(Shelby Moore/For The Times)
19 affordable picks from the 101 Best Restaurants in California guide
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Among California’s abundant culinary riches — farm-to-table fine dining, multi-course omakases, iconic roadside diners — there are plenty of affordable options. Gleaned from restaurant critic Bill Addison’s 2025 guide to the 101 Best Restaurants in California, head to any of the 19 picks below for a value-driven meal that’s no less impressive than a tasting-menu feast. From a San Francisco destination for Mission burritos to homestyle Syrian cuisine just outside San Diego, these destinations give you a glimpse into the breadth of California dining without draining the wallet. — Danielle Dorsey
We picked the best restaurants in the state. Here’s where to eat in San Francisco, San Diego, Palm Springs and beyond.
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Mendocino
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Jumbo's Win Win
Mendocino American $
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
In August 2024 Scott Baird left behind his life as a San Francisco cocktail ace to open a restaurant in the wooded thick of Anderson Valley wine country. The premise of the place (Jumbo is a nickname for his younger son) is “roadside burger stand.” Yes, the 120-year-old building with checkered floor tiles summons an old-timey food hall, and the kitchen turns out righteous smashburgers, hand-cut fries and wedge salads with extra-herby dressing. But the purview has quickly deepened. Baird procures whole cows and creates a second weekly menu filled with Mexican flavors, a nod to the contributions of his kitchen team, many of whom are from Michoacán: Plush tacos made from fresh masa might cradle chopped skirt steak or tongue, or beef cheek might be joined by quesadillas de rajas and strawberry-laced tres leches for dessert. Other weeks he cures pastrami for teetering sandwiches or shaves dry-aged prime rib for fresh dips. Seafood-themed nights on weekends have proved popular enough with the locals to become a regular event. That’s the thing about this place: Baird is engaging with the tiny local community, responding to its tastes and creating an affordable hangout for young families, wizened winemakers and those of us passing through. The sense of welcome is palpable, and an ideal match for the honest cooking.
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Greater Sacramento
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Nixtaco
Roseville Mexican $
(Jyotsna Bhamidipati/For The Times)
For years Patricio Wise straddled careers between finance and restaurants. In 2010 the banking business brought him from Monterrey, Mexico, where he and his wife, Cinthia Martinez, owned a steakhouse, to Roseville, a town 18 miles northeast from the center of Sacramento. Six years later, after first dipping back into cooking by selling tacos at farmers markets on weekends, Wise and Martinez opened Nixtaco as their full-time gig. It has grown into a smash — the kind people drive distances for, the rare taqueria for which weekend reservations are smart planning. In the crush of success, Wise has never abandoned what’s most important to him. His team nixtamalizes blue and yellow corn on site, pressing the masa into small, precise discs lined up on planchas. He channels his nostalgia for dishes such as atropellado, a Monterrey specialty of meat simmered with chiles, tomatoes and onions, into a shredded pork belly filling he translates as the “road kill taco.” I stay close to the more traditional takes (a riff on a gobernador with shrimp, bacon and molten Oaxacan cheese; a simple, soulful rajas con crema with corn), though the mix also includes spins on spicy fried chicken tacos and a half-dozen vegan variations, among them fried avocado with pickled onions and chipotle-peanut aioli. The range doesn’t diminish the essential respect shown to the form. In April, Wise and Martinez transformed Cantina Pedregal, their short-lived finer-dining restaurant in nearby Folsom, into a second Nixtaco.
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North Bay, Napa and Sonoma
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El Molino Central
Sonoma Mexican $
(Bill Addison/Los Angeles Times)
A molino is the specific mill used to grind nixtamalized corn into masa, which has been the focus of Karen Taylor’s businesses for decades. In 1991 she started Primavera, a Bay Area wholesale operation built around tamales and tortillas, and a name under which she sells life-giving chilaquiles for breakfast on Saturday mornings at San Francisco’s Ferry Plaza farmers market. Nearly 20 years later she translated what she’s learned about fresh masa into a tiny restaurant in the Boyes Hot Springs section of Sonoma County. With counter ordering and only one table inside, most customers dine on a beautifully tiled covered patio or green picnic tables a few feet away. The casual setting belies the finesse of the cooking, much of it done by chefs long employed by Taylor, many of them women from disparate parts of Mexico. A portion of the menu flows with the seasons: Light-handed sopes filled with chicken tinga and chile rellenos filled with epazote-scented creamed corn arrive in summertime; winter is for butternut squash and caramelized onion enchiladas; and spring brings lamb barbacoa tacos over thick, fragrant tortillas. Among perennials, look for the chicken tamale steamed in banana leaves and covered in chef Zoraida Juarez’s mother’s recipe for mole — hers is the color of red clay, hitting the palate sweet before its many toasted spices and chiles slowly reveal their flavors.
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The Marshall Store
Marin County Seafood $
(Christopher Reynolds/Los Angeles Times)
Late winter or early spring is a superb time to visit the Tomales Bay area in West Marin. Neon-green grass, coaxed out by recent rains, usually covers the surrounding hills, and the temperatures stay mostly in the 50s and 60s. It feels good to bundle up a little here. The bay’s protected status produces some of the state’s finest oysters: medium-small, often with flavors somewhere between briny and buttery. Eat a dozen of them raw, and then a few more of them grilled, looking out on the water at the Marshall Store, a shoreline oyster bar run by some of the same people who operate Tomales Bay Oyster Co. three miles down the highway. Marshall Store isn’t exactly a secret: Any time of year, particularly on weekends, a line to order trails out the door. It moves steadily, giving you time to make decisions before reaching the counter: grilled oysters with barbecue sauce, or garlic butter and bacon, or Rockefeller style? (I like the latter.) Maybe a tri-trip or Dungeness crab sandwich to split, or a smoked trout salad with little gems and avocado? Tables under roadside tents shield you from the sun, but perching on the deck, squinting at the rocking sailboats and breathing salt air between bites, is the real move.
Extra Helpings: Plenty of people will think it’s heresy to recommend Marshall Store over nearby Hog Island Oyster Co. Check out both at lunchtime to decide for yourself, and for dinner hang with the locals at Saltwater Oyster Depot in Inverness.)
Extra Helpings: Plenty of people will think it’s heresy to recommend Marshall Store over nearby Hog Island Oyster Co. Check out both at lunchtime to decide for yourself, and for dinner hang with the locals at Saltwater Oyster Depot in Inverness.)
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San Francisco
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Breadbelly
San Francisco Bakery Coffee $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Clouds of flour, blocks and blocks of butter, all the micro-seasonal fruit: San Francisco is the best bakery city in the United States. The options can overwhelm, but I’ll send you first to Breadbelly. Katherine Campecino-Wong, James Wong, Clement Hsu and their staff craft many detailed delights, both sweet and savory, at their always-busy six-year-old storefront in Richmond. Most of us come, at least on a first visit, for the famous kaya toast. Coconut jam, squiggled over milk bread, has been infused with pandan, turning the color to avocado-green and imprinting flavors of vanilla and toasted rice. Its fame is earned. Stick around, though, for the omelet-filled biscuit sandwich dripping with American cheese and charred scallion chimichurri; the crazily smart riff on an arancino made with sticky rice and stuffed with Chinese sausage and Fontina; and the almond-scented crumb cake baked with boozy Luxardo-style cherries and sour cherry jam. Arriving later in the afternoon to avoid crowds means a whole lot might be sold out … but there will still be kaya toast.
Extra Helpings: Four more S.F. bakery suggestions: Arsicault for the legendary croissants; b. Patisserie for the equally fabled kouign amann; Holy Nata for the custardy Portuguese pasteis de nata; and Baklavastory for peerless pistachio baklava.
Extra Helpings: Four more S.F. bakery suggestions: Arsicault for the legendary croissants; b. Patisserie for the equally fabled kouign amann; Holy Nata for the custardy Portuguese pasteis de nata; and Baklavastory for peerless pistachio baklava.
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La Taqueria
San Francisco Mexican $
(Carolyn Fong/For The Times)
It would be such a score to share with you some arcane, down-a-back-alley-every-other-Thursday revelation about the perfect Misson-style burrito in San Francisco. I attempted that feat for the Chronicle back in 2006, when I ate hundreds of burritos over 10 weeks and documented the quest. After all that, I wound up top-ranking La Taqueria, already the most lauded burrito specialist on the West Coast — which is to say, in the whole world. Nearly 20 years later, Miguel Jara’s frontrunner, where lines have been trailing onto the sidewalk since 1973, remains the place to gauge the landscape. The star order: a carne asada “super” burrito, which famously omits the rice typical to a Bay Area burrito, leaving more room for smoky beef, near-liquid cheese, guacamole, sour cream, pinto beans and additions of salsa fresca and hot sauce. Ask for the burrito dorado, an off-menu request; even sealed in silver foil, it will be crisp after searing on the plancha. Some people will tell you the tacos are even better. I don’t agree, but order away. You’re here to add your own opinion to the grand collective.
Extra Helpings: For nearby comparisons, try the ace Mission-style burritos at Taqueria El Farolito, El Metate and late-night favorite Taqueria Cancún.
Extra Helpings: For nearby comparisons, try the ace Mission-style burritos at Taqueria El Farolito, El Metate and late-night favorite Taqueria Cancún.
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Minnie Bell's Soul Movement
San Francisco Soul Food $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Rosemary. That’s probably the word that comes to mind when you first crunch into Fernay McPherson’s fried chicken. I remember how the herb gave the bird new woodsy-sweet dimension, without overpowering its essential pleasure, when McPherson debuted Minnie Bell’s as a stand at the Emeryville Public Market in 2018. Its flavors are even more finely calibrated at her restaurant relocated to the Fillmore District, a historic Black neighborhood where her family has lived for generations. The short menu weaves in a couple of specials such as oxtails braised with potatoes and carrots or fried fish on Fridays, but the fried chicken commands most of the attention. Sides of custardy mac and cheese, capped with a Parmesan crust, and long-simmered, nicely bitter greens complete a holy trinity of comforting foods. Along with dinner service, Minnie Bell’s is also blessedly open for lunch on Friday and Saturday, instantly making the restaurant a vital new daytime dining option.
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East Bay
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Tacos Mamá Cuca
Hayward Mexican $
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
Maria Márquez began her Sonoran-style taqueria in 2022 from her home in Oakland, pairing the nearly translucent, lard-glossed flour tortillas she’d been making her whole life with meats grilled open-air over mesquite coals by her husband, Juan Carlos Garcìa. Three years later the business evolved to a food truck parked four days a week in a lot along one of Hayward’s main streets, with a comfortable dining tent set up in the far end. Few things in California life are as rewarding as a taco that hits your senses like the current that turns on the stadium lights. San Francisco Chronicle critic Cesar Hernandez led me to the taco Yaquí, a large tortilla folded around smoky chopped carne asada with refritos (flavored with chorizo and chipotle to double the smokiness) and a grilled Anaheim, its stem a curly tail sticking out from the bundle. Melted cheese had sealed the taco, but I pried it open to splat on smooth avocado sauce and roasted-tomato salsa served in a molcajete. Boom. The menu is short: quesadilla, caramelo, chorreada (made with a crackling corn tortilla drizzled with the rendered, toasted lard called asiento); asada, al pastor, chorizo, tripa. For overkill, the “special burrito” is wrapped in bacon and grilled to crispness. It’s probably something you only need to order once, but it’s there for all the TikTok likes should you choose.
Extra Helpings: On the subject of Sonoran-style taquerias, I must shout out Sonoratown, now with several locations across Los Angeles County, which fills its powdery-butter tortillas with cheese-laced guisados for chivichangas and my favorite burrito in the city with grilled steak or, lately, spiced cabeza.
Extra Helpings: On the subject of Sonoran-style taquerias, I must shout out Sonoratown, now with several locations across Los Angeles County, which fills its powdery-butter tortillas with cheese-laced guisados for chivichangas and my favorite burrito in the city with grilled steak or, lately, spiced cabeza.
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Tacos Oscar
Oakland Tacos $
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
The taqueria that Oscar Michel and Jake Weiss run out of a repurposed shipping container isn’t strictly vegetarian, but they devise the most inspired vegetarian and vegan tacos in California. They’re famed for their broccoli taco: hunky florets (I’m grateful it’s actual broccoli and not twiggy broccolini, which I’m so over), which are charred but not acrid, freckled with peanut and chile arbol salsa, zapped with pickled onions and folded into a plush, just-made tortilla using masa from Oakland’s La Finca Tortilleria. It’s awesome. Other creations might involve fried sweet potatoes and queso fresco, or calabacitas anointed with an herby pepita salsa, and recently I had an open-faced quesadilla special with chanterelles and three other mushrooms, bound with molten jack cheese and scented with epazote’s peppery musk. At weekend brunch, even a seemingly basic bean and cheese taco reveals delicious calculations: Creamy Mayocobas plus melted strands of Tillamook cheddar plus roasted jalapeño salsa equals wow. Yes, meatier brainstorms also impress: A tri-pork situation involving bacon, linguiça and polvo de chicharrón with collard greens and black beans comes to mind. But the taco genius low on the food chain is an example that can and should resonate across the state.
Extra Helpings: In the last year The Times’ Food team named some of our favorite meat-free tacos around Los Angeles. Two of mine: Josef Centeno’s wondrous puffy tacos with soyrizo or mushroom birria at Bar Amá; and the “heaven” vegan tacos, particularly the vegan riff on green chorizo, from Alex and Elvia García at Evil Cooks.
Extra Helpings: In the last year The Times’ Food team named some of our favorite meat-free tacos around Los Angeles. Two of mine: Josef Centeno’s wondrous puffy tacos with soyrizo or mushroom birria at Bar Amá; and the “heaven” vegan tacos, particularly the vegan riff on green chorizo, from Alex and Elvia García at Evil Cooks.
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Silicon Valley and South Bay
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Bò Né Phú Yên
San Jose Vietnamese $
(Mariel De La Cruz/For The Times)
San José is home to the largest Vietnamese population in a single city outside Vietnam, and the strip mall enclaves of San José’s Little Saigon rival its Orange County cousin in the variety and specificity of its restaurants. Where to start eating? Wander into the courtyard of Lion Plaza on Tully Road, and look for the “L’amour Dance Studio” sign above the semi-hidden entrance to the complex’s food court. “Bo ne,” says the woman from behind the counter at Bo Ne Phu Yen, less a question and more of a statement. It’s what everyone orders. She hands over a beeper, and when it buzzes you walk up to receive a spitting-hot black-iron plate, with sliced filet mignon, egg, one lightly packed pork meatball and a generous splotch of soft pâté, all hissing and sizzling. I’m so mesmerized by the action, I almost miss that the plate is in the shape of a cow. Use the warm, crackling loaf of French bread to compose ideal bites, interspersed with nibbles of tomato and cucumber. Bo ne is a traditional breakfast, though the stand stays open until mid-afternoon most days.
Extra Helpings: For your next stops in San Jose’s Little Saigon, explore the broader menu — and especially the extra-crisp cha ca la vong — at Thie’n Long, and the spicy noodle soups at Hue Restaurant in the same complex.
Extra Helpings: For your next stops in San Jose’s Little Saigon, explore the broader menu — and especially the extra-crisp cha ca la vong — at Thie’n Long, and the spicy noodle soups at Hue Restaurant in the same complex.
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Central Valley
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Mi Ranchito Cafe
Stockton Mexican $
(Jyotsna Bhamidipati/For The Times)
I asked two L.A.-based food writers, Bill Esparza and my Times colleague Gustavo Arellano, if they had suggestions in California’s vast Central Valley, anywhere between Bakersfield and Sacramento, that might exemplify the region’s Mexican American dining culture. They both independently sent me to Mi Ranchito Cafe in Stockton, which has stood since 1955. Alexandra Reyes’ father bought the restaurant in 1974; she’s been running it since the 1980s. Among combination plates of enchiladas, tacos, chiles rellenos, camarones al mojo de ajo and breakfasts of machaca and eggs in many styles, the dish called “a la chicana” best distills the taste of the place. It’s a local specialty in which strips of beef are sautéed and then simmered with onions and green and red peppers in a light tomato sauce. Polishing off a plate feels good in the soul. To soak up all the sauce, the restaurant makes amazing flour tortillas unlike any I’ve known before: oblong and three times the usual thickness, almost with distinct layers, and marked with griddle patterns like a secret alphabet I’m sure I can decipher if I stare long enough. Dining within the restaurant’s wood-paneled walls and murals of vaqueros on horseback can feel like a time capsule. Locals keep tables and counter seats full, likely realizing the keeper of traditions they have in the place.
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Greater Los Angeles
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Azizam
Silver Lake Persian $
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
The cooking of Iran has historically been a cuisine with distinct expressions inside and outside the home. Family settings often involve dishes that can be exceptionally labor-intensive or stews so nuanced and subtle they defy professional kitchen standardization. In the Los Angeles area, home to the largest Iranian population outside Iran, most Persian restaurant menus are crowd pleasers purposefully designed around fire-singed kebabs, creamy dips and snowdrifts of seasoned rice heaped on platters. Cody Ma and Misha Sesar have poignantly narrowed the divide at the Silver Lake cafe they opened in 2024. The leading light among their concise mix of mazeh (cold small plates), sandwiches and entrees is the kofteh Tabrizi, a giant herbed beef-and-rice meatball steeped in a tomato-based broth electric with Persian dried lime. Your spoon soon finds its sweet, secret heart: a filling of mixed dried fruits and walnuts. Look to turmeric-marinated chicken over rice for sheer comfort. In the several years that Azizam previously ran as a pop-up, Ma and Sesar mined an exploratory streak in their cooking, finding the similarities and differences in their individual families’ regional recipes. I’m hoping as they settle into the restaurant’s early success, we’ll see more intricate khoresht (seasonal stew) specials like a brothy June stunner of lamb neck with apricots.
Extra Helpings: Two other Persian favorites: tiny Taste of Tehran in L.A.’s Tehrangeles neighborhood in Westwood, and Komaaj in San Francisco for northern Iranian specialties.
Extra Helpings: Two other Persian favorites: tiny Taste of Tehran in L.A.’s Tehrangeles neighborhood in Westwood, and Komaaj in San Francisco for northern Iranian specialties.
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Barbacoa Ramirez
Arleta Mexican $
(Shelby Moore/For The Times)
Lamb barbacoa — when cooked properly for hours to buttery-ropy tenderness — is such a painstaking art that most practitioners in Southern California sell it only on the weekends. In the Los Angeles area, conversations around sublime lamb barbacoa should start up in the north San Fernando Valley, at the stand that Gonzalo Ramirez sets up on Saturday and Sunday mornings near the Arleta DMV. You’ll see him and his family wearing red T-shirts that say “Atotonilco El Grande Hidalgo” to honor their hometown in central-eastern Mexico. Ramirez tends and butchers lambs in the Central Valley. The meat slow-cooks in a pit overnight and, cradled in plush made-to-order tortillas, the tacos come in three forms: smoky, molten-textured barbacoa barely hinting of garlic; a pancita variation stained with chiles that goes fast; and incredible moronga, a nubbly, herbaceous sausage made with lamb’s blood. Join the line (if it’s long, someone usually hands out samples to encourage patience) and then find a place at the communal outdoor table. Worried that options might run out, I tend to arrive before 9 a.m., an hour when Ramirez’s rare craftsmanship often inspires a mood where people sit quietly, holding their tacos as something sacred.
Extra Helpings: Two other Los Angeles-area weekend standouts must be mentioned: On Lincoln Heights’ Ave. 26, Josefina Garduño and her family serve spicy consomé bobbing with chickpeas and wisps of meat alongside barbacoa tacos. And in frequent Sunday pop-ups in Boyle Heights, Petra Zavaleta of Barbakush unwraps her Pueblan-style barbacoa from a swaddle of maguey leaves.
Extra Helpings: Two other Los Angeles-area weekend standouts must be mentioned: On Lincoln Heights’ Ave. 26, Josefina Garduño and her family serve spicy consomé bobbing with chickpeas and wisps of meat alongside barbacoa tacos. And in frequent Sunday pop-ups in Boyle Heights, Petra Zavaleta of Barbakush unwraps her Pueblan-style barbacoa from a swaddle of maguey leaves.
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Earle's on Crenshaw
Leimert Park American $
(Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times)
In the infinite ways to define Los Angeles, “hot dog town” is among them. Generations of Angelenos know brothers Cary and Duane Earle, who began selling hot dogs from a cart in 1984 and opened their first stand-alone restaurant in 1992. Several locations later, settled on an iconic stretch of Crenshaw Boulevard, their storefront is not only bedrock for the local Black community but a citywide favorite — including for vegans, with plant-based versions of Earle’s signature hot dogs, burgers and cheese fries. With nearly 20 options for hot dog toppings, it might take several trips to nail down your go-to order. Make mine a classic chili-cheese dog with raw onions. Also, who is that ray of sunshine radiating from behind the counter? The brothers’ mom, Hildred Earle-Brown, who as neighborhood grandmother seems to never forget a face.
Extra helpings: It is equally hard to imagine Los Angeles without another restaurant name-checking the same street, Dulan’s on Crenshaw. When this transplanted Southerner needs fried chicken, oxtails, mac-and-cheese and collards, I head to Greg Dulan’s restaurant, recently and sharply remodeled.
Extra helpings: It is equally hard to imagine Los Angeles without another restaurant name-checking the same street, Dulan’s on Crenshaw. When this transplanted Southerner needs fried chicken, oxtails, mac-and-cheese and collards, I head to Greg Dulan’s restaurant, recently and sharply remodeled.
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Komal
Historic South-Central Mexican $
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(Shelby Moore/For The Times)
Given that Los Angeles is the largest nexus of Mexican culture in the United States, the city has relatively few outlets for superior masa — the kind, made with corn grown on family-run farms, that smells, feels and tastes supercharged. Which is why food obsessives now flock to the molino and food stall in Mercado La Paloma started last year by Fátima Júarez and her husband, Conrado Rivera. Júarez chose corn as her medium when she began working with Gilberto Cetina just across the market at Holbox in 2017. At Komal, she grinds and nixtamalizes corn daily from heirloom varieties procured by import company Tamoa. Her menu, deceptively spare, is mostly a handful of quesadillas and tacos. Unfold a creased blue corn tortilla, bound by melted quesillo, to admire the spray of squash blossoms inside. These three earthen-sweet elements alone contain the world. Two tlacoyos, filled with creamy ayocote beans and covered in pleasantly astringent cactus salad, shows off the almost fudgy denseness of the masa in a thicker form. Weekends bring freshly imagined specials: lamb barbacoa, fried empanada with shrimp, maybe tres leches crowned with a corn cookie. Komal’s identity as a restaurant continues to take shape, but its presence in the community has been immediately thrilling.
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Mae Malai Thai House of Noodles
Los Feliz Thai $
(Shelby Moore/For The Times)
The journey into L.A.’s dense, specialized Thai dining culture begins with a single dish. My bid? Malai Data’s superlative version of boat noodles, a recipe gleaned from her mother-in-law, who’s made the dish professionally in Bangkok for decades. Find her in the shopping complex at Hollywood Boulevard and Western Avenue, in a room with traffic-cone orange walls and a fleet staff of servers. The short menu, including basil-scented egg rolls and respectable pad see ew, is roundly satisfying, but the boat noodles are the irrefutable star attraction. Data’s servings are small and under $10, as is customary: In Bangkok part of the fun is going from stall to stall, tasting each cook’s tweaks. I ask for thin rice noodles (among six options), as the server recommends; pork over beef; and “spicy” rather than “Thai spicy.” At this level, the chile heat races across the taste buds as a big first sensation and then retreats, balancing the broth’s sweetness and vinegary thwack. Spices like star anise and white pepper glint like fireflies at dusk. Green onions and fried crumbles of pork skin rustle against the teeth, and bites of the bowl’s solo pork meatball bounce around the palate. The noodles feel squiggly, and they’re gone quickly, until only the must-sip liquid dregs remain, tingly and the color of black coffee.
Extra Helpings: In L.A.’s Thai Town, Sarintip “Jazz” Singsanong’s Jitlada remains indispensable for a fiery descent into southern immolators like jungle curry with crispy pork. Not quite two blocks away is Amphai Northern Thai Food Club, serving the more herb-fragrant curries and lemongrass-packed sai ua from Chiang Rai, Thailand’s northernmost province. And for another single-dish rec, head to Roasted Duck by Pa Ord for its lacquered-skinned namesake fanned over jade noodles.
Extra Helpings: In L.A.’s Thai Town, Sarintip “Jazz” Singsanong’s Jitlada remains indispensable for a fiery descent into southern immolators like jungle curry with crispy pork. Not quite two blocks away is Amphai Northern Thai Food Club, serving the more herb-fragrant curries and lemongrass-packed sai ua from Chiang Rai, Thailand’s northernmost province. And for another single-dish rec, head to Roasted Duck by Pa Ord for its lacquered-skinned namesake fanned over jade noodles.
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Mariscos Jalisco
Boyle Heights Mexican Seafood $
(Carter Hiyama / For The Times)
To choose one taqueria in the heart of Los Angeles, a city sustained by tacos, to put forth as an uppermost recommendation is daunting. And yet, I know my answer, confirmed by months of eating last year when The Times’ Food team banded together for a project naming the 101 Best Tacos in Los Angeles. For 23 years, Raul Ortega has been parking his shiny lonchera on Olympic Boulevard, serving what has become one of the city’s canonic dishes. His tacos dorados de camarón ensnare a mixture of spiced, minced shrimp with the elegance of a Venus flytrap. The edges of the tortillas sizzle and crisp in the fryer, while the filling cooks to improbable creaminess. Be careful: The first bite is usually lava-hot, even with the cooling relief of sliced avocado and thin red salsa flooding the surface. Reaching ideal temperature, the range of textures pings among the four cardinal directions. I’ve long believed Ortega’s masterpiece is a worthy first-ever meal in Los Angeles. He operates three additional outposts, including a counter restaurant in Pomona and a lonchera on the Westside. If none of them quite reaches the zeniths of the Boyle Heights truck, it still might be the most incredible seafood taco you’ve ever had, and a fast-track pass into the city’s culinary identity.
Extra Helpings: Tacos Los Güichos on West Slauson Avenue serves the al pastor taco I love most in Los Angeles. For breakfast tacos, Macheen in Boyle Heights sets the standard. For melting carne deshebrada folded into impeccable handmade flour tortillas, head to Asadero Chikali in Inglewood near SoFi Stadium.
Extra Helpings: Tacos Los Güichos on West Slauson Avenue serves the al pastor taco I love most in Los Angeles. For breakfast tacos, Macheen in Boyle Heights sets the standard. For melting carne deshebrada folded into impeccable handmade flour tortillas, head to Asadero Chikali in Inglewood near SoFi Stadium.
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San Diego
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Las Cuatro Milpas
San Diego Mexican $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Why the constant line zigzagging out the door of this 92-year-old daytime restaurant in San Diego’s vital Barrio Logan neighborhood? Corn tortillas, rolled with pork or chicken and then fried to order in pork lard. Chorizo con huevo, the contents of its bowl covered in soupy beans and tomato-tinged Spanish rice so dense with flavor your taste buds hardly know how to parse the molecules. Alongside the eggs are folded flour tortillas, casually ethereal in their nexus of powdery, stretchy, dense-light textures. I look around the room to see if everyone is as full of wonder as I am. To locals, it’s just Tuesday at Las Cuatro Milpas. These few dishes have been enough to sustain the institution that Petra and Natividad Estudillo began in 1933. While waiting to place your order, glance down the block at Chicano Park, where highway junctions merge overhead, and imagine how the streetscape would have looked to the Estudillos for their first 30 years in business, before the construction of the I-5 and Coronado Bridge carved through the barrio in the 1960s. Two of their grandchildren, all sisters, continue to run the restaurant. May it never change. They expect you to know your order, taken in front of the open kitchen, to keep the queue moving. Bring cash.
Extra Helpings: Now that you’ve had breakfast, stick around Barrio Logan for far more recently opened dining options, including a lunchtime cheeseburger at Hayes Burger or wittily crafted seafood tacos at Fish Guts.
Extra Helpings: Now that you’ve had breakfast, stick around Barrio Logan for far more recently opened dining options, including a lunchtime cheeseburger at Hayes Burger or wittily crafted seafood tacos at Fish Guts.
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Mal Al Sham
San Diego County Mediterranean $
(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
I’d seen shots of mansaf — flatbread, rice and lamb in spiced yogurt sauce heaped on a platter in earthen layers — while researching Mal Al Sham online, but it wasn’t listed on the restaurant’s Syrian menu. “Yes, we have it,” the server said casually, and she soon returned carrying the dish. Mansaf is often called the national dish of Jordan, although its appeal has endured across the Eastern Mediterranean region for centuries. This one ranks among the best versions I’ve had in restaurants in the United States. Its silken sauce has the crucial ingredient: jameed, dried and reconstituted yogurt that adds a distinct, delicious sharpness. Six-year-old Mal Al Sham resides on the main road through El Cajon, a city with one of the country’s largest Iraqi immigrant and refugee communities. The restaurant honors the population with a weekend special of quzi, another lamb-and-rice dish more peppered with sweet, bright spices (but no yogurt sauce). For a feast, surround these dishes with other regional staples: silky hummus, fattoush tangy with pomegranate molasses, beefy kibbeh in fried or grilled variations and extra-crunchy falafel. For seekers of outstanding Levantine cooking, El Cajon is a worthwhile 20-minute drive from downtown San Diego.
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