In the Where to Eat: 25 Best series, we’re highlighting our favorites restaurants in cities across the United States. These lists will be updated as restaurants close and open, and as we find new gems to recommend. As always, we pay for all of our meals and don’t accept free items.
Anajak Thai
Thai
This family-run Thai restaurant in Sherman Oaks has a superpower: shape-shifting. Tuesdays are for Thai-inspired tacos and tostadas, which make sense the second you taste them, or for cheffy, one-off collaborations, while the last weekend of each month means it’s time for Justin Pichetrungsi’s freestyle tasting menu. But what some might consider the ordinary days in between are a joy, too, with dishes like the mouthwatering fish custard haw mok or Southern Thai fried chicken. That’s when the restaurant plays the part of neighborhood gem and you can see all the loving updates that Mr. Pichetrungsi made after he took over from his parents and bulked up the wine program.
14704 Ventura Boulevard, Sherman Oaks; 818-501-4201; anajakthai.com
Italian country cooking is an endlessly replicated genre in Southern California, but a visit to Chad Colby’s open kitchen and glowing, grown-up dining room is an energizing reminder of how irresistible it can be when handled with focus and skill. Go for the slightly esoteric, perfectly made pastas, like dimpled foglie d’ulivo, perky malloreddus and slippery, thin-skinned plin dell’ alta langa, but don’t let it be at the expense of the olive oil-soaked focaccia, the beans baked with bread over a wood fire or the intensely flavored ice creams.
4653 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles; 323-510-3093; anticonuovo-la.com
Bavel
North African, Middle Eastern
Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis built their reputations on rigorous Italian fare at their downtown ace Bestia, but this is the restaurant that showed us what they could really do. Bavel is a roaring, pleasure-driven powerhouse of North African and Middle Eastern cooking, and even dishes that were on its opening menu five years ago, like the laminated strips of malawach with crème fraîche and strawberry zhoug, feel fresh, fundamental and totally uninhibited.
500 Mateo Street No. 102, Los Angeles; 213-232-4966; baveldtla.com
Birdie G’s
Jewish, New American
The steaks at Birdie G’s may be impeccable, but some of the restaurant’s most exciting maneuvers are often vegetarian, or almost vegetarian, or entirely vegan. (The chef, Jeremy Fox, did write a cookbook called “On Vegetables,”…
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