LAGuide
The Hit List: New LA Restaurants To Try Right Now
photo credit: Nicolas Zhou
When restaurants open, we check them out. This means that we subject our stomachs and social lives to the good, the bad, and more often than not, the perfectly fine. And every once in a while, a new spot makes us feel like Angelyne driving her convertible down Santa Monica Blvd. When that happens, we add it here, to the Hit List.
The Hit List is where you’ll find all of the best new restaurants in LA. As long as a place opened within the past several months and we’re still talking about it, it’s on this guide. Keep tabs on the Hit List and you'll always know which new restaurants you should be eating at right now.
New To The Hit List (6/11): Fiorelli Pizza
THE SPOTS
photo credit: Peter Halvorsen
If every backyard garden had a pizza stand, the world would be a happier place. Just look at Fiorelli Pizza, an outdoor pop-up from the chef behind Love & Salt that’s open Thursday through Sunday (weather permitting) inside The Cook’s Garden, a working urban farm on Abbot Kinney in Venice. The menu and operation are stripped-down, but the surroundings are so lush, Adam and Eve would have considered booking the place on Airbnb. Still, the main attraction is the excellent wood-fired pizza with puffy, leopard-spotted crust—especially the fennel sausage pie topped with fava greens plucked straight from the planter. Enjoy them at a picnic table while you stare lovingly at a bunny between slices.
Some people want diamonds or flowers. All we want is a fried cutlet the size of our face, which is exactly what Lasung House’s excellent donkatsu provides. This casual, diner-like spot in Koreatown by the Quarters BBQ folks mercilessly pounds its pork steaks until they’re as thin as the plate. The panko crust is jagged and crackly, so the smoky-sweet tomato sauce on top clings like a dryer sheet. One cutlet is filling enough to leave us slumped in our seats, but consider doing a cutlet rotation if you're with a group—spicy cutlets, cheese cutlets, fish cutlets with tartar sauce. They also do a few fusion-y pastas, like bolognese and seafood cream, but the spicy chilled jjolmyeon is the best option after all that breaded meat.
If we placed restaurants on a Dungeons and Dragons-style alignment chart, Leopardo would fall squarely under “chaotic good.” Look past the plates that all arrive at once, the cryptic menu descriptions, and the eye-rolling (but undeniably tasty) $160 breakfast waffle with caviar, and you’ll find this quirky seafood-heavy pizza spot from the original Angler chef serves some wildly delicious dishes. The crisp-skinned grilled whitefish in salty “Lord’s Water” broth is one, as is the spicy elk tartare with bone marrow and mint. Aside from a few puffy, cheese-crusted pizzas, the menu changes nightly. That doesn’t apply to the cocktail menu, thankfully—it’d be a tragedy if we couldn’t order their pickled green tomato martini after a long day of dealing with our landlord.
We walked into Iki Nori in Hollywood expecting a quick handroll lunch. 90 minutes later, we left with a strong Negroni buzz and several texts to friends declaring we found the spot that dethrones KazuNori. This sleek, walk-in sushi bar from the Iki Ramen people takes up the ground floor of an office building on Sunset, making it a lunchtime no-brainer and a great pre-show option for drinks and snacks. Grab a spot at the 12-seat marble bar, admire the floor-to-ceiling windows, and watch young, chatty chefs sear fatty tuna and pack scallop handrolls in front of you. We’d point you toward the $28 four handroll set—it’s enough food to fill us up, with room to sneak in a few chef-recommended nigiri at the end.
We’ve eaten many smashburgers (maybe too many) doing this job, and after a while, they start to blend together. But not Ban Ban Burger. This counter-service spot on Sawtelle from the Tuk Tuk Thai people does Thai-influenced smashburgers that are so good they smacked the flat-patty fatigue right out of us. Combo meals here involve crispy wagyu laab burgers kicked up with mint-garlic gremolata, pale green pandan-flavored milkshakes, and spice-dusted fries with curry ketchup. Everything on the short menu grabs your attention, but we say prioritize the peppery grapow burger finished with a runny egg, or the fried chicken sando on toasted milk bread with panang mayo. Apologies if you wanted the smashburger trend to die—this place is breathing life back into it.
On our first visit to this daytime Persian cafe in Silver Lake, we had a lovely afternoon meal on the outdoor patio eating juicy turmeric chicken. After our second first, we were fully head over heels: This quiet, sun-lit corner spot is a place to bring a book and feel like the world stops spinning over a homey, delicious lunch. After ordering at the counter, a colorful spread arrives in minutes: tomato-y khoresh bademjan, fresh barbari with garlicky yogurt, and grapefruit-sized kofteh tabrizi studded with walnuts and barberries. Azizam also makes top-tier desserts, like the baklava-esque mille-feuille with stripes of soft cream that shouldn’t be missed. In fact, maybe ditch the book and bring a friend so you’ll be able to order more.
photo credit: Sylvio Martins
This tiny spot in Thai Town is a duck-centric spinoff of our beloved Pa Ord, but unlike most spinoffs, it’s just as great as the original. There are just two tables and a few bar seats, but they all offer a view of Daffy’s personal hell: a tall oven full of glistening roasted birds. You can order your duck over rice, stir-fried, or in a spicy soup, but our pick is the classic carved duck set with garlic oil noodles. The meat is visibly juicy when squeezed, and cut into neat slices with soft, fatty skin—dip them in sweet reduced duck broth and soy-chili sauce for maximum effect. If you don’t want dinner with wings, the pounded-to-order papaya salad and crispy pork belly hold their own, too.
photo credit: Jakob Layman
It took one dinner at this upscale Italian spot in West Hollywood for us to start doing Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, that is screaming “Stella!” to anyone who’ll listen. The cavernous, two-story space feels like a mega-yacht floating off the coast of Monaco, complete with studio execs ordering vintage wines without opening the menu. But the glitzy scene isn’t the reason to come, it’s the food. Gooey mozzarella and anchovy melted over lemon leaves, silky polenta pasta gilded with crab and trout roe, and grilled Iberico pork that practically melts on your fork—all outstanding and welcome change-ups from LA’s chicken parm and bolognese craze. Stella is pure (pricey) extravagance, but the one-of-a-kind cooking here is worth braving the valet line filled with Cybertrucks.
photo credit: Ashley Randall
The bar for impressive tacos in LA is high, but this Mexican-Armenian spot from the Mini Kabob team stands out like Zendaya at a red-carpet premiere. Wedged into a sliver of a space near Sunset Junction, MidEast Tacos folds smoky steak, chicken, and shrimp kabobs into flour tortillas to create clever fusion-y remakes served lunch through dinner. Takeout is big here, but the grilled meats are best eaten ASAP on the handful of streetside tables. Hefty rice-filled burritos taste like a Mini Kabob plate wrapped up (a good thing), quesadillas are decorated with Thai basil and chile arbol toum, and thick cottage fries come dusted in aleppo pepper. But we’d prioritize the simple falafel taco fresh from the fryer—made with three crispy cilantro-green nuggets with soft, steaming cores.
photo credit: Jessie Clapp
DTLA’s best Thai takeout window has arrived in Atwater Village. At Holy Basil's tiny new sit-down spot, wagyu grapow packs the same heat and crispy pork belly has the same potato-chip skin as at the original, but it's the new seafood options that steal the spotlight. Dishes like spicy-sweet grilled prawns, tart snapper ceviche, and papaya salad sprinkled with fried fish croutons are so flavorful we’d wade across the LA River for them, storm surge or not. We especially love the mussels in a dreamy coconut milk broth punched up with garlic, lime, and a big bouquet of lemongrass. Holy Basil is only taking walk-ins while in soft open mode, so to avoid the longest lines, head in during lunch or right when they open for dinner.
Jilli in Koreatown is a sool jib, which means “drinking spot” in Korean. And if you’ve driven through Ktown, you know there’s no shortage of those places. But that’s not why we’d send you to Jilli. The short menu here involves cheeky takes on Korean bar foods that are delicious whether you need something to soak up booze or not. Friends split bottles of fancy yogurt soju and share plates of mini shrimp toasts, rigatoni alla kimchi vodka with bacon bits, and Chimmelier’s craggy double-fried chicken. The room is a blast, too—the barebones former Kinn space has been amped up with a 2000s hip-hop playlist and a projector broadcasting Korean cartoons. The seats at the long wooden bar are still the best ones in the house.
While we’ll miss fishing $10 from our glove compartment to slurp Thai boat noodles on the sidewalk, the new Mae Malai is an upgrade on all fronts. This former Thai Town street vendor moved into a strip mall storefront and expanded its menu with dishes like pad grapow, crispy shrimp omelets, and “poached and dipped beef,” a spicy offal salad with copious amounts of lime. Still, you’re coming here for those boat noodles, which are so good they have us questioning our loyalty to the iconic Sapp Coffee Shop (much love). For roughly $9, Mae Malai gives you a small bowl of chewy rice noodles, juicy meatballs, and crackly pork rinds in a sweet-sour-spicy broth so intense, it'll light up taste buds you didn’t know you had.
It’s a known truth that LA has the best sushi in the country, so you can’t fault anyone for feeling skeptical about the arrival of Uchi. This upscale Japanese restaurant in Weho hails from Texas, a state more famous for smokehouses than sashimi. Well, throw out any preconceived notions. Housed in an impressive, wood-paneled space that resembles an airport credit card lounge, Uchi serves hot, cold, and raw dishes that go toe-to-toe with the best in LA. The menu is…Texas-sized, so concentrate on the nigiri, then add small plates like vegetable tempura, daikon salad with crispy rice, and smoked yellowtail on a yuca tostada. And don’t be alarmed when you see people putting salmon sushi in their mouths upside down, it’s a thing here.
You've probably heard about Little Fish. This all-day cafe in Echo Park led a previous life as an apartment pop-up run by two chefs with dreams of deep-fried fish. At their new space on Sunset, you’ll find cottage cheese pancakes with cherry jam and nori-dusted crispy potatoes, plus seafood-heavy breakfast dishes like trout tartine and fish congee. And then there’s the famed beer-battered fish sandwich, served only at lunch: Wonderfully crisp and somehow light as a feather on a fluffy potato bun, it’s like the Filet-O-Fish you were promised in TV commercials, complete with tangy Kewpie mayo and briny pickles. They often sell out of these life-affirming sandos on weekends, but drop by during the week and they should be in stock until late afternoon close.
