Plan

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 counter in the strip at Fairfax and Melrose, opening at 6:30am and running to 6pm every day. Espresso, drip and pastries, with a patio out front that people sit on for an hour at a time. It is the longest daily window of any coffee on this stretch of Fairfax.

Daily 6:30am to 6pm

Twenty-three acres of lawn wrapped around asphalt seeps that are still bubbling, with the Lake Pit and its life-size mammoth models at the Wilshire edge. The excavation pits are fenced but visible and people are often working in them. The museum building closed in July 2026 for a two-year rebuild, and the grounds, the Pleistocene Garden and the playground stayed open and free.

Park grounds daily 6am to 10pm. The museum building is closed for renovation until 2028

Twenty-eight acres on the site of the old Pan-Pacific Auditorium, which burned down in 1989 and left the park behind it. Grass, a walking path, a playground and a recreation center, sunk below street level so the traffic on Beverly disappears. The Holocaust Museum LA sits on the north edge of the same lawn.

Recreation center Mon 9am to 7:30pm, Tue to Fri 9am to 9pm, Sat 9am to 6pm, closed Sunday. Park grounds keep longer daylight hours

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

A horseshoe bar under a ceiling papered in paper shamrocks, each one carrying a regular's name, some of them decades old. Tom Bergin opened the business in 1936 and it ran near-continuously at this Fairfax address until 2018, then reopened under new owners in December 2019 with the interior and the shamrocks intact. It is a landmarked building and the bar runs to 1am every night.

Mon to Sat, 4pm to 1am. Sun, 1pm to 1am