Food in Los Angeles

A strip-mall counter on East Valley Boulevard whose beef roll is the dish people drive for, a flaky scallion pancake rolled around sliced flank steak, hoisin, cilantro and green onion, cut into rounds. The rest of the menu is Shandong noodles and dumplings and it is all cheap. You order at the front, sit at a laminate table and it arrives fast.

Mon to Thu, 11am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 10:30pm. Sun, 11am to 9pm

An Indian kitchen on 23rd Street that has fed USC for years, with a menu that also carries Mexican and American plates because that is what the block asked for. The chicken tikka masala and the garlic naan are what most tables order. It is fluorescent and unfussy and the food comes out quickly.

Daily, 10am to 9pm

A small Black-owned counter on Vernon Avenue that took over the address Porterhouse Fried Chicken used to hold, doing birria tacos, fried chicken and sides on the same menu. It is takeout with a couple of seats and the hours are short, finishing before seven on weekdays. The birria quesatacos are the thing people drive over for.

Tue to Fri, 10am to 6:45pm. Sat, noon to 5:30pm. Closed Sun and Mon

A Jamaican kitchen in Leimert Park Village run by the Mills family since the late nineties, doing jerk chicken, curry goat, oxtails and ackee with saltfish. Plates come with rice and peas and fried plantain. The space is small and warm and the reggae is on, and on a Saturday afternoon the village outside is at its busiest.

Tue to Thu, 11am to 8pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 9pm. Sun, 11am to 7pm. Closed Mon

A walk-up window on First Street that has sold the same bean and cheese burrito since 1966, with green chile if you ask for it. There is no dining area to speak of, just a sidewalk and a couple of tables, and the order comes back in paper in about four minutes. Boyle Heights Beat put the appeal down to not having changed anything.

Tue to Sun, 10am to 7pm. Closed Mon

Charcoal-grilled chicken on East Compton Boulevard, sold by the half or whole bird with rice, whole beans, grilled onions, serranos, tortillas and salsa. The Infatuation's Compton guide says the chicken is not the safe order here but the right one. It is cash only, so bring some.

Daily, 9am to 7pm

A family soul food kitchen in the same West Compton Boulevard building as the museum, open since November 2016. It is named for Alma, who learned to cook from her mother Annie and her sister Betty Jean, both from Arkansas, and her daughter Corina runs the baking side after twenty years of catering. Oxtails, pork chops and fried chicken come with homemade cornbread, and the peach cobbler pancakes are the thing people order without being told to.

Wed to Sun, 11am to 5pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday

Mesquite-grilled Tijuana-style tacos off a sidewalk setup on Victory Boulevard, with the adobada off a trompo and a salsa bar you help yourself to. Angel Hernandez built this from one stand into a dozen across Southern California and the original Vineland pitch has since shut, but the Victory operation runs Tuesday to Sunday from about 4:30pm to 11pm. You eat standing up.

Tue to Sun, about 4:30pm to 11pm. Closed Mon

Barbacoa de borrego cooked the way it is done in Texcoco, lamb wrapped in maguey leaves and steamed overnight in a pit, sold by the pound with consommé, tortillas and salsa borracha. The Pico Rivera branch sits on Whittier Boulevard with a plain dining area and a counter. Weekends are when the full cuts come out. It opens at eight in the morning, because barbacoa is breakfast.

Daily, 8am to 9pm

A diner on Eagle Rock Boulevard since 1962, with brown vinyl stools down a long counter and booths along the walls. The kitchen does corned beef hash, French toast and a cheeseburger club, and then it does Thai-American dishes on the same menu, including Thai-style fried rice with bacon and chicken sausage with rice and eggs. House chile salsa arrives in a jar.

Reported daily 7am to 3pm, with some listings adding a 5pm to 9pm evening service. No operator website exists, so none of this is confirmed.

A deli on Ventura Boulevard since 1957, second generation in the same family, with a menu long enough to take a few minutes to read and a counter selling by the pound. The house line is that every sandwich is a work of Art, which tells you the register. Booths, matzo ball soup, pastrami cut thick, and a crowd of Valley regulars who have been coming since the 1970s.

Daily, 8:30am to 8pm

Armet and Davis built this in 1959, the firm that drew the Norms, Denny's and Bob's Big Boy prototypes, and it shows in the cantilevered swooping roof, the zig-zag railings and the freestanding sign. It opened as Conrad's, Peter Metsos took it over in 1974 and renamed it Astro, and the City Council made it a Historic-Cultural Monument by unanimous vote in October 2024. Pink leather booths, etched glass, a full diner menu.

24 hours, confirmed on the operator's own site. One review in April 2026 reported an unexpected closure, so an occasional gap is possible.

A counter at the back of Attari Plaza with a shaded courtyard of outdoor tables behind it. The menu runs to tongue sandwiches, kotlet and a bowl of ash reshteh that arrives whether or not you ordered soup. It has been on this block of Westwood Boulevard since the early 1990s.

Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 7pm. Closed Monday

An Ethiopian kitchen in the unit next door to The Mint, serving doro wat and vegetarian combinations on injera at a handful of tables. Portions are built to share and the bill stays low. It is a family operation with no bar and no hurry.

Tue to Thu, noon to 9pm. Fri and Sat, noon to 9:30pm. Sun, noon to 8pm. Closed Monday

A family-run breakfast place in the Lakeside Shopping Center, open since March 2008 and run by Chef Bea. Seventeen versions of French toast on the menu and about twenty ways to have a waffle or a crepe. Gluten-free, lactose-free, vegan and vegetarian orders are all handled.

Daily 8am to 2:30pm.

An ice cream counter on Yale Avenue with a candy case at the front and a line that runs out onto the sidewalk on a warm evening. They make their own and the waffle cones get pressed where you can see them. It opens at noon and runs to nine most nights and ten on Friday and Saturday, which makes it the Village's default after-show stop.

Mon to Thu, noon to 9pm. Fri and Sat, noon to 10pm. Sun, noon to 9pm

The menu is three things: fish tacos, shrimp tacos, potato tacos. Corn tortillas are made on site and whoever takes your order fries the seafood behind the counter while you wait. You get the taco plain and then dress it yourself at a bar of cabbage, lime-soaked radish relish, chipotle crema and house salsas. A fish taco is $3.50, shrimp $4.25, potato $3.25.

Daily 11am to 9pm, from listings. The operator publishes a menu but no hours.

This is the old Harvey's Broiler on Firestone, a 1958 Googie drive-in that was illegally half-demolished in 2007 and then rebuilt from the original drawings with the sign and the canopy back where they were. Carhops still work the lot on weekend nights and there is a counter and booths inside. It is a burger, a patty melt and a hot fudge cake, at drive-in prices.

Daily, 8am to 9pm

The oldest Bob's Big Boy left standing, built in 1949 and designed by Wayne McAllister, with curving window walls, a cantilevered canopy and the tall sign out front. California has it on the register as a Point of Historical Interest. Car hop service runs on Saturday and Sunday nights and the lot fills with classic cars every Friday. It is open past midnight every night of the week.

Daily from 6am, to midnight Sunday to Thursday and to 3am Friday and Saturday. Classic car show Fridays 4pm to 10pm

A pub on the same block as the theater with a rotating draft list and a kitchen that does a pastrami burger and fish and chips in portions people complain about finishing. The beer board changes often enough to be worth reading before you order. It is closed on Mondays, which is the one day the block loses it.

Tue, Wed and Sun, noon to 10pm. Thu, noon to 11pm. Fri and Sat, noon to midnight. Closed Monday

Brent's has served Parthenia Street since 1967 and remains family owned, and the one the rest of Los Angeles drives to the Valley for. Hand-cut pastrami, whitefish salad, a bakery counter and booths that fill by half past eleven. It has won the local reader polls so often that the awards are part of the decor. The only destination thing about it is the drive; inside it is a deli with a hostess and a wait of ten minutes.

Mon, 8am to 3pm. Tue to Sun, 8am to 8pm

Christopher Tompkins started the company as a mobile raw bar and opened this counter in 2019. Malibu is the flagship and, by his own account, the strongest of the five. The butter-poached lobster roll is the order, alongside soft-shell crab sandwiches and seafood platters. The building came through the Palisades Fire, though the closures around it cost the business more days than its first five and a half years combined.

Daily 11am to 8pm.

A take-out window in the front of the old banquet hall at 2811 East Olympic, selling the small guisado-filled burritos of Jerez, Zacatecas on flour tortillas pressed to order. The birria de res is the one people come for and a single burrito is about the size of your hand, so nobody orders one. The hall's license means beer and wine to go as well.

Mon to Thu, 11am to 6pm. Fri to Sun, 10:30am to 6pm

A corner market on Walker Avenue in a residential part of San Pedro, family run since 1978, where the sandwich counter does most of the trade. You order a hot pastrami or an Italian cold cut, it is built bigger than you asked for, and you eat it on the curb or in the car. Cash only, with an ATM by the door.

Mon to Sat, 10am to 5pm. Closed Sun

Built into a hillside on State Route 27, which is what the name is about, with a multi-level patio looking down the canyon. Almost all the seating is outdoors. They roast their own organic coffee, and the menu runs from avocado toast and grain bowls to lobster benedict and a Moroccan kofta tagine. There is a small shop.

Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm. Saturday and Sunday 8am to 4pm.

Canter's has been on Fairfax since 1948 and in this building, the former Esquire Theater, since 1953. The deli case, the bakery counter and the pastrami sandwich are the same trade the Canter family started in Boyle Heights in 1931. Attached to it is the Kibitz Room, a cocktail lounge opened in 1961 that still books live music most nights and runs until 2am. Saturdays the deli does not close at all.

Mon to Fri, 6am to 11:30pm. Sat, open 24 hours. Sun, 5am to 11:30pm. The Kibitz Room runs 11am to 2am daily

Two yellow Union Pacific passenger cars parked on Ventura Boulevard, serving chili dogs and burgers out of the galley since the 1970s. You order at the window, eat at a counter inside the car, and the whole thing takes twenty minutes. The Sunset Boulevard original came first and this is the second car. Mustard on wax paper, no table service, no ambition beyond the hot dog.

Daily, 11am to 10pm

The Lopez family cooks carnitas in copper pots on a lot off Soto Street, and has done since long before the storefront in Monterey Park existed. You order by the part you want rather than by the taco, and the buche and cueritos go before the maciza does. It is a yard with a tent, a plastic table and a long line of people who planned their afternoon around it.

Wed to Sun, 10:30am to 5pm. Closed Mon and Tue

A walk-up stand on North Broadway that has run around the clock for close to fifty years. Tacos, burritos and nachos at a window, with a few tables outside.

Open 24 hours, every day

A Mexican grill a block up Citrus with both indoor tables and a patio, doing a full sit-down menu rather than counter service. Sunday is a short day here, 10am to 3pm and then done. It is closed all day Monday.

Tue to Thu, 11:30am to 9pm. Fri, 11:30am to 10:30pm. Sat, 11:30am to 9:30pm. Sun, 10am to 3pm. Closed Monday

Rudy Del Campo, a dancer who appeared in West Side Story, opened this on Hyperion in 1962 with his wife Helen and his sister Beatriz. The family still runs it. Downstairs is the Cavern Club Theater, which has been staging drag and cabaret under the restaurant for decades.

Mon to Thu 11:30am to 9pm. Fri and Sat 11am to 10pm. Sun 11am to 9pm

Al Cassell opened a hamburger counter in Koreatown in 1948, grinding his own beef daily and broiling the patties rather than griddling them. The business closed and was brought back in 2015 in the ground floor of the Hotel Normandie, still grinding in house and still running the original broiler method. It opens at 9am, which makes it the rare Koreatown kitchen that serves breakfast.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 9am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 9am to 10pm

Korean barbecue over charcoal on the west end of Soledad Canyon, open noon to 10pm every single day with no reservations taken. The all-you-can-eat needs two adults, so a solo diner orders off the à la carte side, which the operator states plainly rather than burying. It is the only place on this stretch where the meal itself takes an hour and a half, so it belongs before a show and not after.

Daily, noon to 10pm. Last all-you-can-eat seating 9:15pm, last call 9:40pm

Gilberto Cetina's Yucatecan counter inside Mercado la Paloma, doing cochinita pibil, panuchos and a lime soup that is the reason a lot of people drive here. You order at the register, take a number, and eat at a communal table in the middle of the market. The same family runs the seafood counter across the aisle.

Daily, 9am to 9pm

A 1946 counter with twenty-five orange vinyl stools set around one horseshoe, mountain and beach murals on the walls and the original neon out front. John Isaac started the first one in Green Bay in 1913; his son opened this one, and when Green Bay closed in 2020 Burbank became the only branch left. It is the oldest restaurant still trading in the city.

Tuesday to Saturday 11am to 8pm. Closed Sunday and Monday.

A horseshoe counter inside Grand Central Market that has been serving the same American-Chinese menu since 1959. You sit on a stool under a neon sign and order wonton soup or chow mein. The market around it dates to 1917 and the stall has outlasted most of its neighbors.

Daily, roughly 11am to 8pm. The market itself runs 8am to 9pm and vendor hours vary inside that window

The parent churreria has been in Mexico City since 1935. This opened January 29, 2026 in the old Patra Burgers stand on the Sunset and Laveta corner, painted white and trimmed in blue neon, and it is the first Los Angeles branch and the second in the country after Costa Mesa. Churros and thick chocolate are the whole point.

Sunday to Thursday 8am to 11pm, Friday and Saturday 8am to 1am.

A small storefront on Evergreen whose reputation rests almost entirely on flautas, fried to order and buried under guacamole and crema. It has been in the same family since the 1950s and the menu has barely moved. You order at the counter, sit at a formica table, and are out in half an hour.

Tue to Thu, 7am to 8pm. Fri to Sun, 7am to 9pm. Closed Mon

Connie Cossio's place on Imperial Highway does the Nayarit coast: pescado zarandeado, a whole butterflied snook grilled over wood, plus aguachile, smoked marlin tacos and shrimp. It is a low building with a patio and a bar, paper on the tables, and the fish comes out on a board for the table to pull apart. The zarandeado takes time, so order it when you sit down.

Mon to Thu, 10am to 8pm. Fri to Sun, 11am to 9pm

A diner on the west end of Soledad Canyon known for omelets sized past the point of reason, with a set of house traditions built around finishing one. It is loud, it is full of families on a weekend, and it closes at 2pm every day, which makes it a morning stop and nothing else. The portions are the joke and the staff are in on it.

Daily, 7am to 2pm

A 1958 supper house on Washington Boulevard that never updated itself, so the pepper steak is still flamed at the table and the Caesar is still mixed in front of you. Booths are dark red leather and the lounge has a piano on Thursday evenings. Walk-ins are taken and the bar will seat you without a booking, though weekend dinner fills up. Prices are not cheap but nothing about it is fashionable.

Lunch Tue to Fri, 11am to 3:30pm. Dinner Sun to Thu, 4pm to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 4pm to 11pm. Closed Mon

Loyal Damon opened this in 1937 after running a chain of candy stores, moved it to Brand Boulevard in 1980, and his family still has it. An outrigger canoe hangs from a vaulted thatched ceiling over rattan walls, a saltwater tank, palm palapas and bamboo booths, with Bettina Byrne murals copying Eugene Savage's Art Deco work for the S.S. Lurline. Prime rib and pan-roasted pork chops on the plate, Mai Tais and Blue Hawaiis in the glass. Moe Elliott, behind the bar since 1956 and managing since 1980, wrote the house Mai Tai.

Daily 3pm to 10pm. There is no lunch.

Opened in 1964 by Dobrivoje Tanasijevic, a Serbian former soccer player who had been maitre d' at La Scala. He kept the neon sign frame from the restaurant he took over. Around twenty tables in a 1929 bungalow, red checked cloths, and dishes named after regulars. The Troubadour is next door.

Dinner nightly, hours not confirmed by the operator

Cookies have come through this Broxton window in Westwood Village since 1983 and started making ice cream sandwiches to order in 1995. The line moves because there is one decision to make. It stays open later than almost anything else in the village.

Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday noon to 10pm. Friday and Saturday noon to 11pm. Closed Monday

A walk-up fried chicken stand on North Garey with a hand-painted sign and a line that forms on the sidewalk at lunch. It is cash only, they will not take an order over the phone, and the chicken comes in a box with a roll. There is no dining space to speak of, so people eat in the car or take it somewhere.

Daily, 10am to 7:30pm

A diner counter that has been in the Farmers Market since 1938, with its own door on the Third Street side and its own hours, later than the market around it. Pancakes and pies come from a full breakfast menu at any hour it is open. The booths are vinyl, the coffee is refilled without asking, and on a weekend it runs past midnight.

Sun to Thu, 6am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 6am to midnight

Named for Duke Kahanamoku, who taught surfing in Malibu and appeared in more than twenty-eight films. Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, the real Gidget, works here as Ambassador of Aloha. There is a casual Barefoot Bar side with island plates and tropical drinks and a separate dining side doing fish and steak. Hula Pie is the dessert everyone orders.

Lunch daily 11:30am to 4pm. Dinner Sunday to Thursday 4pm to 8:30pm, Friday and Saturday to 9pm.

Adolf Dulan's soul food counter on Crenshaw, where you move along a steam table picking three sides against smothered chicken, oxtails or short ribs. The cornbread comes with the plate and the greens are cooked down properly. It has been a Crenshaw institution for decades and the line at one in the afternoon is a line that moves.

Tue to Fri, 11am to 8pm. Sat and Sun, 10am to 8pm. Closed Mon

Adolf Dulan built his name on soul food across South Los Angeles, and this Manchester Boulevard location carries it on under his family. You read the steam table, point at what you want, and carry the tray to a table. Oxtails and smothered chicken bring people back. Peach cobbler does too. The restaurant fills up with Inglewood regulars rather than with arena traffic.

Every day, 11am to 8pm

The Earle brothers have been selling sausages on Crenshaw since they started from a cart in 1984, and the counter now runs beef, turkey, Polish and a vegan line with chili and slaw on top. You order at the register and take a tray to a table. It is the kind of address people from the neighborhood have been using their whole lives.

Mon to Sat, 10:30am to 9pm. Closed Sun

The Montes family opened El Arco Iris on York Boulevard in Highland Park in 1964 and ran it until 2017, when they closed and later reopened in Lincoln Heights under a shortened name. The chile verde, mole poblano and carnitas came over with them.

Mon 11am to 9pm. Tue to Fri 11am to 10pm. Sat 10am to 10pm. Sun 10am to 9pm

A twenty-four hour taqueria on Whittier Boulevard, part of the small El Atacor group that Angelenos know for the fried potato taco. There is a drive-thru where somebody walks out to your car to take the order, and a walk-up window for everyone else. Asada, carnitas and the potato taco with a green salsa. Nothing about it closes, which is the feature.

Open 24 hours, daily

A family restaurant at Soto and Whittier that has been cooking lamb barbacoa since 2003, served with consommé, rice and the usual salsas. Weekends are when the barbacoa is at its best and the place fills with families eating before noon. It shuts in the late afternoon, so this is a daytime stop and nothing else.

Daily, 8:30am to 4pm

El Cholo started in 1923 and has been at this Western Avenue address since 1931, which makes it the oldest Mexican restaurant still trading in Los Angeles. Dark booths, tiled floors, combination plates and a bar that pours a green corn tamale alongside the margarita. The dining area is large and a walk-in on a weeknight is not a problem.

Daily 11:30am to 9pm

David Castro and Mario Jimenez opened this on Sunset in 1975 and it still runs on red vinyl booths and a mariachi trio working the floor most nights. The house margarita comes to the table on fire. Combination plates arrive fast and the bar does not slow down for anybody.

Monday to Thursday 11:30am to 10pm, Friday and Saturday 11am to 11pm, Sunday 11am to 10pm

Blanche and George March opened El Coyote in 1931 and moved it to Beverly Boulevard in 1951, where the dark booths, the paper lanterns and the servers in full Mexican dress have stayed put. The food is combination plates and the margaritas come in volume. It is cheap, it is dim and the dining area is big enough that walking in on a Friday usually works.

Wed and Thu, noon to 9pm. Fri and Sat, noon to 10pm. Sun, noon to 9pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday

A big corner operation on Pacific Boulevard with separate counters for tacos, tortas, aguas frescas and the panadería, so you order at whichever line is shortest and carry a tray to a table. The pan dulce comes out of the oven through the day and the agua de horchata is poured from glass barrels. Pacific Boulevard outside is the busiest shopping street in the Gateway Cities, and this is the corner everybody crosses.

Mon to Thu, 7am to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 7am to 11pm. Sun, 7am to 10pm

A family-run place on York that has been serving Highland Park for more than twenty years. The huarache is the reason to go, a long oval of fried masa with beans inside, crema and cheese on top and a choice of meat. Jonathan Gold named it in the Los Angeles Times list of essential restaurants in 2008 and it stayed on.

Daily, roughly 8am to 8pm. Listings disagree on the closing time and on whether it shuts on Wednesdays, so call first

A Mexican restaurant and panaderia on Garey Avenue that opens at 5:30 in the morning and keeps going until the evening. The bakery case runs along one side and the kitchen turns out menudo, chilaquiles and plates of the standard sort all day. It is counter-forward and fast, and nobody minds how long you sit. Two blocks from the Fox Theater marquee.

Mon to Thu, 5:30am to 8:30pm. Fri and Sat, 5:30am to 9pm. Sun, 5:30am to 8pm

A Pico-Union restaurant whose menu is almost entirely goat birria, sold as stew or by the pound, plus an asada plate and menudo on weekends. It has been on this stretch of Pico for decades. Cash only.

Mon to Fri 9am to 8:30pm. Sat and Sun 8am to 8:30pm

The Rojas family has been feeding this corner of Evergreen Avenue since 1942, when the place was called El Tupinamba. It is known for the Hollenbeck burrito, named for the LAPD division up the street, and for Manuel's Special, which weighs about five pounds and is ordered mostly as a dare. The dining area is small, covered in photographs of regulars, and the line outside moves at the pace of a counter, not a sit-down restaurant.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 6am to 7pm. Fri and Sat, 6am to 8pm

An Oaxacan restaurant on Vermont that opens at six in the morning, which puts it ahead of everything else nearby. The mole negro and the tlayudas are what people order, and the menu also runs a full Oaxacan breakfast. Tables, waiters, paper placemats, no wait.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 6am to 9:30pm. Fri and Sat, 6am to 10pm

An indoor-outdoor pizza place in the Topanga Center, behind the post office, with a wood oven, a short wine list and a crate of second-hand records by the counter. It is newer than anything else in the canyon and it is still a walk-in with picnic tables. The 9pm close is the latest anything in Topanga keeps.

Daily, 10am to 9pm

A family-run Mexican restaurant on lower Lankershim that dates itself to 1946, which makes it older than almost anything else left on the street. Combination plates, a bar, vinyl booths and a dining area that has not been restyled to chase anyone. It sits south of the NoHo Arts District near Toluca Lake, on the stretch of Lankershim people drive rather than walk.

Mon and Tue, 11am to 9pm. Wed to Fri, 11am to 10pm. Sat, 10am to 10pm. Sun, 10am to 9pm

A burger counter on Soledad Canyon that opens at 6:30 in the morning and does not shut until 11pm, midnight on a Friday and Saturday. Burgers, pastrami, breakfast served all day, a gyro on the board. It is the one place near the club that is reliably open both before an afternoon show and after a late one, and the 1,700-odd ratings say the neighborhood treats it as the default.

Sun to Thu, 6:30am to 11pm. Fri and Sat, 6:30am to midnight

Three generations of the same family have been making ice cream on West Main Street since 1937, from a business the Fosselmans trace to 1919. Everything is made on the premises and the flavor board has taro, lychee and ube on it alongside the butter pecan, which is Alhambra telling you who lives there. Cash only, bills and coins, no cards at all.

Mon to Sat, 10am to 10pm. Sun, 11am to 10pm

A curved counter with nineteen stools and no tables, on the lower level of the Beverly Hills Hotel since 1949. The banana-leaf wallpaper was designed in 1942 and hung here by Don Loper, and the counter and stools are attributed to Paul Williams. Open 7am to 4pm, daily.

Daily 7am to 4pm

A breakfast and lunch counter two doors from the comedy club's host restaurant, run by brothers who state their own rule on the site: no shortcuts, no frozen substitutes. Chilaquiles, machaca, omelettes, tortas, all cooked to order. They opened a second location in Winnetka recently, which is what happens when a counter this small gets a line. It shuts mid-afternoon, so it is a before stop for a matinee and an early dinner is not on the table.

Mon to Fri, 8am to 2pm. Sat and Sun, 8am to 3pm

Carmen and Gilberto Rodriguez bought an existing Pico Boulevard place called El Indio in May 1974 and added Gilbert's name to the sign. Both founders have since died and their nine children own it together. Tortillas are pressed in house and the bar runs on margaritas for people who live within a mile of it.

Monday to Saturday 8am to 9pm. Sunday 8am to 2pm

A bakery in a plain industrial building on a Venice back street, where you pull a paper ticket at the door and wait for your number to come up in red over the counter. Bread, pastry, smoked fish and sandwiches are all made on site. There is a separate express line for coffee, pastry and a loaf if that is all you want.

Daily, 7am to 4pm

A seafood place that has sat on the sand where Sunset meets Pacific Coast Highway since 1972, wrapped around an open deck that looks straight down the beach. The dining hall burned in the Palisades Fire and the deck and a back-up kitchen came back in July 2025, so what you get now is lunch, dinner and drinks outside. Order the fried stuff and sit where the water is.

Monday to Thursday and Sunday, 11am to 8pm. Friday and Saturday, 11am to 9pm

A Vietnamese place on Las Tunas Drive that has been in the same strip since the early eighties, where the cha gio are the thing to order before the pho arrives, fried hard and wrapped in lettuce and mint. The bun and the broken rice plates are the other half of the menu. Closed Wednesdays, which catches people out.

Mon and Tue, 10am to 8pm. Closed Wed. Thu to Sun, 10am to 8pm

A breakfast and lunch place sitting directly on the Strand at the foot of Pier Avenue, with a patio facing the sand. You order at the register and carry a number to a table. Pancakes, breakfast quesadillas and burgers, at beach prices rather than oceanfront ones, and it has been feeding the same walk-up trade for decades.

Mon to Thu, 7am to 3pm. Fri to Sun, 7am to 4pm

Fernando Lopez opened Guelaguetza in 1994 and moved it to this Olympic Boulevard address in 2000, where it became the center of Oaxacan life in Los Angeles. The menu covers seven moles and tlayudas. A bandstand runs live music most nights. The James Beard Foundation named it an America's Classic in 2015, the first traditional Mexican restaurant to get one.

Tue to Thu, 11am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 9am to 10pm. Sun, 9am to 9pm. Closed Monday

The original Guisados, open on Cesar Chavez since 2010, doing stewed fillings on thick handmade corn tortillas. You order at the counter from a board of about a dozen braises and the sampler plate of six small tacos exists for people who cannot choose. It is bright, loud and fast, with a patio out back, and it has kept the same format while the company added a dozen other addresses.

Daily, 9am to 9pm

A barbecue counter and bar on Belmont Street, in the building next to the comedy club, doing smoked meats with southern sides in a plain setting that has never pretended otherwise. There is a patio outside and a full bar in. Nothing here needs calling ahead.

Mon to Thu, 11am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 10pm. Sun, 11am to 8pm

A family-run Cuban place in a North Redondo strip on Inglewood Avenue, going more than thirty years on the same recipes. Ropa vieja, lechon and plantains, a full bar doing mojitos, and a band on weekend nights that turns the floor into a dance floor. It is busy and loud and nobody is dressed up.

Mon to Sat, 10:30am to 9:30pm. Sun, 10:30am to 9pm

A Filipino American counter on Beverly Boulevard in Historic Filipinotown, open since 2018 and run as a deliberately neighborhood-facing operation. Longganisa and sisig turn up in sandwich form alongside the plates. It shuts at 3pm and is closed Tuesday.

Mon, Wed to Fri 8am to 3pm. Sat and Sun 9am to 3pm. Closed Tuesday

A seafood counter in the same market, run by Gilberto Cetina Jr., serving kanpachi tostadas, smoked marlin tacos and an octopus taco cooked in its own ink. It has a Michelin star and was the Los Angeles Times restaurant of the year, and it is still eight stools and a counter inside a market. Reservations exist for the tables, but you can put your name down and wait, which at lunch is usually twenty minutes.

Tue to Thu and Sun, 11:30am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 11:30am to 10pm. Closed Mon

A diner on Vermont serving since 1969, baking more than thirty pies a day and doing breakfast at any hour. Booths, a counter and a pie case by the door. It runs to 1am most nights and 2am on Friday and Saturday.

Sunday to Thursday 7am to 1am, Friday and Saturday 7am to 2am

A family-run stall in a strip mall on North Atlantic that does Taiwanese breakfast and then shuts at three in the afternoon. The order is fantuan, a sticky rice roll packed with pork floss and a length of fried dough, with salty or sweet soy milk alongside. Radish cake, scallion pancake and sesame bread fill out the rest of a short board. Cash only and closed Wednesdays.

Mon and Tue, 7am to 3pm. Closed Wed. Thu to Sun, 7am to 3pm

A walk-up taco stand on the Coldwater Canyon corner with a covered patio and a window you order at. It opened as the cheap arm of Hugo's on Santa Monica Boulevard and has outlasted plenty of things around it. Open 9am to 9pm every day, which covers breakfast burritos and a late dinner with the same menu board.

Daily, 9am to 9pm

A small dumpling house on Las Tunas whose name is its dish, the hui tou, a pork and cabbage parcel folded into a rectangle and pan-fried flat on one side so the bottom goes brown and crisp. Order them with the wontons in chili oil. Everything is folded by hand at the back and the whole place is plain formica and paper menus.

Daily, 10:30am to 9pm

Store 111, in the Cahuenga Pass below Universal, with a drive-thru and a dining area. This is the Valley end of the pass rather than the Hollywood side, which matters because the chain has a separate Hollywood store on Sunset.

Sunday to Thursday 10:30am to 1am. Friday and Saturday to 1:30am.

Open in Topanga since 1975, under old sycamores beside the creek. Tables are set on stone terraces with lights strung through the branches, and there is covered seating plus an indoor space for cold nights. The cooking is Californian and seasonal, off local farms and the restaurant's own organic garden.

Lunch Monday to Friday 10am to 2:30pm, dinner from 5:30pm. Weekend brunch 9am to 3pm, dinner from 5:15pm

A walk-up window on the southeast corner of La Brea and Olympic, in what used to be a roast beef stand. The Hong family brought back the hand-drawn doodles on the paper plates when they took the brand over. This address opened in March 2023 and is the second Irv's, not the 1946 original out on Route 66.

Sunday to Thursday 10am to 1am. Friday and Saturday 10am to 2am.

An izakaya on West Carson, in the stretch of Torrance where most of the Japanese restaurants are. Grilled skewers, oysters, hot pots and small plates ordered a few at a time, with shochu and sake to go with them. It opens at five and takes last orders at half nine, and the dining area is loud in the way an izakaya is supposed to be.

Every day, 5pm to 10:30pm, with last orders at 9:30pm

The Trani family have been feeding San Pedro since 1925, when the place opened as a cafe for men working the fish canneries and the docks. It is still an Italian restaurant with white cloths and a bar you can sit at. The waiters have worked there a long time. Dinner only, five nights a week, and it is busy on a Saturday without being hard to get into.

Closed Mon and Tue. Wed to Sun, 5pm to 9pm

A narrow counter tucked into the Malibu Country Mart on Cross Creek, making sandwiches to order out of a case of cold cuts and a stack of bread. The sandwiches are wrapped in paper and eaten on the benches in the courtyard outside. It closes at five, which tells you it is a daytime operation and always has been.

Daily, 9:30am to 5pm

A bright counter at the Valley Boulevard end of Alhambra that opens at eight and serves Chinese breakfast until half past ten, soy milk and youtiao and radish cake. The dish it is known for is the Shanghai pan-fried pork bao, sheng jian bao, browned flat on the bottom and still full of soup. You order at the register, take a number and sit at a shared table.

Daily, 8am to 9pm. Breakfast menu 7am to 10:30am

Raul Martinez started King Taco out of a converted ice cream truck in East Los Angeles in 1974, and this Cesar Chavez branch keeps the original format: a brightly lit counter with a salsa bar. Carnitas and lengua come by the taco. It is open past midnight every night and until three on weekends, which in this part of town is unusual. Cash moves fast and the line is rarely longer than five minutes.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 8:30am to midnight. Fri and Sat, 8:30am to 3am

A Reseda Boulevard burger stand where the owner's son, a chef who came out of Sushi Roku and Katana, put a sushi counter inside his father's diner. So the menu runs cheeseburgers and onion rings on one side and nigiri cut to order on the other, in the same building, at the same counter. It is the kind of arrangement that only happens in a strip mall, and it is the most-cited place near the Cal State Northridge campus for that reason.

Mon to Thu, 10:30am to 9:45pm. Fri and Sat, 10:30am to 10:15pm. Sun, 10:30am to 9:15pm

The restaurant attached to the bakery that makes the sweet bread, on Sepulveda in south Torrance. Loco moco, saimin, oxtail soup and paper-wrapped rolls to take away, served in a dining area that is always busy and never slow. It runs seven in the morning to nine at night, seven days, which is the widest window of anything in Torrance.

Every day, 7am to 9pm

The food court on the upper level of an indoor mall on Western, above an H Mart grocery. Separate counters sell different things and you carry a tray to a shared table, so a group that cannot agree still eats together. Mountain Restaurant inside the same building keeps later hours than the court does.

Food court daily 10am to 8pm. The mall itself closes at 7pm and the H Mart stays open until 9pm.

Rogelio Fonseca and his parents opened this on North Figueroa in 1969 and it has stayed in the family. The outside carries murals by the artist Leo Limon and the inside still has the wood panelling and burgundy booths. The adobada is pork shoulder marinated for more than a week in red chile and paprika.

Wed to Sat 8am to 5:30pm. Sun 8am to 2:30pm. Closed Monday and Tuesday

A small antojitos kitchen on the same block as the comedy club, built around birria: tacos, quesabirria, consommé, plus burritos and bowls. It takes online reservations and does catering, which for a place this size means the birria is the draw and they know it. Open to 10pm on a weeknight and 11pm Friday and Saturday, which is after the club's set lets out.

Closed Mon. Tue to Thu, 11am to 10pm. Fri, 11am to 11pm. Sat, 10am to 11pm. Sun, 10am to 8pm

A family place on Huntington Drive in El Sereno built around gorditas de maiz made by hand, most often filled with carnitas or chicharron guisado. There are tamales, burritos and aguas frescas alongside, and enough tables that a group does not have to wait.

Mon to Thu 9am to 8pm. Fri to Sun 8am to 8pm

A family bakery on Hoover that has been making Yucatecan food since 1971, and the cochinita pibil is the reason to walk in. You order at the counter from a case of pan dulce and a short hot menu, and there is a handful of tables if you want to sit. Tamales colados come wrapped in banana leaf. Most people leave with a bag of marquesitas as well.

Daily, 8am to 7pm

A panaderia on Whittier Boulevard running since 1952, where most people come for tamales by the dozen rather than for pan dulce. You take a tray and tongs at the door and pay by the piece at the register. At five in the morning there is already a line of people buying for a party later that day.

Mon to Sat, 5am to 7pm. Sun, 5am to 6pm

A full restaurant on Cesar Chavez with a tiled bar and a molcajete that arrives still bubbling. The waiters have worked there for decades. The menu runs long and covers mole, carne asada and seafood, and the margaritas are the reason a lot of tables stay past dessert. L.A. Taco treats it as the neighborhood's occasion restaurant rather than a quick stop.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 9am to 8pm. Fri and Sat, 9am to 9pm

Jacqueline Koster opened this on Franklin in 1969 with crepes and omelettes and Edith Piaf on the stereo, and her daughter Francoise runs the kitchen now. It is a full bistro with a long bar that keeps pouring after the kitchen shuts. The back patio is where people end up.

Daily 5pm to 2am, kitchen until 11pm

A pupuseria on Washington between the Salon Playa block and the freeway, doing the standard revueltas and loroco alongside plates of carne asada. The space is small and plain with a handful of tables. It is the kind of place where the order is taken at the counter and brought out to you.

Daily, 9am to 9pm

A counter-service storefront two blocks off the Third Street Promenade cooking Michoacán and Purépecha food, with corn tortillas pressed in the building. Chips and pickled carrots come with the meal and the aguas frescas change daily. Order the taconazo and they griddle cheese under the adobada or the asada.

Monday to Friday 9am to 9pm. Saturday 10am to 9pm. Sunday 11am to 6pm.

Al Langer opened this counter across from MacArthur Park in 1947 and his son Norm still runs it. The number 19 is pastrami on double-baked rye with coleslaw and Russian dressing. It closes at 4pm, which is the single most important thing to know about it.

Mon to Sat 8am to 4pm. Closed Sunday

A truck parked in the gas station lot on the southwest corner of La Brea and Venice, with a vertical spit of al pastor turning beside the window. The Martinez family came from Oaxaca and started with one truck; there are fifteen now across greater Los Angeles. This corner is one of the few where the spit runs all day instead of only in the evening.

Sunday to Thursday 10am to 2am. Friday and Saturday 10am to 3:30am.

Warner Ebbink and chef Brandon Boudet opened this in January 2008 in the old La Belle Epoque space on Hillhurst. Ebbink put in a 1930s wooden bar he bought off a saloon in Easton, Pennsylvania, and leaded-glass windows salvaged from a New York building that was coming down. Boudet is from New Orleans and it shows on the menu. Handmade pastas, wood-fired pizzas, brunch on the weekend.

Monday to Thursday 10am to 10pm, Friday 10am to midnight, Saturday 9am to midnight, Sunday 9am to 10pm. Weekend brunch runs 9am to 3pm and there is counter service on weekdays 10am to 4pm.

A 1956 pizzeria on Lankershim with a dark bar at the front, red booths, a thin crispy crust and a neon sign the Valley Relics Museum keeps old menus from. It opens at four in the afternoon and runs to midnight, which is an unusual shape and makes it one of the few places on this street still serving food when a show lets out. Nothing about the interior has been updated to look older than it is, because it does not have to.

Daily, 4pm to midnight

Opened on 4th Street in 2008 and more or less anchored Retro Row's turn from antique shops into a street people eat on. The kitchen does mole in several colors and a tableside guacamole, and the bar is known for a long tequila list. It is next door to the Art Theatre, so half the early tables are people with a ticket. Weekend service starts at ten for brunch.

Mon to Fri, 11:30am to 9pm. Sat and Sun, 10am to 9pm

A truck that parks on Olympic in the evening selling tacos árabes, the Puebla dish of pork shaved off a vertical spit onto a flour pan árabe with a chipotle sauce. It trades in Mid-City during the day and moves east at night, which is why the location is worth a check before you go. Everything is eaten standing up next to the truck.

Wed, Thu and Sun, 3pm to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 3pm to 11pm. Closed Mon and Tue

A burger stand on Rosecrans that has been here since 1984, under a sign tall enough to read from four blocks away. Cheeseburgers, chili cheese fries and pastrami sandwiches come out in styrofoam containers and the whole thing is built for the car window. It opens at seven in the morning and does not close until two, or three on Friday, which makes it the widest set of hours in this part of Compton.

Mon to Thu, 7am to 2am. Fri, 7am to 3am. Sat and Sun, 7am to 2am

A full Jewish deli on Calabasas Road doing pastrami, matzo ball soup, lox and a breakfast that starts at 8am. It is a counter and tables, bright, with a bakery case and a case of salads, and it is the only place on this stretch that feeds you at eight in the morning. Portions are deli-sized, meaning one sandwich is dinner.

Mon to Thu, 8am to 8pm. Fri and Sat, 8am to 9pm. Sun, 8am to 8pm

A walk-up burger stand on Arroyo Parkway that opens at five in the morning and serves until midnight, 363 days a year. The breakfast burrito is the thing most people come for and it is sold all day. You order at a window, take a number, and eat at the picnic tables out front. The Walnut Street branch keeps shorter hours, so the Arroyo one is the late stop.

Daily, 5am to midnight. Closed Thanksgiving and Christmas

A family-run Thai restaurant in a Reseda Boulevard strip mall that cooks both northern and southern regional dishes rather than the standard Los Angeles Thai menu, which is why people drive to Northridge for it. Khao soi, sai ua, southern curries, and a long menu with a separate section of the things the family actually eats. The dining area is plain and the food is not.

Mon to Wed, 11am to 10pm. Thu to Sat, 11am to midnight. Sun, 11am to 10pm

A panadería on East Compton Boulevard with trays of pan dulce you pick over yourself with tongs, plus drinks and snacks at the counter. It opens at five in the morning and stays open until ten at night on weekdays, which is an unusually long day for a bakery anywhere. The selection thins out late, so early is better if you care which piece you get.

Mon to Fri, 5am to 10pm. Sat and Sun, 5am to 8pm

The landward end of Malibu Pier, with an indoor dining area and a bar and patio side that serves the same menu. This is the Restaurant, not the Pier Cafe out at the far end, which California State Parks closed in January 2025 for structural repairs and has not reopened.

Sunday to Friday 9am to 8pm. Saturday 9am to 9pm. The operator notes hours may be cut short on rainy days.

A fish market on the inland side of PCH since 1972, owned and run by commercial fishermen, with a counter at one end and a tiered concrete patio looking over the water at the other. You order at the window, carry a tray up the steps and find a bench. There is no table service and no reservations.

Cafe daily 11am to 8pm. Fish market daily 10am to 8:30pm

A Peruvian kitchen in a strip mall at Melrose and Vine, working out of a space with the feel of an old lunch counter. Lomo saltado, seafood fried rice and the citrus ceviches are the orders, and the green sauce on the table is hotter than it looks. Mains run around thirteen dollars.

Monday to Thursday 11:30am to 8pm, Friday and Saturday 11:30am to 9:30pm, Sunday 11:30am to 8pm

The other shrimp taco on this stretch of Olympic, two blocks from Mariscos Jalisco and argued about in the same sentence. The tacos dorados come out of the fryer onto a paper plate with cabbage and a thin red salsa, and the tostada de camaron is the order if you want something cold. It is a stand with a counter and a few stools on the sidewalk.

Daily, 9am to 5:30pm

Raul Ortega has parked on this stretch of Olympic since 2001 and sells one thing people line up for, the tacos dorados de camaron, fried to order and topped with avocado and a tomato salsa poured over the top. There is a folding table and a wall to lean on. The line is usually ten deep at lunch and takes about as long as it takes to read the menu board.

Daily, 9am to 6pm

A family Lebanese and Armenian restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard since 1982, doing mezze, charcoal kebabs and the soujouk that gets ordered at every second table. Jonathan Gold put it on his 99 Essential Restaurants list when he was at LA Weekly. The setting is plain and the portions are not.

Tuesday to Thursday 11am to 9pm, Friday and Saturday 11am to 10pm, Sunday 11am to 9pm, closed Monday

Chicago deep dish baked to order in a pan, which means about forty minutes from ordering to eating. The shop opened on this stretch of Sunset in 2004 and makes its own masa and sauces. Order when you get there and drink something while it bakes.

Tue 5pm to 10pm. Wed to Sun 11am to 10pm. Closed Monday

A walk-up burger stand on Western at 44th with a window, a few outdoor tables and a menu that runs from a chili cheeseburger to pastrami and breakfast burritos. It opens at nine in the morning and goes to half past eleven at night on weekdays, which makes it the one place near Lico that is still serving when a show ends. Order at the window and wait outside.

Mon to Fri, 9am to 11:30pm. Sat and Sun, 9am to 11pm

On the block of South Fairfax the city designated Little Ethiopia, Messob has been serving since 1985 and stays open to 11pm every night. Combination platters come on a single sheet of injera and the vegetarian spread is as substantial as the meat. The dining area is plain and the service is unhurried.

Daily 11am to 11pm

Named for a station on the Mexico City metro and cooking the food of that city, including pambazos, flautas and chilaquiles from nine in the morning. Carnitas run on weekends only, in eight separate cuts including snout, ear, skin and stomach.

Mon to Thu 9am to 9pm. Fri and Sat 9am to 10pm. Sun 9am to 9pm

A Salvadoran place four doors from Salon Playa Las Tunas on the same block of Washington, doing pupusas revueltas, yuca frita and a pollo encebollado. The griddle is visible from the counter and the pupusas come with curtido in a jar on the table. It is a working neighborhood restaurant with a television on, not a project.

Mon to Thu, 8am to 10pm. Fri to Sun, 8am to 11pm

Carmen Miceli and his wife Sylvia opened this in 1949 and it is the oldest Italian restaurant in Hollywood. The waiters sing opera and show tunes between courses, which has been the arrangement since the start rather than a later idea. Pizza and the baked pastas are what to order, under a ceiling hung with chianti bottles customers left behind.

Daily, 11:30am to 9:30pm

Jesucita Mijares started this as a tortilla factory in 1920 and her family still runs it, which makes it the oldest Mexican restaurant in Pasadena. It sits in a low building on Palmetto Drive off Fair Oaks with a walled patio and a cantina at the back. Closed Mondays, open from ten on Sunday.

Closed Mon. Tue to Thu, 11am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 10pm. Sun, 10am to 8pm

A small diner on Sunset dating to 1926, with a counter and a handful of tables. Breakfast runs all day and the kitchen closes mid-afternoon.

Daily, 8am to 3pm

A small counter on Olympic where Kilak Kim rolls the dough in an open kitchen and the dumplings are folded to order. Frozen ones are sold to take home. A separately run place in Northridge uses almost the same name and a Diamond Bar location has closed, so the address matters here more than the sign does.

10am to 8pm Wednesday through Monday. Closed Tuesdays.

A barbecue house at the Naples end of 2nd Street that has been smoking baby backs since 1992, in a dim wood-panelled space with booths and a long bar. The order is a half rack with the sweet sauce, or the beef dip if you want something you can hold. Takeout starts at ten in the morning even though the dining side does not open until noon on weekends. It is the closest thing to a sit-down meal within walking distance of Gaslamp.

Mon to Thu, 4pm to 9pm. Fri, 4pm to 10pm. Sat, noon to 10pm. Sun, noon to 9pm. Takeout from 10am daily

A shack at the county line where PCH runs out of Los Angeles, opened in 1956 as Panorama Pacific and renamed after a contest in 1971 when the Young family took the lease. You line up at one of two counters, fried on one side and steamed shellfish on the other, and eat at picnic tables with motorcycles parked across the lot. It has been in more films than anyone has counted.

March to October: Monday to Thursday 10:30am to 8pm, Friday 10:30am to 9pm, weekends 10am to 8:30pm. October to March it closes an hour earlier each day

A pizza and pasta place on the corner of Sixth and Centre, directly across from the Grand Annex. Red booths, a counter and pizza by the slice or the whole thing. Get the garlic rolls. It opens at half ten in the morning and runs to half eleven on weekend nights, which makes it both the lunch and the walk-home option on the same street as two stages.

Sun to Thu, 10:30am to 10:30pm. Fri and Sat, 10:30am to 11:30pm

On the water on the Malibu side of PCH, part of the Nobu Ryokan property, with a bar and lounge alongside the dining area. It was one of the few businesses on its stretch of highway that the Palisades Fire left standing. It shut in January 2025 and has been trading since.

Sunday to Thursday noon to 10pm. Friday and Saturday noon to 11pm. The reservation line only answers 10am to 5pm.

A 1957 Armet and Davis coffee shop with the zigzag roof still standing over the parking lot. Counter seats face the griddle and the booths run along the glass. The city made it Historic-Cultural Monument No. 1090 in 2015, which is what kept the building standing when a fast-food chain bought the land underneath it.

Open 24 hours, seven days.

A northern Chinese noodle shop on Figueroa a few doors up from the Nine O, doing hand-pulled noodles, pork and chive dumplings and a beef noodle soup that comes out fast. It runs to eleven at night six days a week, which makes it the latest food anywhere near the Shrine. Plastic trays and paper menus. The line at the register keeps moving.

Mon to Sat, 11am to 11pm. Sun, 11am to 9:30pm

A gelato and crepe counter in a strip on Soledad Canyon, with cases of gelato made on site and savory and sweet crepes off a griddle behind them. It is a fifteen-minute stop rather than a meal, and it opens at nine or ten every day, which covers a daytime show cleanly. Watch Tuesday: it shuts at 2:30pm that one day and keeps normal hours the rest of the week.

Mon, 10am to 7pm. Tue, 10am to 2:30pm. Wed to Fri, 10am to 7pm. Sat, 9am to 6pm. Sun, 9am to 5pm

Tom Koulax opened this walk-up stand on the corner of Beverly and Rampart on May 15, 1946 and it has not closed since. There is no indoor seating, just a counter you stand at and a chili burger wrapped in paper. It marked eighty years in May 2026 by selling the burger for eighty cents.

Open 24 hours, daily

Six booths and a counter in a narrow storefront on First Street, open since 1956 and the last Japanese restaurant left from the era when Boyle Heights held one of the largest Japanese American populations in the country. The menu is teishoku sets, curry rice and udon, cooked by one person at a time. There is a state historical marker on the building and it is still a neighborhood lunch place rather than a museum.

Mon to Sat, 11:30am to 2pm and 4:30pm to 7:30pm. Closed Sun

A taco counter next to Circus Liquor on Vineland that cooks Mexican and Peruvian at the same time. The lomo saltado taco on a handmade tortilla with a Peruvian green salsa is the one L.A. Taco singled out. There are also burgers, pizzas, wings and chiles rellenos, because the kitchen does not believe in narrowing down. Opens at 5pm, runs to 1am on Friday and Saturday.

Sun to Thu, 5pm to midnight. Fri and Sat, 5pm to 1am

A diner on Pacific Avenue that has been serving since 1940, with a counter, vinyl booths and a menu of eggs and hash that has not been updated to suit anyone. Service is fast because the turnover is fast. It is the closest real breakfast to Cabrillo Beach and it does not pretend to be anything else.

Mon to Fri, 7am to 2pm. Sat and Sun, 7am to 3pm

George and Rena Panagopoulos opened this in 1958 in a building Eldon Davis and Helen Liu Fong designed, and it is one of the best-preserved Googie coffee shops left in Los Angeles. Boomerang roof and rock planters outside. Neon and a counter with swivel stools inside. Fried chicken, biscuits and eggs, served until three in the afternoon and not a minute later.

Mon to Fri, 7:30am to 3pm. Sat and Sun, 7am to 3pm

The only restaurant in Malibu with its own private cove, with tables set directly on the sand. Bob Morris opened it in 1998 on land his father assembled acre by acre in the fifties. The parking lot is where Jim Rockford kept his trailer in The Rockford Files, and the cove turns up in Gidget and Beach Blanket Bingo.

Daily 8am to 9pm, with some listings running Friday and Saturday to 10pm. Breakfast 8am to 11am. The operator publishes no hours of its own.

A counter on Pico where the dough gets rolled from five in the morning and you order fresh pasta by the plate or by the pound. Paola Da Re and her children run it and the seating is a few tables, so most people take it away. Nothing on the board is expensive and the line at the register moves.

Daily 10am to 9:30pm

A Toluca Lake coffee shop that opened in 1960 and has been under the same ownership since 1999. Breakfast, lunch and dinner all day, baked goods made in the building, and a patio. There is a back area called the Green Room where studio people talk business.

Daily 8am to 9pm.

A pizza counter on Hermosa Avenue that has been cutting slices for more than fifty years. You order at the register, it comes out on paper, and there are a few tables if you want one. It stays open to two in the morning on Friday and Saturday, which makes it the thing you eat on the walk back to the car.

Sun to Thu, noon to midnight. Fri and Sat, noon to 2am

Opened in 1908 and at the Alameda Street address since 1951, when the original building was taken for the 101 freeway. Sawdust covers the floor. Long lines form at carving stations where you order by shouting your sandwich. The tables are communal. Coffee is still famously cheap.

Daily, 6am to 10pm

Five siblings have run this on Cherry Avenue since 1985, in the part of Long Beach that holds the largest Cambodian population outside Cambodia. The order is kuy teav, the rice noodle soup, built on a pork bone broth with the house sauce on the side. It opens at seven in the morning and shuts at three in the afternoon, because breakfast soup is the point. Closed Mondays.

Tue to Sun, 7am to 3pm. Closed Mon

A Formica counter on California Boulevard that has been grinding its own beef and building the same burger since 1963, with a paper-wrapped patty, iceberg lettuce and Thousand Island. The pies are made in house and sold whole or by the slice. It is cash only and there is an ATM by the door. Caltech is two blocks away, so the counter fills with students and contractors at the same time.

Daily, 8am to 9pm

A walk-up stand at La Brea and Melrose that has been selling chili dogs from the same window since 1939. You order outside, you wait outside, and you eat at one of the tables behind the building. The menu is longer than the building is wide and the signs explaining it have not been redesigned in decades.

Sun to Thu, 9:30am to midnight. Fri and Sat, 9:30am to 2am

One of two Pioneer Chicken locations left in Los Angeles, on Soto at Whittier since about 1982, still selling the fried chicken and gravy the chain was built on after the Echo Park original shut in 2009. The sign is the original sign and the chicken comes in a box with a biscuit. It is counter service with a small seating area and a drive-through.

Daily, 10am to 9pm

A Mediterranean counter on Reseda Boulevard doing shawarma, kabob plates and falafel wraps for the Cal State Northridge crowd, with a grill running in the open and plates that come out fast. Order at the register, sit in a plain dining area, pay student money. It has been the default cheap lunch for the campus long enough that it shows up in every list of what is near CSUN.

Daily, 11am to 9pm

The first Pitfire, opened on this corner in 1997 and still the one the rest were copied from. You order at a counter, they call a number, and personal wood-fired pizzas and pasta come out to a patio and beer garden on the northwest corner of Lankershim and Magnolia. Beer and wine, paper napkins, no host stand. On some evenings there is trivia or a comic or a band in the garden.

Sun to Thu, 11am to 11pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to midnight

A small family-run shack on Western with split logs stacked against the outside wall, feeding a wood fire that cooks every chicken on the menu. You can smell it from a block away. Order at the counter, take a quarter or a half with rice and beans, and eat at one of the few tables inside. It has been doing only this for more than thirty years.

Mon and Wed to Fri, 11am to 7pm. Sat and Sun, 11am to 8pm. Closed Tuesday

A women-owned carnitas counter on Soto below Olympic, selling pork by the pound with tortillas, salsa and nopales to go with it. Most of the trade is people buying a kilo for home on a Saturday morning, and there are a few seats if you want to eat there. It opens at half past eight and is done by five.

Mon to Fri and Sun, 8:30am to 5pm. Sat, 8am to 5pm

The Burbank branch of the Cuban bakery the Porto family started in their Echo Park house in 1960 after leaving Havana. The potato balls and cheese rolls are the reason for the line, and the line moves, because there are a dozen people behind the counter and a numbered ticket system. Coffee, pastries and sandwiches as well. Cash-cheap and nothing here costs much.

Mon to Thu, 6:30am to 7pm. Fri and Sat, 6:30am to 8pm. Sun, 7am to 7pm

One of the few Nicaraguan restaurants in Los Angeles, on Venice Boulevard near Pico-Union. The plate to get is the carne asada nicaragüense with gallo pinto and fried cheese, and there is nacatamal on weekends. The family that runs it says plainly that the point is to keep Nicaraguan cooking going for a generation that grew up here.

Mon to Thu, 8am to 8:45pm. Fri to Sun, 8am to 9:45pm

A fish market on the Redondo boardwalk since 1953, where you pick what you want out of the ice and they steam or fry it while you wait. You carry the tray to a picnic table on the deck over the water and eat it with plastic forks. Crab, shrimp cocktails and oysters alongside fish and chips. The gulls know exactly what they are doing.

Mon to Thu, 10:30am to 8pm. Fri to Sun, 9:30am to 8pm, with a 9pm close on Saturday

A turquoise diner that opened on Pico in 1958 and has never been redecorated, down to the matching turquoise stools and the red booths. Tarantino shot a scene of True Romance in it and Lords of Dogtown used it too. Breakfast runs all day and the plates are cheap.

Daily, 6:30am to 2pm

The giant donut on the roof went up in 1953 and the stand under it has not changed shape since. You order at a walk-up window on the side of the building, there is no seating, and people eat standing next to their cars in the lot. It runs 24 hours a day, which is the whole reason to know about it in a part of Inglewood where almost nothing else does.

Open 24 hours, every day

A stone building on Mulholland that the Savko family turned into a store and grill in 1961, and which has been the gathering point for motorcyclists on this road ever since. You order a burger at the counter and eat it at a long table outside while two hundred bikes come and go. It shuts at five and closes Monday through Thursday, so the window is narrow and real.

Friday 9am to 5pm. Saturday and Sunday 7am to 5pm. Closed Monday to Thursday

Around twenty-five years of late service have made this strip-mall restaurant a Thai Town fixture. Crispy morning glory salad and the pork with Chinese broccoli are what regulars order. It runs until quarter to eleven every night.

Monday to Friday 4pm to 10:45pm, Saturday and Sunday 2pm to 10:45pm

A Thai kitchen on Magnolia in Valley Village that takes the cooking seriously and the presentation lightly. It splits the day, lunch until 3:30pm and dinner from 5pm, which is worth knowing before you walk over. The Infatuation has called it one of the most overlooked Thai places in the Valley. There is a small bar and wine by the glass.

Daily, noon to 3:30pm and 5pm to 9:30pm

A small shop on Westwood Boulevard that has been making Persian-style bastani since the 1980s. The saffron and pistachio is the one to get, pressed between two wafers if you ask for it that way. Cucumber and date sit on the same board, which tells you the register.

Sunday to Thursday 11am to 10pm. Friday and Saturday 11am to 11pm

Ducks and strips of char siu hang in the front window and a man with a cleaver takes them down and chops them to order over rice. The dining area behind is plain tile and laminate and the rice plates come out within a few minutes of ordering. It opens at nine in the morning, which almost nothing else in San Gabriel does.

Daily, 9am to 9pm

A Salvadoran kitchen on Vermont just below Washington that stays open until 2am on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, which is rare on this stretch. The plates are large and cheap and the pupusas keep coming out of the kitchen well past midnight. On a weekday it shuts at ten, so the late version of this stop only exists on a weekend.

Mon to Thu, 8am to 10pm. Fri to Sun, 8am to 2am

A Thai Town storefront that has been serving since the late 1970s and has poured coffee since the eighties, though the boat noodles are why anyone comes. The bowl arrives with beef, tendon and tripe in a dark broth with pork rinds on top. Order two, they are small.

Monday and Tuesday 10:30am to 7pm, Thursday 10:30am to 7pm, Friday to Sunday 10:30am to 9pm, closed Wednesday

A very small place on Valley Boulevard with a handful of tables that has been doing one dish since 1982, poached chicken over rice cooked in the fat, with ginger-scallion, garlic-chili and dark soy on the side. Order the dark meat for two dollars more. The rest of the board is Macanese and Malaysian cooking and the baked seafood casserole is the other thing regulars order. Closed Sundays.

Mon to Sat, 11am to 9pm. Closed Sun

Barbecue at the south end of Main, with twenty-four craft taps and a rule the operator states outright: meat is smoked fresh daily, and when it runs out they are out. Brisket, ribs, tri-tip, sides, served on trays. Going early is not a preference here, it is the whole strategy, which fits an afternoon screening better than an evening one.

Mon to Wed, 11am to 9pm. Thu to Sat, 11am to 10pm. Sun, 9am to 9pm

A small counter on Eighth Street opened in 2016 by Teodoro Rodriguez Diaz and Jennifer Feltham, cooking the flour-tortilla style of northern Sonora rather than the corn-based food most of LA serves. Tortillas are pressed in house and the chivichangas come out of the fryer. There are a few stools and a lot of takeout.

Daily, 11am to 10pm

Sophy Khut has been cooking on this stretch of Pacific Coast Highway for more than twenty years, and the menu runs long enough that regulars order by pointing. What she is known for is the beef jerky, flank steak oven dried and then fried, which arrives in thick pieces with a dipping sauce. The place also serves Thai, which is how a lot of Cambodian kitchens in Long Beach survived. There is a stage and a dance floor used on weekends.

Daily, 10am to 9pm

An open-air courtyard built out of repurposed shipping containers at Bellflower Boulevard and Oak Street, with eight independent counters around a shared seating yard. Tacos Arandas, Un Rinconcito Argentino and Panda Sal's handle most of the food, Off Duty pours beer and wine, and Pana's Café and Brown Cup Boba open at seven in the morning. Leashed dogs are welcome and there is no minimum spend to sit down.

Mon and Tue, 7am to 9pm. Wed, Thu and Sun, 7am to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 7am to 11pm

Two sisters from Japan opened Suehiro in Little Tokyo in 1972 and ran it on First Street for fifty years until an eviction in 2023 pushed it to Main Street. Same family, same curry, in a bigger space. It serves until 1am on weeknights and 3am on Friday and Saturday.

Mon to Thu 11:30am to 1am. Fri 11:30am to 3am. Sat 8am to 3am. Sun 8am to 1am

Open every hour of every day, in the converted Sizzler on Western. The order is sul long tang, an ox bone broth you season yourself at the table, or galbi jjim, short ribs braised in a cast iron pan and finished with cheese at the table if you ask. It is bright, loud and fast, and at four in the morning it is still full.

Open 24 hours, daily

Part bakery, part café, with most of the seating outdoors under umbrellas at the Lankershim corner. Bread and pastry are made on site and the savory side runs to egg dishes, toasts and grain bowls. It is ordered at the counter. The NoHo branch is the Valley outpost of a Venice operation that has been going since the early 2010s.

Daily, 7am to 3pm

A Gujarati farsan counter on a side street off Pioneer Boulevard in Artesia's Little India, where the snacks and the sweets are made on the premises every day. You order at the glass case and eat at tables in the back. Dhokla and khandvi sit on one side. Pani puri is there too. Barfi and jalebi fill the other. It is vegetarian throughout and the bill is small.

Tue to Thu and Sun, 11am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 9:30pm. Closed Mon

A corner diner on the ground floor of the 1967 Beverly Laurel, red vinyl booths and loud music until three in the morning. It shut in the spring of 2020 and reopened that November under Stephanie Wilson, who had worked there since 2011, first as a server and then as general manager.

8am to 3am, seven days.

A family has run this corner stand at Sunset and Lucile since 1981. Its own menu leads with chilaquiles, which tells you what the morning crowd is there for, and the rest is fish and shrimp tacos, wet burritos and menudo. It is a painted walk-up with seating out back.

Monday to Saturday 7am to 9pm, Sunday 7am to 4pm.

A walk-up counter on Glendale Boulevard that opens at 6am and sells until the food runs out, usually by mid-afternoon. Cash only. The chorizo and potato breakfast burrito is what Anthony Bourdain ate here for The Layover, and a second counter opened on Eagle Rock Boulevard in 2025.

Daily 6am to 3pm, or until they sell out

A cash-only stand on the Olympic taco row, one door east of Don Quixote, doing beef and goat birria on handmade tortillas with consommé on the side. The goat is the reason to come and the consommé is rich enough to drink on its own. There is no seating worth the name, so people eat standing at the counter or in the car.

Mon and Wed to Sun, 8:30am to 4:30pm. Closed Tue

A twelve-foot hot dog you order through, designed by Milton J. Black and commissioned in 1939 by the dance act Veloz and Yolanda. The 1933 Group restored it and reopened in July 2022 on a lot that held a studio once used by the Doors. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Wednesday and Thursday 3pm to 10pm, Friday and Saturday noon to 10pm, Sunday noon to 9pm, closed Monday and Tuesday

Open since 1959 and run by the same family, in a late-sixties interior nobody has renovated. Two hundred pounds of turkey go into the oven every morning, and the turkey dinner and the turkey sandwich are what people come for. Breakfast runs until 11:45am on weekdays and until 2pm on Saturday and Sunday.

Daily 8am to 2pm and 4pm to 9pm. Closed between two and four.

Open on Los Feliz Boulevard since 1922 and run by the same family the entire time, which makes it one of the oldest restaurants in the city on its original site. Lawrence Frank and Walter Van de Kamp built it before they started Lawry's. Prime rib and Yorkshire pudding, and a bar that does a 2pm happy hour.

Daily 11am to 9pm. Happy hour Mon to Fri 2pm to 5pm

A Tam's on North Alameda, part of the Southern California chain Kostas Vovos started in 1971 and his grandson Spiro runs now. The Compton signs carry more weight than the burgers alone would explain: Kendrick Lamar rapped about hanging out at Tam's, and a Tam's #21 sign stood on the Super Bowl LVI halftime stage. This one opens at six in the morning and closes at ten at night.

Daily, 6am to 10pm

Daniel Alonso came from Puebla and has been selling Tijuana-style tacos for eighteen years, and this East Compton Boulevard shop is the first of his. The asada goes over mesquite and comes on handmade corn tortillas with guacamole and a salsa de molcajete. It stays open to eleven most nights and to midnight on Friday and Saturday.

Mon to Thu, 10am to 11pm. Fri and Sat, 9am to midnight. Sun, 9am to 11pm

A tonkotsu counter on Arroyo Parkway just south of Colorado that stays open until two in the morning from Thursday to Saturday and midnight the rest of the week. You order at a tablet, pick a bowl and a spice level, and it arrives fast. There is outdoor seating and free parking near enough that nobody circles. It is the one place near the Civic that is reliably still serving food when a show lets out.

Mon to Wed, 11am to midnight. Thu to Sat, 11am to 2am. Sun, 11am to midnight

Thirty-five years in the back corner of the Malibu Country Mart, away from the parking lot. Grilled octopus, taramasalata, whole branzino and lamb, indoors and on a large patio. Zane and Elisa Koss have now run it through the Woolsey Fire, the pandemic and the Palisades Fire; it closed in January 2025 while PCH was shut and reopened remodeled.

Three sources disagree. The landlord lists noon to 9pm daily; other listings open at 11:30am and run to 11pm on Friday and Saturday. Call (310) 317-9667 before you plan around a closing time.

A plain Thai restaurant in a strip on Victory Boulevard with a long menu, low prices and a big vegetarian section. It opens at 11am and runs to 9:30pm, which in this stretch of the Valley is a wider window than almost anything else. Closed Wednesday. Service is quick and the dining area is small.

Mon, Tue, Thu and Sun, 11am to 9:30pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 10pm. Closed Wed

A metal bar on West 4th that serves New York style pies and slices until last call. The stereo is loud and the playlist is the kind of thing the staff actually own on vinyl, and there is a pinball and arcade corner off to one side. It is 21 and over all day, so the noon open is for adults killing an afternoon rather than for families. Slices keep coming after the kitchen shuts, which is the part that matters when a bill runs long.

Sun to Thu, noon to 11pm. Fri and Sat, noon to midnight. Kitchen closes an hour before the bar, slices until last call

A smash burger counter that opened in March 2026 in the building that used to be The Alley, the recording studio where Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, Fleetwood Mac, Etta James and the Red Hot Chili Peppers all cut tracks. The owners kept the name and the history is on the walls. Burgers and fries during the week. Brunch on weekends. Closed Monday and Tuesday.

Wed and Thu, 4pm to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 11:30am to 10pm. Sun, 11:30am to 9pm. Closed Mon and Tue

A wooden shack on Pico that has been serving since 1947, with twenty-six stools around a U-shaped counter and no tables at all. You wait standing behind whoever is eating, then take the stool when it opens. The hickory burger and the pie have both been on the menu since the first day, and the bill arrives handwritten.

Sunday to Thursday 11am to 11pm. Friday and Saturday 11am to midnight

A counter pizzeria on the theater's block where the whole idea is that you pick the toppings and they hand-toss it for you. The dough uses imported Italian flour and the cheese is Grande, which is a more serious sourcing decision than the build-your-own format suggests. There are salads, wings and craft beer alongside, and a patio out front if the inside is full.

Daily, 11am to 9pm

The oldest restaurant and bar in Santa Monica, on Main Street since 1934 and the first place to open on that street. Ron Schur has owned it since the first day of 1989; he bought it after a waitress would not give him the salad dressing recipe. The bar has not been changed since 1946, the Christmas lights stay up all year, and the phone number ends in 1934.

Daily from 5pm until close, which listings put at 11pm Monday to Thursday, 12:30am Friday and Saturday and 10pm Sunday. Happy hour 5pm to 7pm at the bar and the front patio.

The original location, on the corner of Valley and Garfield since 1951, with the neon sign and a walk-up window. Order the world famous pastrami dip and expect a pile of meat that needs two hands and a stack of napkins. Chili cheese fries come in a portion sized for a table. It is open until one in the morning every night of the week.

Daily, 10am to 1am

A Japanese bakery three doors from the cinema, run under the Okayama Kobo name, where the dough is made with Hokkaido flour and no preservatives and everything is baked on site each morning. The counter is curry breads, melon pan, cream buns, a short list of sandwiches and coffee, and most of it is gone by early afternoon. You order at the case, you eat at a small table or you carry it out. It closes at 2:30pm, so it is a matinee stop and nothing else.

Tue to Sun, 8am to 2:30pm. Closed Mon

An open-air market at Third and Fairfax since 1934, built out of the stalls farmers set up on a vacant dairy field and never taken down. You eat standing or at a shared table under the green awnings, from whichever counter you want, and Bob's Coffee and Doughnuts opens at 8am for the people who arrive before anything else does. Parking on site is free for the first hour.

Mon to Fri, 9am to 9pm. Sat, 9am to 8pm. Sun, 10am to 7pm

Red leather booths, dark wood panelling and oil paintings, all left from when this was The Windsor. The Korean owners took it over and kept the interior intact, so the fried chicken and the spicy seafood stew arrive in a 1940s steakhouse setting. Television shoots here constantly, which is why it looks familiar.

Monday to Saturday 4pm to 2am. Closed Sunday

Harold Sparks opened this on Centinela in 1983 and it has been Inglewood's breakfast table since. Chicken and waffles, salmon croquettes and grits come out of a small kitchen onto a short counter and a handful of booths. There is usually a wait on a Sunday and it turns over quickly.

Mon to Fri, 8am to 2pm. Sat and Sun, 8am to 3pm

Red leather booths and tufted vinyl across the street from the Warner Bros lot, in a building that went up as the Red Coach Inn. The restaurant opened in 1946 at Pass and Riverside with forty-six seats and moved here in 1949. The interior has not been redone since.

Monday to Thursday 11:30am to 10:30pm. Friday and Saturday to 11pm. Sunday brunch 10am to 2pm and dinner 3:30pm to 9pm.

A saloon-fronted barbecue place on Vanowen running a double-barrel smoker in the back alley, which is why the block smells the way it does. Brisket, ribs and sausage sold by weight, served on trays with white bread and pickles. It is the closest real food to the Mayflower Club and the only thing within walking distance of it worth crossing the road for.

Closed Mon. Tue to Thu, 11am to 8:30pm. Fri, 11am to 9pm. Sat, noon to 9pm. Sun, noon to 8pm

A small storefront on Fifth Street in the arts district that serves the same menu from nine in the morning until nine at night. Eggs and bacon in the morning, then steak and fries, lamb and shrimp later, on paper menus in a narrow dining area. It is the one place downtown that will feed you at four in the afternoon, which is when a lot of people need feeding.

Mon to Sat, 9am to 9pm. Sun, 9am to 2:45pm

A window on Washington Place that has been selling the same hard-shell taco since 1959, with unmelted cheddar over shredded beef. L.A. Taco's own write-up calls it a Los Angeles roadside legend and singles out the dark, smoky red sauce. You order outside and eat at a picnic table.

Daily, 11am to 8pm

A family bakery that has been on El Prado in Old Torrance since 1984, occupying a row of storefronts it expanded into one at a time. Glass cases of cakes, pastries, cookies and a sandwich counter at the back. You take a number, and on a Saturday morning the number matters.

Mon to Fri, 7am to 6pm. Sat, 7am to 5pm. Sun, 8am to 3pm

Garlic chicken with black beans, rice and plantains, served fast in a dining area with the lights up. The garlic sauce is the reason people have been coming to this La Cienega address for decades and the plate still costs less than twenty dollars. Walk in, get seated, eat, leave.

Sun to Thu, 11am to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 11pm

An Italian restaurant that has been on this corner of Victory Boulevard since 1964, doing pizza, pasta and veal in a dining area with red sauce on the table and booths along the wall. It opens at 11:30am six days a week and runs to 10pm, later on Friday and Saturday. Sunday it does not open until 4pm. The place also does catering, which is how it has stayed alive.

Mon to Thu, 11:30am to 10pm. Fri and Sat, 11:30am to 11pm. Sun, 4pm to 10pm

Charles Vitello opened this on Tujunga Avenue in 1964 selling sandwiches on bread he baked himself, and it grew into the Italian restaurant Studio City treats as its own. New owners took over in 2005 and added a cocktail lounge upstairs where jazz and cabaret acts play. Downstairs is still red sauce, veal and a waiter who has worked there a long time.

Mon to Wed, noon to 9pm. Thu to Sat, noon to 10pm. Sun, noon to 9pm

A counter-and-booths diner that has been on Main Street long enough that the interior is the reason half the people are there. Eggs, hash browns, pancakes, patty melts, coffee that keeps coming. There is no website and no online ordering. It opens at 6am and it is done at 1:30pm, which makes it a breakfast and early lunch stop, and on a weekend morning there is a line on the sidewalk that moves.

Daily, 6am to 1:30pm

A barbecue counter on Slauson that has been smoking ribs and hot links for South Los Angeles since 1975, with sauce hot enough that the mild is a real choice. You order through a window into a small waiting area and most of the trade is takeout. The sandwiches are heavy and the rib tips come by the pound.

Mon to Thu and Sun, 11am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 10pm

Opened on Third Street in 2008, in the years when the Arts District had almost nothing else. You order sausages at a counter at the front and carry the number to a long communal table in the back under exposed brick. The beer list runs to Belgian and German taps.

Sun to Thu 11:30am to midnight. Fri and Sat 11:30am to 1am

Two brothers from Oaxaca who cooked in Lebanese restaurants put both cuisines on one short menu, so a plate of hummus sits next to a tlayuda and the kebab comes wrapped in a handmade tortilla. It is a small storefront on Forest Avenue with a handful of tables and an order-at-the-counter setup. The name is Zapotec for thank you.

Tue to Sat, 11:30am to 7pm. Closed Sun and Mon

Opened on Broadway in 1977 under the old Bing Wong Hotel, in a space that had been a diner. The slippery shrimp is what everyone orders and the portions are built for sharing. It is a two-part dining space with paper menus and fast service.

Sun to Thu 11:30am to 8:30pm. Fri and Sat 11:30am to 9:30pm

Socorro Herrera and her husband Jaime turned an eight-by-ten-foot shoeshine stand into this on April 1, 1976, cooking the Merida recipes she grew up with. It won a James Beard America's Classics award in 2005. Cochinita pibil is the order; there are also vaporcitos and Yucatan tamales. Socorro died in December 2024 and her daughters Dora and Margie run it now.

Monday to Saturday 11am to 5:30pm. Closed Sunday. The Pasadena location on South Fair Oaks runs to 6:30pm and is about five times the size.

A sushi bar on the Old Town strip with a long sake list and kushiyaki off the grill as well as the usual rolls and sashimi. It splits the day, noon to 2:30pm and then from 5pm, running to 10:30pm on weeknights and 11pm on Friday and Saturday. You can sit at the bar without booking. Valet and street parking.

Mon to Thu, noon to 2:30pm and 5pm to 10:30pm. Fri and Sat, noon to 2:30pm and 5pm to 11pm. Sun, noon to 2:30pm and 4:30pm to 10pm

The Iskenderian family opened their first Los Angeles branch here at Sunset and Normandie in 1984, twenty-two years after the original in Beirut. Rotisserie chicken, shawarma and the garlic sauce the place is known for, ordered at a counter in a mini-mall. It runs to midnight every night.

Daily, 10am to midnight