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.

A meal at Cobi’s is like listening to SZA’s first album, CTRL: it’s perfect for nearly every occasion. A last-minute birthday soirée with your friend who lives in Koreatown and misses the sound of waves against the shore? Cobi’s. Brunch with your slightly older cousin and his wife, who you’ve been promising to see for far too long? That sounds like a job for curry puffs and French toast spread thick with creamy, custard-like kaya jam, don’t you think? Or are you desiring a gorgeous setting among the flowers for a catch-up date with your friend, on which you will dine upon a medley of Southeast Asian classics selected by the kitchen, like rich, luxurious butter chicken and cured king salmon that arrives with scallion crème fraîche? Seems like a long way of saying it, but it’s time to book a table at Cobi’s.

Hollywood loves a mother-daughter Cinderella story (“Freaky Friday,” “The Joy Luck Club,” etc.). ABL is no exception. Here, oysters are dusted with jerk seasoning and  plopped straight into the fryer, a single gesture that tells you much about the unique ethos of this kitchen. This is Jamaican Chinese soul cooking, courtesy of Aja and Barbara Dawson, the mother-daughter team behind Little Tokyo’s A Beautiful Life. It’s the first place in Los Angeles trying its hand at this mix of flavors, and we’re all better for it. Tables are piled high with islander egg rolls, plump with fall-apart oxtail, and the Chen pi ji wings, which drift into the neighborhood of orange chicken, scented with fragrant dried tangerine peels. You’ll want the oxtail two ways, too. The 35-seat room glows deep red, fills quickly (especially at weekend brunch), and sits along Cahuenga Blvd.

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.

Book on

Sushi Takeda might be one of the best kept secrets in Los Angeles. Hidden on the third floor of Little Tokyo’s Weller Court, this unruffled, unpretentious Edomae-style omakase spot is where you’ll find one of our favorite lunch deals in town: an $110 omakase special (it’s $120 on weekends). Chef Hide Takeda rewards grace rather than flash, and the sardine is his beautiful, salty star. The fish is bound to a shiso leaf and daikon shaved nearly to transparency, a perfect bite coated in a whisper of sweetness. The meal unravels before you: abalone, steamed and folded into rice until it turns to something like risotto; kelp-cured snapper; sea bream lifted with yuzu; a small bowl of uni and house-cured ikura, shimmering the color of a Santa Monica sunset. Arrive early to snag one of the coveted eight(ish) seats at the bar.

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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.

You might know Adam Perry Lang. He’s the “APL” of this eponymous  new barbecue venture in Venice (and of an erstwhile Hollywood chophouse of the same name). APL, the man, the myth, is one of America’s most serious live-fire mavericks, a guy who cut his teeth at Le Cirque and Guy Savoy. In a previous life, he turned Jimmy Kimmel’s backlot into a smoke-wreathed barbecue showdown. Now you’ll find him firing up, well, the live fire on weekends at his pop-up inside Gin Rummy Bar on Washington Boulevard. This is American barbecue with a fine-dining pedigree, coaxed over cherry and oak, and the menu shifts constantly. Lately: a 36-ounce glazed rack of lamb, sweet-and-sticky pork ribs, candied smothered oxtail, and a lacquered, dry-aged duck leg confit. Here’s the drill: enter through the back parking lot, place your order between noon and 12:20 p.m., and please come on time.

We’re always on the hunt for great Indian food in Los Angeles — so, you can imagine our delight upon discovering Brick Lane. While longtime Rustic Canyon wine director Kathryn Coker pours out low-intervention wines and Horacio Cortex works magic through a South Asian-inspired cocktail program (the Kaffir Drop is a particular joy), at the center, chef Sanjay Rawat shines with his contemporary Indian cooking. Rawat began his empire at the Ritz-Carlton Laguna Niguel’s on-site restaurant, Kahani, and has now taken over  a revamped 1920s Arts District warehouse full of exposed brick and fire-pitted patios. Butter chicken is cold-smoked over an applewood flame then sent into the tandoor. A single, oversized tandoori prawn is a treat, as is the branzino slicked in Kashmiri chile aioli. Every meal should begin with a spread of chaat and warm bread, or else.

How far are you willing to drive for banana bread pudding? If your answer is, “not very,” we hope you either live in Topanga Canyon, or, let us sweeten the deal: how about  a banana bread pudding served in a romantic locale that looks like a set piece from Under the Tuscan Sun? You walk down the path and there it is: a table set beneath the old sycamore trees, a creek that murmurs beside you; waterfalls that wind down mountains and brick pathways that lead to even more loveliness. Welcome to Inn of the Seventh Ray, your outdoor destination for when the Italian countryside seems just out of reach (and budget). It’s the ideal backdrop for grilled Spanish octopus laid out over garlic-rosemary polenta, oven-roasted Chilean sea bass, and the aforementioned brûléed banana bread pudding, made with real vanilla bean, layered with warm caramel ribbons.

Book on

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.