The Best Places in Los Angeles

A tiki bar so small it was once a violin-repair shop, which tells you everything about the square footage and nothing about the ambition. Three generations of the same family have been pouring Mai Tais under the thatched canopy on Sunset since the sixties, and they do not serve beer or wine, so don't ask. Modern tiki bars tend to look like this place photoshopped. The original is still doing it straight.

1. Difford's Guide 4.5 stars · Difford's Guide
2. Huckberry The 50 Best Dive Bars in America

Sweet smoke from the grill drifts across a Highland Park parking lot, and the line at this taqueria doesn't move an inch. The queso taco, built on a blue corn masa tortilla and finished with a melted skirt of Monterey Jack, is the reason most people are here. The homemade salsas run from bright to ferociously spicy. A few picnic tables outside, a Bib Gourmand on the record, and tacos that arrive colorful and structurally ambitious.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Los Angeles Times Pierna de pollo queso taco · The 101 Best Tacos in Los Angeles
3. Eater The Best Restaurants in Highland Park

Perched on a cliff above the Pacific in Dana Point, this Waldorf Astoria resort fans out across lush gardens that step down through pools, a sculpture garden, and a Robert Trent Jones Jr. golf course before hitting a private beach club. Six ocean-view restaurants, a full spa, and enough on-property activity to make nearby attractions feel like homework. A Forbes Four Star property where "casual elegance" is less a cliche than an actual operating philosophy.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

Red booths, a Rat Pack haze, and martinis that mean business: A Restaurant is the kind of old-school American steakhouse that Newport Beach keeps expecting someone to replace and never does. Niman Ranch pork chops and Mary's organic chicken anchor the menu alongside the steaks, and the chicken pot pie appears only on Mondays and Fridays, which somehow makes regulars plan their week around it.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Eater The 38 Essential Orange County Restaurants

1. Los Angeles Times The 101 Best Restaurants in California
2. Eater The 38 Essential Orange County Restaurants
3. Los Angeles Times #32 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Emerging Chef · Danielle Duran-Zecca and Alessandro Zecca
2. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: California · Danielle Duran Zecca
3. Eater The Best Restaurants in Highland Park

Bottled sauces on a shelf near the door signal what kind of osteria this is: the food is good enough that people want to bring it home. On Beverly Blvd, Angelini has been around forever by LA standards, which is almost a punchline in a city that abandons its favorites by spring. The service runs old school and warm, and the lengthy Italian menu leans comfortably on what the regulars already know they're ordering.

1. AAA Three Diamonds
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant

1. Bon Appétit The Very Best Bagels in the US (Yes, Outside New York)
2. Eater The Best Restaurants in Highland Park

1. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Chef · Jeremy Fox
2. Time Out #22 · The 40 best restaurants in Los Angeles you need to try right now

1. Los Angeles Times The 101 Best Restaurants in California
2. Eater The 38 Essential Orange County Restaurants

1. Eater The Best New Restaurants in America
2. Esquire The Best New Restaurants in America
3. Eater Best New Restaurant

1. Los Angeles Times #42 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker · Nicole Rucker
3. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Pastry Chef or Baker · Nicole Rucker

Twelve acres of exotic gardens and waterfalls in the foothills of the Santa Monica Mountains make this Four Seasons feel genuinely removed from Los Angeles, even if it's only an hour out. The resort hosts what the collection bills as its largest spa, so the crowd skews toward people who came here specifically to lie down and breathe. Malibu and Santa Barbara are both easy day trips from the driveway.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended
2. The 50 2025 · Most Admired Hotel Group Award

The website is ilovemole.com, which tells you everything about what this Oaxacan restaurant is here to do. The orange façade announces it from blocks away, and inside, the grill station fills the room with the smell of blistering peppers before you've even sat down. The moles, particularly the negro and rojo, are the reason regulars keep coming back. Complimentary chips arrive already drizzled with mole coloradito, so you're committed before you've ordered.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Time Out #39 · The 40 best restaurants in Los Angeles you need to try right now

By day, the butcher counter at Curtis Stone's Hollywood steakhouse moves heritage cuts from partner farms; by night, crystal chandeliers and a fireplace turn the same room into an Art Deco dining room with a Michelin star. The wood-fired grill is the organizing principle, and the dry-aged beef arrives with the confidence of a kitchen that was also selecting the animal earlier that afternoon.

1. World's 101 Best #41 · World's Best Steak Restaurants
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

Ten seats tucked into the back corner of a Costa Mesa shopping mall, which sounds like a punchline until you're actually sitting at the counter. Hana re runs a leisurely omakase that moves through composed dishes and delicate nigiri with the kind of unhurried calm that makes the parking lot outside feel very far away. The sake list gives you something to think about between courses.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Essential Orange County Restaurants

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels
2. Time Out The 17 best hotels in Los Angeles

The honey onyx bar is the same one New York regulars know, transplanted to Beverly Hills and looking very much at home on Camden Drive. This is fine dining, coastal Italian, and the room is styled like a billionaire's yacht without any apparent irony. Homemade pasta is the reason to linger, particularly the fusilli with the red wine-braised octopus that made the Manhattan original famous. The crowd skips dessert at their own peril.

1. Wine Enthusiast Top 50 New Restaurants
2. Eater The Best Beverly Hills Restaurants

1. Los Angeles Times The 101 Best Restaurants in California
2. Time Out #15 · The 40 best restaurants in Los Angeles you need to try right now
3. Los Angeles Times Tacos dorados de camarón · The 101 Best Tacos in Los Angeles

1. The New York Times The Restaurant List
2. Los Angeles Times The 101 Best Restaurants in California
3. Time Out #31 · The 40 best restaurants in Los Angeles you need to try right now

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Four Star

Distressed wood and exposed brick give this intimate Santa Ana sushi counter the feel of a tavern that took a sharp left turn into Japan. Chef Gino Choi runs an omakase where the mood is warm and unhurried, and the courses keep pace with his evident enthusiasm for the form. The Michelin Guide has it listed. Tucked into a quiet stretch of downtown, it draws the kind of crowd that drives past the freeway exits everyone else takes.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Essential Orange County Restaurants

Chef Rocio Camacho has built a mole-focused Mexican restaurant in Bell Gardens around a question most kitchens dodge: why stop at one? The room is spare and unpretentious, the moles are not, running from an ink-dark Oaxaqueño to a spicy-sweet manchamanteles to a bright verde, each layered enough to hold your attention from first bite to last. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, and a James Beard semifinalist.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. James Beard Awards 2023 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: California · Rocio Camacho

Dim sum ordered off a menu rather than flagged down from a cart means everything arrives from the steamer still properly hot, which sounds obvious until you've had the other kind. This Cantonese seafood restaurant in Rosemead holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and draws the kind of crowd that fills large round tables for both weekend dim sum and proper evening dinners. The seafood is the reason to stay through dinner.

1. Chinese Restaurant Awards #6 · Elite 30 Canada
2. James Beard Awards 2022 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: California · Tony Ho

A converted house on Pacific Coast Highway that now does serious work as a steakhouse, with enough rooms and terraces that you could visit four times and sit somewhere different each time. The kitchen leans into butter the way a steakhouse should, and the bar draws regulars who look comfortable enough to have their own tabs. The Michelin Guide lists it among its selected restaurants for the region.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Essential Orange County Restaurants

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

An upstairs omakase spot above Pacific Coast Highway where the fish comes from Japan and the menu follows the seasons like it has somewhere to be. The kaiseki-style progression moves from delicate cold bites through sashimi and nigiri to dessert, each course composed with the kind of precision that makes you slow down mid-bite. Newport Beach casual this is not, but the room is chic without being stiff about it.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Essential Orange County Restaurants

Floors 22 to 26 of a 54-story tower above L.A. Live, which means you wake up with the Staples Center in your sightline and a surprisingly quiet room for being that deep in the downtown buzz. The Ritz-Carlton here is a full-service luxury hotel, with a spa, club lounge, and meeting spaces that draw the corporate retreat crowd as readily as weekending couples looking for a staycation with valet parking.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels
2. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The banquettes are printed with jokes, which tells you something about the mood at this rustic Spanish tapas bar from chef Amar Santana. Sherries and Spanish wines run deep, the bar area is a good-looking place to park yourself, and the kitchen sends out croquetas, paellas, and little grilled sandwiches layered with jamón ibérico and Manchego. Two outdoor patios round out the options when the weather cooperates, which in Costa Mesa it usually does.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Eater The 38 Essential Orange County Restaurants

The Rockwell Group redesigned every room and public space here, steering the W Hollywood from hot-pink maximalism into moody mid-century gold and emerald, with an oculus motif running through the whole thing. It's a full-service hotel sitting on Hollywood and Vine, above the Walk of Fame, with 319 rooms, suites, a rooftop pool bar, and weekly DJ sets and live music keeping the lobby from feeling too grown-up about itself.

1. Forbes Travel Guide Forbes Recommended

1. AAA Four Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. Esquire Dahlia Martini · The Best Martinis in America

1. Esquire Tequila Martini · The Best Martinis in America
2. Eater The Best Beverly Hills Restaurants

1. James Beard Awards 2026 · Nominee · Outstanding Professional in Beverage Service · Jack Benchakul

Burnt terracotta walls and 65 seats keep this Melrose Hill Italian restaurant feeling like someone's well-appointed dinner party. The team does twice-weekly farmers' market runs, so the menu follows the seasons rather than the other way around. The wine list moves through France, Italy, and California without showing off. A James Beard semifinalist nod for Best Chef California in 2025 tracks for a room where regulars rarely bother with the menu.

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Semifinalist · Best Chef: California · Evan Algorri
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Charcoal-grilled satay mushrooms from Long Beach share a menu with Dungeness crab curry and lip-tingling beef nam tok at this small, casual Thai restaurant in Atwater Village. The team behind it built a following on Northern Thai-style sausage packed for pandemic pickup, and the cooking has only gotten looser and more confident since. The New York Times put it on their list of the 25 best restaurants in Los Angeles right now, which for a neighborhood spot with a takeout window is saying something.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles Right Now
2. Los Angeles Times Fifty Under $50
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles

The team behind the Sunset Tower brought this residential-style luxury boutique hotel to West Hollywood, and the neighborhood pedigree shows. It sits at the quieter, leafy edge where the Hills meet Beverly Hills, a world away from the frenzy further east. Expect the kind of considered, old-Hollywood polish that never needed to announce itself. The Michelin Guide awarded it one Key.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

Vegan minibars and a rooftop with Pacific sunsets sum up Hotel Erwin pretty well: a boutique hotel that leans into Venice Beach without taking the bro-surf thing too seriously. It sits steps from the ocean in a neighborhood that has traded most of its beach-bum identity for wine bars and upscale boutiques, while still keeping the bodybuilders. The Michelin Guide has it among their selected hotels in Los Angeles.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels
2. Time Out The 17 best hotels in Los Angeles

An Ethiopian restaurant sitting quietly in the Little Ethiopia stretch of Fairfax, where injera-lined silver platters arrive on the table and a fork is beside the point. The family-run team keeps the room simple and lets the food argue for itself, which it does. The kitfo draws regulars back, and the Michelin Guide gave it a Bib Gourmand. Come with a group large enough to order widely, or you'll spend the meal regretting what you skipped.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Los Angeles Times #86 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles

The rotisserie spit is the organizing principle here: Filipino chicken inasal and pork belly lechon anchor a menu that also runs deep on vegan and gluten-free options, all of it designed to land at a table without a scary bill. Lasita is a natural wine bar tucked into Chinatown's Far East Plaza, and the glowing wine fridge holds Sicilian skin-contact, chilled Spanish reds, and sparkling Portuguese whites. A Monday-night glass or a family dinner both make sense, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

1. Bon Appétit America's Best New Restaurants
2. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles Right Now
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles

1. Time Out #30 · The 40 best restaurants in Los Angeles you need to try right now
2. James Beard Awards 2024 · Semifinalist · Outstanding Hospitality

1. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants

1. AAA Four Diamonds

1. AAA Four Diamonds
2. The New York Times 2021 · Critic's Pick · Restaurant Review

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. AAA Four Diamonds

A former church in Downtown LA, now a contemporary restaurant with an open ceiling that lets the room breathe and the people-watching practically do itself. The crowd comes for small plates and cocktails at the two circular bars or settles into the sofa-stuffed lounge like they own the place. The menu roams globally, though the kitchen keeps one foot planted in the familiar. Loud, beautiful, and a little theatrical.

1. James Beard Awards 2025 · Nominee · Outstanding Professional in Cocktail Service · Tobin Shea
2. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
3. The 50 The 50 Discovery

The birds go in whole and come out deeply browned, every slice carrying crackling skin and a soft layer of fat underneath. This tiny strip-mall Thai restaurant in East Hollywood keeps things focused: duck over rice, duck over thin jade noodles, or duck as the salad. The carcass goes into the pot for a dark broth that becomes duck noodle soup, which regulars treat as a second visit folded into the first.

1. The New York Times The 25 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles Right Now
2. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. AAA Four Diamonds

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. AAA Four Diamonds

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels
2. Time Out The 17 best hotels in Los Angeles

1. Esquire The Best Bars in America

A 1964 concrete hulk at Wilshire and Normandie, the LINE is a hotel that leans into its brutalist bones rather than apologizing for them. The Sydell Group renovation turned 384 art-filled rooms into a Koreatown landmark, and the Hollywood Hills-facing rooms frame the Griffith Observatory and the Hollywood Sign like a painting someone left on your wall. Design-forward guests who find warm neutrals suspicious tend to feel at home here.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Hotels
2. Time Out The 17 best hotels in Los Angeles

Nine rooms, suites, and cottages tucked into a Mediterranean Revival estate in Silver Lake that has, over the years, been a silent-film star's mansion, a girls' school, and a Franciscan convent. The interior designer who eventually bought it had a conventional boutique hotel in mind; the building had other plans. It holds a Michelin Key, and the rooms feel less like accommodations than borrowed sets from a film that never got made.

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. Michelin Guide 1 Key

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Jollof rice finished with herby lamb chops or jerk cauliflower is the kind of menu decision that takes longer than it should. This West African-Californian restaurant in Inglewood grew out of a pandemic pop-up, and the cooking still carries that energy, all sticky honey chicken berbere and root beer-braised short ribs with whipped yams. The room got a modern refresh and the cocktails are genuinely cooling. The Los Angeles Times put it among the best restaurants in California.

1. Los Angeles Times The 101 Best Restaurants in California
2. Los Angeles Times #29 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles

1. Wine Enthusiast Forward 50 Restaurants

1. AAA Three Diamonds

The live-fire hearth in the open kitchen sets the mood at ALTO, a fine dining spot in Studio City built around the flavors of Argentina and Uruguay. The menu runs toward generous, shareable plates, with breads and empanadas opening things up before proteins cooked over fire take center stage. South American wines get their own serious list. The Michelin Guide has it selected, and the Los Angeles Times placed it among the city's 101 best restaurants.

1. Michelin Guide Selected Restaurant
2. Los Angeles Times #55 · The 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles
3. Eater The 38 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

Complimentary Stanley coolers and beach bags packed with towels greet you at check-in, which sets the tone for this 25-room boutique hotel one block from the Balboa Peninsula shore. The rooftop deck looks out over the harbor, and the whole place leans hard into the idea that you came here to do nothing useful. A low-key, sun-faded-in-a-good-way escape for anyone who doesn't need a sprawling resort to feel like they're on vacation.

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

The pink building with green trim on Main Street signals something a little different, and the floral wallpaper and mismatched furniture inside confirm it. Cobi's is a lively, affordable Southeast Asian restaurant running Thai, Malaysian, and beyond on one broad menu. The Michelin Bib Gourmand crowd tends to look pleased about the curry puffs, the wood-grilled mains, and the fact that dinner here rarely requires a difficult conversation about the bill.

1. Michelin Guide Bib Gourmand
2. Los Angeles Times Fifty Under $50

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds

1. AAA Three Diamonds