There is no such thing as the quintessential Los Angeles restaurant.
That’s the soul-deep beauty of dining in our city. The street stand where burnt-orange birria juice drips onto your T-shirt from your third taco defines the L.A. experience as much as the holiest omakase counter, the scrappiest natural wine bar and the latest steakhouse-style burger sensation.
Some chefs arrange lettuces among summertime peaches so otherworldly in flavor they all but cross into science fiction. That describes our glory with salads — as do the stinging lime and crisped rice of nam khao tod, and the specific tang of dried mint and pomegranate molasses in fattoush made by careful, practiced hands.
It’s the collective greatness, the sum of our exquisite differences, that makes L.A. remarkable. Perhaps such a thought can comfort in dark times.
The 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles, now in its 12th year, is an annual guide to excellence but also the annual family photo: The calendar flips and we don’t look quite the same as before.
Food columnist Jenn Harris joins me as co-author of this 2024 edition. After several cycles of tackling the 101 project solo, I’ve been traveling more to report on dining across California, so our two-person approach to surveying L.A.’s paragons made wonderful sense. We crisscrossed the region for months, checking in on stalwarts and swapping notes on potentially overlooked contenders. We agreed a lot and debated plenty (especially about pizza). We asked ourselves over and over: Which mix of restaurants tells the most compelling, complete and delicious story about Los Angeles? This is our answer.
The lineup includes 27 new entrants. They’re bright lights, braving fresh perspectives, in a time of economic upset for the restaurant industry that has witnessed dozens of closings over the last year.
Among the newcomers: the Silver Lake cafe rewriting the Persian menu playbook with intricate stews and a giant meatball; the downtown Arts District bistro where Japanese and French flavors meet in a bowl of spaghetti or a billowing pot pie; and a stall at the Mercado La Paloma where masa made from heirloom Mexican corns receives its due as an art form.
Additionally, Jenn and I welcome five honorees to the 101’s Hall of Fame list. These are icons with names you’ll likely recognize, run by chefs who’ve fundamentally shaped L.A. dining. We also point out seven of our favorite new places for drinking — mostly wine and spirits, but including a Studio City shop serving Middle Eastern-inspired coffee brewed in sand.
If our dining culture defies easy categorization, at its finest it also embodies creative possibility and connection at the table. Our lives, it seems to me, could use these virtues more than ever.
— Bill Addison, restaurant critic