Top Restaurants In LA

"San Francisco's reputation is as the only center of civilized eating west of the Mississippi. Now, Los Angeles is putting up a stiff challenge for the honors..." --From The Great Restaurants of America, published 1960

I'll say!

Back then, the sort of civilized eating this virtually prehistoric guidebook was talking about meant Haute Continental, the sort of food that elegantly dressed swells ate at places like Chasen's, Perino's and Scandia in Los Angeles, and the Blue Fox and Ernie's in San Francisco.

But these days, what began as the chrysalis of a possibility in the late Seventies and early Eighties, at places like Michael's, Trumps and Valentino, has blossomed into a butterfly of awesome proportions.

In fact, in an age of selective memory lapses, many in the inner sanctums of obsessive foodiedom have no doubt forgotten what things used to be like, just a few years ago. Allow me a moment to jog your collective memories for a moment: Until about a decade ago, the way things used to be was that people in Los Angeles would fly up to San Francisco for a good weekend of wining and dining, and no one in San Francisco would ever consider an act as wholly ludicrous as flying to LA to eat -- what, after all, was the point? Why would one possibly journey from the land of Chez Panisse, Narsai's and the Tadich Grill to this vale of aging celebrity hangouts.

Cuisine in Los Angeles, like a dust beetle trapped in amber, was a thing stuck in time. Thanks to the Biz, restaurants remained places to be seen; the food was besides the point. And for New Yorkers, forced by the vicissitudes of industry to briefly give up their reservations at Lutece, the Four Seasons and La Cote Basque, the idea of eating in the Big Orange was wholly beneath contempt. Many would carry all their meals with them, bagsful of provisions from the Carnegie Deli and Zabar's, a small taste of manna brought to the wilderness.

Then, in the late Seventies and early Eighties, something (in the words of Joseph Heller) happened. There was a period of sudden and cataclysmic restaurant growth in Los Angeles, leaving the starved denizens feeling like kids set loose in a toy shop, or perhaps more appropriately, like a sailor with a three-day pass in Storyville. Suddenly, the names on every lip were Ma Maison, Michael's, Spago, Chinois on Main, St. Estephe, Trumps, the Ivy, Valentino, Primi, La Toque, City and the Parkway Grill. Suddenly, we were in the age of the Foodie Ethic, which is important to define to understand where we are today.