Plan

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

An acre and a half in the southeast corner of the Cal State Northridge campus, started in 1959, holding over 1,200 plant species across California natives, Mediterranean climate beds, cacti and succulents, herbs and an ethnobotanical section, plus four greenhouses. Free to walk into on a weekday. It is small enough to see properly in half an hour, which is the right length for the gap before a curtain.

Mon to Fri, 8:15am to 4:45pm. Closed weekends and university holidays

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

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 Northridge branch of the 1960 Cuban bakery, tucked into the Northridge Fashion Center on the same street as the concert hall. Same potato balls, cheese rolls, guava strudel and café con leche as the older branches, same ticket-number system at the counter. It opens at 6:30am and runs to 8pm every day without exception.

Daily, 6:30am to 8pm

Five acres of Valencia orange trees along Nordhoff Street, planted in the early 1940s when this was farmland and kept when the campus was built around them. Carved paths run through the rows and students use it for picnics. Volunteers pick the fruit for the campus food pantry, more than 153,000 pounds of it since 2009, and biologists use the grove to study bee populations. It is the last working piece of the agricultural Valley on this side of the 405.

Open daylight hours, no gate and no admission

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