Hall of Fame restaurants: These timeless classics define L.A. dining 73%
By Bill Addison0%
12/7/2022, 4:00:08 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 32 faulty reasoning types, including Halo Effect, Appeal to Emotion, and Anecdotal, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 60.1% saturation with 806 hits. Analysis detected 4,384 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,342 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 65.5% and a BS Rank of 73% (4,666 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 72.30% of the article peer group.
Hall of Fame restaurants: These timeless classics define L.A. dining
We think of the Hall of Famers as restaurants so vital to the marrow of Los Angeles dining that they transcend the whims of list-making and rankings.
They’ve earned a place in our lives for the tenure of their existence.
Given that the list has grown to 38 previous inductees since its inception in 2019, we want to make sure the list stays special.
One enduring, rambunctious power player joins the 101 Hall of Fame this year.
— Bill Addison, Restaurant Critic
Bestia
2025 Hall of Fame
Downtown restaurant culture was booming in the early 2010s, but no one could have predicted the impact of Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis’ first restaurant in a former warehouse up an alley at the then-stark corner of the developing Arts District.
I’ve sometimes wondered over the years if Bestia is situated over some sort of magnetic energy vortex.
Show up most any night and the brick walls will still be jangling from the din.
What’s the secret to its staying power?
Menashe’s visceral take on Italian cuisine is the culinary equivalent of screaming into a pillow.
Tearing into pastas and pizzas raging with garlic, strong herbs, pungent sausage and salty blasts of cheese is therapeutic and cathartic.
His kitchen team has always known exactly how far to push — pairing roasted bone marrow with a mound of spinach gnocchetti to absorb the fatty intensity, arranging dilled gem lettuces and a bowl of anchovy-infused crème fraîche around a hunk of charred, meaty lamb neck.
Hot doughnuts, a flawless chocolate budino tart and a free-form crostata filled with seasonal fruit have long headlined Gergis’ dream lineup of desserts.
They cool the fever of the savory dishes and send you calmer into the night.
May the crowds at Bestia never thin.
A.O.C.
2024 Hall of Fame
The entree description read “Liberty duck breast, verjus-poached quince, mustard greens and hazelnuts”; the fall flavors on the plate echoed the shifting light and early nightfall witnessed from the restaurant’s ivy-covered patio.
That’s always been the gift of Suzanne Goin.
Many people think of A.O.C. for staples like bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with Parmesan and Spanish fried chicken doubly enriched with romesco aïoli and chile-cumin butter.
Do they also realize that Goin basically codified an entire branch of L.A.’s dining culture?
She laid out a blueprint for California-Mediterranean menus, validating the beauty of our local ingredients but also knowing when they gain from ideas inspired by the cooking of North Africa, western Asia and the warmest coasts of France and Spain.
The restaurant began two decades ago as a cramped wine bar, and co-owner Caroline Styne’s wine program has expanded in ways that fit its standing as a modern classic — with fruit-accented tequila cocktails and rum-laced espresso martinis to match.
They opened a second A.O.C. in Brentwood in 2021, without a doubt a boon to its community.
My heart, though, resides in the cozy West 3rd Street location and the serenity of its timeless patio.
Harold & Belle’s
The gumbo at Harold & Belle’s is an ambush of heat and smoke, the spice of the andouille sausage leaching into the umber stew.
Crowded with shrimp and blue crab legs and woodsy with sassafras, it’s a hearty bowl that evokes the Creole roots of the restaurant.
For 55 years, Angelenos have frequented this corner in Jefferson Park for a taste of New Orleans.
Harold Legaux Sr. and wife Mary Belle, the real Harold and Belle, opened the restaurant in the fall of 1969 as a place for fellow New Orleans transplants to gather over familiar po’boy sandwiches and gumbo.
Now, third-generation owners Ryan and Jessica Legaux run the restaurant, expanding the family’s footprint in the community with catering, a takeout operation called To-Geaux and a vegan menu.
Fried chicken is encased in a craggy coating like armor.
Po’boys overflow with golden fried shrimp and oysters.
Each grain of rice in the jambalaya seethes with a hot mixture of paprika and cayenne.
There’s a warmth to the staff not easily duplicated elsewhere, and meals tend to feel like visits to a friend’s house.
Mariscos Jalisco
Eating a pair of tacos dorados de camarones on the hood of your car while the salsa roja drips down your wrist is a quintessential Los Angeles dining experience.
This is Southern California’s taco culture, wrapped up in three bites of Raul Ortega’s fried shrimp tacos.
He started Mariscos Jalisco as a stationary food truck along Olympic Boulevard in 2001 with lime-slicked seafood and tacos inspired by the ones he ate in San Juan de los Lagos, Jalisco.
More than two decades later, the Tostada Poseidon, a tower of shrimp soused in red aguachile over sliced octopus, is just as impressive.
A sip of the coctel de camarón still carries the freshness of a seaside breeze.
And the tacos dorados de camarones, which led to Ortega winning The Times’ 2024 Gold Award, continue to thrill me.
Filled with chopped shrimp, then dropped into the fryer, the tacos are a study in contrasts.
The shell remains blazing hot under the cool salsa and slivers of avocado.
The bits of shrimp exposed to the frier are as crisp as the shell, frizzled and deeply browned.
All the crunch collapses into a mouthful of soft, creamy shrimp filling.
It is a constant in ever-uncertain times — an Angeleno’s taco North Star.
Soban
Does the galbi jjim stew at Soban taste at least 18% better because chef-owner Jennifer Pak uses a pair of scissors to cut the chunks of short rib into bite-sized pieces at your table while telling your lunch date (in this case my mother) that she’s as beautiful as a movie star?
Or because the wrinkled jujube dates at the bottom of the stew come from Pak’s own trees?
Dining at Soban is mandatory eating for anyone attempting to understand the depth and breadth of Koreatown.
The experience begins with an impressive array of the day’s banchan.
There might be wood ear mushrooms dressed with sesame oil, a ramekin of japchae and a dish of crispy peanuts with baby anchovies you’d swear was the best bar snack in the world.
Her ganjang gaejang come with plastic gloves so you can grasp the claws of raw, soy-marinated crab and suck the sweet meat out of the shell.
I like to save the clumps of roe to eat with spoonfuls of hot purple rice.
The braised black cod, cooked until the fish just starts to flake, is surrounded by big rounds of radish, potato, tteok and silken tofu.
This is food and a place that never fails to comfort.
Taste of Tehran
A general rule of Persian cuisine in Los Angeles: The khoresht, or complex stew, is the fundament of Iranian home cooking, with infinite individual, regional and seasonal variations.
(Local author Naz Deravian’s book “Bottom of the Pot” is one portal into the glories of khoresht.)
Out in the world, families and groups tend to go out for kebabs, and restaurant dishes are designed for widespread appeal.
Chef and owner Saghar Fanisalek’s six-table dining room may be hidden among the thicket of other Persian cafes and markets in Westwood, but Taste of Tehran stands out as the best of the kebab houses.
Fanisalek cooks a reassuring mix of dishes — marinated meats singed over flames and served with snow banks of rice, yogurt and eggplant dips as tart as they are rich — all with uncommon finesse.
Just the right amount of grated onion stings the beef koobideh, shaped in undulating patterns on the skewer, and the chicken kabob has fully absorbed its lemony marinade.
Tahdig, that bottom-of-the-pot rice, cracks like crystal; order it with chicken fesenjoon spooned over and let its pomegranate-tinged gravy soften the grains for a few moments.
On a warm day, try to claim one of the restaurant’s few tables along the well-trafficked sidewalk.
You’ll be people-watching while passersby observe back, appraising your meal with ravenous glances.
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