tastes like an enchanted LAUSD breakfast tray: warm, spiced, faintly nostalgic, and somehow better than you remember. For now, Seedy is a small, humble thing.  We can’t wait to see it grow.

No reservations; more info here. 

Over in a rustic, charming Craftsman cottage in Silver Lake — Bowery Bungalow was its previous tenant — childhood friends Marco Gagliardi and Anthony Dragotto have built a European-style dining room to honor their two grandmothers, both named Josephine. Candles flicker as guests settle in for long, unhurried meals, served in green leather booths and at wooden bistro tables outfitted with white linen napkins. There are two ways to experience Josephine: In the dining room and front patio, you’re in for a six-course supper ($95) that starts with focaccia, crudités, and intensely savory anchoïade, then moves through whatever Gagliardi is digging that week; you might eat wild rabbit confit set against a smear of cool labneh, or a flaky buckwheat tart and a sweet pea velouté. At the bar and back patio, a daily à la carte chalkboard menu (reserved for walk-ins) keeps the entire affair loose and casual.

Ototo’s co-owner and beverage director, Courtney Kaplan, has been championing jizake—sakes from small, family-run Japanese breweries—since 2019, culminating in a James Beard Award for the Echo Park izakaya’s beverage program. Charles Namba runs the kitchen, just as he does next door at Tsubaki, and the menu here follows the sake’s lead, which means that dishes are small, snacky, and often fried. The okonomiyaki is the one to get: fluffy, eggy, buried under a blizzard of bonito flakes, or bowls of anmitsu (a traditional jelly and red bean dessert), which offer a sweet reprieve. On Dodger home-game nights, a sukiyaki cheesesteak turns up—a pinch hit, of sorts—so it’s no wonder new Dodger Kyle Tucker has gone out of his way to praise the place.

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Founded by lifelong friends Natasha Price and Tatiana Ettensberger, Wilde’s has quickly become the hottest place to eat in Los Feliz. This new restaurant blends rustic British heritage with fresh California ingredients, through classic dishes like bangers and mash, a flaky meat pie for two, and sticky toffee pudding. It’s elegant and charming, without a whiff of pretentiousness, and its cozy, warm wood interior evokes a British countryside pub. Beyond dinner service, the venue operates as a daytime bakery offering coffee, scones, and spiced carrot tea cake. And since demand has been sky-high since they opened late last year, the team recently announced they’re adding more Resys to cut down on wait times — a smart call, indeed.

Evil Cooks is the rare restaurant where the Satanic branding somehow undersells how wild and wonderful the food gets. In a black‑walled space in El Sereno — fittingly, 3333 N Eastern, which doubles neatly into 6666 — Alex “Pobre Diablo” García and Elvia “La Bruja” Huerta have turned their front‑yard pop‑up and Smorgasburg hit into a metalhead taqueria and one of L.A.’s most inventive modern Mexican kitchens. Devils and “Hell Sereno” jokes mark the entrance; out back, a patio with angels crying jamaica‑red tears and skeletons watching over the tables sets the tone. The Devil’s Pack lets you mix and match tacos, including inky black al pastor on equally black tortillas. El Taco Arabe nods to Puebla and the Middle East at once, while the Prince of Darkness burrito and Megadeth torta go gloriously over the top with pastor, green chorizo, bacon, a fried egg, and even a hot dog. At Evil Cooks, being bad feels very, very right.

Silver Lake has a new strip-mall heartthrob on Sunset: an Afro-Caribbean restaurant where nearly everything tastes like it’s picked up a little smoke along the way. Amiguita is chef Alejandro Eusebio’s most personal project yet, looping back to a childhood in the Cibao region of the Dominican Republic and more than two decades in Los Angeles kitchens, with a detour through “Top Chef” fame along the way. Inside, a sweeping mural by L.A. artist Lara Apponyi anchors the compact room in countryside greens and warm, sunlit tones. Most dishes pass through a Mibrasa charcoal oven, like shrimp mofongo with green plantains, or guava grilled wings with habanero sauce. At the bar, longtime friend Mara Herbkersman (a Ruby Fruit alum) runs a sharp drinks program that leans into small‑production wines, Caribbean beers, and fizzy, fermented cocktails.

Hayama by Watami is a new izakaya in Culver City, and a collaboration between Westside sushi legend Frank “Toshi” Sugiura (Hama Restaurant, Bar Hayama) his daughter Ichigo, and Watami, the Japanese restaurant juggernaut with over 500 locations in Asia. Located in a bright, airy space, this “izakaya” is much less smoky than its traditional counterparts, and incorporates enough Dodger bobbleheads to fill two bar-length shelves. In short, gather here for after-work drinks or dinners with friends with kids. The menu is ambitious but accessible, spanning familiar appetizers (think crispy rice and miso-slicked Brussels sprouts), yakitori served straight off the grill, and an impressive sushi spread. A deep sake list and a short run of Japanese sours make this the obvious choice for a post-Ikea trip, or a low-key Dodger game viewing when you’d rather eat flame-grilled kabayaki eel skewers than stadium food.

Mere steps away from the ocean and overlooking the Manhattan Beach pier, CouCou’s third location achieves something rare: it doesn’t feel like a franchise. Jesse and Hayley Feldman brought their stylish Cali-French bistro to the South Bay, where locals instantly claimed it as the new date-night default. Can you blame them? Leave your wetsuit at the door—the restaurant’s interior is decidedly soigné, featuring marble-topped tables, warm pendant lighting, eclectic framed wall art, and handsome red leather banquette seating. The menu takes cues from its Venice and West Hollywood siblings: you’ve got market crudités with olive tapenade, a Wagyu burger draped in Cognac sauce, and proper steak frites paired with sweet-savory black garlic jus, plus a nostalgic soft-serve sundae made with Strauss Organic Creamery dairy for dessert.

Two Hommés began as a pop-up from lifelong friends Marcus “Chef Mando” Yaw Johnson and Abdoulaye “Chef AB” Balde. Now, it’s an Inglewood date-night favorite, where West African cuisine meets California ingredients. On the corner of La Brea and Centinela, the dining room feels cozy yet tuned-in, with West African textiles, Ghanaian light fixtures, and comfy banquettes—and makes for an ideal pre‑SoFi (or Intuit Dome) dinner. Jollof rice functions as an anchor: a smoky, tomato-rich grain found beneath lamb chops, fried catfish, and chili garlic chicken, among other things. From there, the menu sprawls deliciously, covering sticky honey berbere chicken bites, root beer-braised short ribs, and wildly comforting garlic noodles. Order the Mezcalifornia—Espadín mezcal, cucumber juice, grapefruit syrup—which cools everything down just enough to make a second round feel like fate.

Reading the Stir Crazy menu is like getting through a David Foster Wallace novel: every fifth word, it seems, carries a footnote. But instead of long asides, these superscripts lead to the farms and producers your food came from: Shear Rock Farms, Lily’s, K & K Ranch, and easily a dozen more. Logic follows, then, that there aren’t many set-in-stone dishes at Stir Crazy. The menu keeps changing, built then rebuilt from Sunday’s haul at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market. That’s the magic. The intimate bistro on Melrose always has a new trick up its sleeve: oysters dressed in stone fruit and finger lime. Spring onion dip under a cap of trout roe. Poached chicken slicked in pearly green garlic butter. A glass of low-intervention wine alongside the food just feels right, don’t you think?

For 38 years, eating the city’s definitive pescado zarandeado meant a pilgrimage to Inglewood, which we always made, gladly. Since then, Coni’Seafood expanded to a second outpost in Del Rey, and now, has gone coastal: Find the Cossio family’s Nayarit-style mariscos in Hermosa Beach, two blocks from the Pier, in a kitschy room dressed up with neon and tropical murals. The classics are all here, starting with that legendary whole snook, butterflied and spread with an earthy, brick-red paste, then grilled over mesquite until the skin caramelizes to reveal tender, flaky flesh. Get the smoked marlin tacos and the langostinos, or “little lobsters,” too. The latter arrives slicked in a garlic-citrus sauce you’ll want to take home in a cup.