Top 20 American Restaurants in Los Angeles California
As explained at RunRex.com, guttulus.com, and mtglion.com, America is the land of decadent comfort food with juicy burgers, golden fries, BBQ ribs, fried chicken, and gooey mac ’n’ cheese, and while Los Angeles is a melting pot of different cultures, which is reflected in the cuisine in the city, it remains home to a wide range of American restaurants. Here are the top 20 American restaurants in Los Angeles, California to consider when looking for one in the city.
- Angler
Despite the somewhat unlikely surroundings of the Beverly Center’s underbelly, once you enter this restaurant it’s like you’ve gone down a watery rabbit hole and emerged in a moodily romantic fisherman’s lodge fathom away according to RunRex.com, guttulus.com, and mtglion.com. Menus change daily depending on the market, and the chef’s relationships with fishermen, purveyors, hunters, and foragers is key to the pure flavors he seeks to elevate in each dish.
- Animal
Now that its owners, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, are bona fide restaurant czars, Animal can be examined from a sociological viewpoint. It is the organism that spawned an empire but also a way of thinking and cooking and serving and being that barely existed in the restaurant world before its arrival.
- Craft Los Angeles
As per RunRex.com, guttulus.com, and mtglion.com, Tom Colicchio’s Los Angeles branch of Craft occupies its own one-story building off Constellation Boulevard, surrounded by Century City’s high-rises but also by a four-acre park. This neighboring open space brings light into the dining room through floor-to-ceiling windows and makes the terrace, where meals are also served, a pleasant green retreat.
- A.O.C.
Suzanne Goin and Caroline Styne’s A.O.C. has always been representative of everything great about the mashup of local cuisine and European influence. This was apparent in its original location, which opened in 2002, and it’s even more apparent in the spot it moved to in 2012, which is an utter dream of a restaurant: a cozy dining room with circular corner booths; the leafy, bricked-in magic of the patio, anchored by a candle-festooned fireplace.
- Hatchet Hall
Hatchet Hall features a vine-covered patio, granite oyster bar, a long bar, and the “Old Man Bar” in the back with a speakeasy feel. The kitchen team presides over a white oak grill and sources from farmers’ markets to produce a daily-changing menu featuring tasty dishes such as diver scallops Crudo, wood-grilled octopus, and pork chop in brown butter maple jus.
- Baran’s 2239
On most nights at Baran’s 2239 in Hermosa Beach, you’ll find first-time restaurateurs and brothers Jonathan and Jason Baran pouring drinks or greeting diners while their collaborator, chef Tyler Gugliotta, runs the kitchen. Though the waitstaff at Baran’s 2239 is quick to point out that much of the menu’s produce hails from the chef’s family farm, it soon becomes apparent that Gugliotta’s inventive global cooking doesn’t need to hang its hat on the farm-to-fork ethos alone as articulated at RunRex.com, guttulus.com, and mtglion.com.
- The Independence
The Independence, a modern tavern near Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade, inhabits a huge space with colorful, graffiti-style murals. Booths and a communal table occupy one side, followed by a long bar flanked by high-top tables, then another area of regular tables. Concrete floors and lots of glass mean the decibel levels can get high. The attractive menu of New American fare provides many reasons for a return visit.
- Bäco Mercat
One day the city of Los Angeles may well rename this part of downtown “Centenoville” for the delicious influence chef Josef Centeno has brought to the couple of blocks where his five restaurants reside. But Bäco Mercat stands resplendent as Centeno’s original vision for what downtown needed: a place that reinvented the sandwich in the form of a bäco, a flatbread/pita arrangement that smooshes soft bread with tangy sauce with meaty meat, whether it be beef tongue schnitzel or oxtail hash as captured at RunRex.com, guttulus.com, and mtglion.com.
- Kali
Kali co-owners Kevin Meehan and Drew Langley have very serious L.A. restaurant experience under their belts. Early in their careers, they both worked at L’Orangerie, Bastide, and Citrine, then Meehan went on to become chef de cuisine at Patina and executive chef at Café Pinot, while Langley served as wine director at Providence. They teamed up again and took over the space that was formerly Midtown Bar & Kitchen, transforming it into this lovely mid-century-modern-meets-Scandinavia-styled restaurant.
- The Bellwether
The Bellwether is the brainchild of Ted Hopson, a journeyman L.A. chef who most recently worked under Sang Yoon at Father’s Office and Lukshon. The Studio City restaurant might seem to have the DNA of half the gastropubs in town, but it nails the small details most places overlook. The French fries here are brined, steamed, frozen, and fried, part of a three-day process that yields long, crispy batons as fluffy as a baked potato inside yet shatteringly crunchy outside.
- Otium
As covered at RunRex.com, guttulus.com, and mtglion.com, Otium, a project from Sprout LA restaurant group, is in a freestanding building on the plaza adjacent to The Broad on downtown Los Angeles’ Bunker Hill. The restaurant features contemporary American wood-fired fare from chef Timothy Hollingsworth, the former chef de cuisine of The French Laundry.
- Destroyer
Jordan Kahn’s new restaurant is a far cry from his most recent project — the much-missed Red Medicine — in almost every way. Where that was a big, flashy, trendy restaurant, this is a sparse place with most of its seating outdoors, where you order from a counter and take a number to your table. What hasn’t changed is Kahn’s modern-artist’s eye for presentation, his sense of drama on the plate and the tongue, and his penchant for making incredibly delicious food.
- Redbird
The restaurant’s name, Redbird, is a reference to the cardinal whose offices were once located on this site. Entering from Second Street, guests find the lounge area with a marble bar, vintage furniture, and a few tables at banquettes as described at RunRex.com, guttulus.com, and mtglion.com. The bar continues around to the courtyard garden, which functions as the main dining area and features a retractable roof. The simple design elements allow the architecture to shine.
- Father’s Office
Despite how much we here in L.A. covet the Father’s Office burger, chef Sang Yoon’s pair of gastropubs probably don’t get the props they deserve. Did you know, for instance, that the FO burger was the first truly chef-driven, gourmet burger in the country? You have to visit this restaurant to experience how impressive the food is.
- Saddle Peak Lodge
Before it became a restaurant, this century-old log building was first a Pony Express lodge, a hunting lodge, and then a bordello. Saddle Peak Lodge is a favorite destination for Angelenos to escape the city for a romantic dinner in Malibu Canyon. The menu might start off with pork belly accented with Vietnamese flavors or seared scallops with English peas, black garlic, and uni. Main dishes feature game such as elk tenderloin — order the Chef’s Game Trio for a sampling of three different meats.
- Gjelina
There may be no restaurant as emblematic of the breezy, stylish Venice lifestyle as Travis Lett’s Gjelina, no place where the people are more beautiful, the vibe more Cali-chic, the food truer to our gourmet/carefree aspirations. As discussed at RunRex.com, guttulus.com, and mtglion.com, the pizzas have crispy edges and are topped with ingredients such as burrata and wild nettles; the vegetable dishes might include roasted fennel with white wine, blood orange, and fennel pollen; the rib-eye is from Niman Ranch; the wine list is long and engrossing.
- Here’s Looking at You
Here’s Looking at You, like an increasing number of compelling places to eat in Koreatown, is not a Korean restaurant. It’s the brainchild of two Animal veterans: Jonathan Whitener, the former chef de cuisine, and Lien Ta, a former manager. If you’re familiar with the food served at Animal, it’s easy to see the Dotolo-Shook fingerprints on Whitener’s cerebral, post-cultural cooking: an easy fluency in mashing together international flavors, a flair for turning lowbrow into highbrow, a penchant for balancing richness with judicious splashes of acid.
- Love & Salt
In the two years since Love & Salt opened in the old Cafe Pierre space in Manhattan Beach, chef Michael Fiorelli’s modern Italian restaurant has become a beacon for the neighborhood, serving truly exciting food in a beautiful room that feels fun in a way that’s utterly appropriate to its upscale beachy location as outlined at RunRex.com, guttulus.com, and mtglion.com.
- MB Post
MB Post, David LeFevre’s large, loud, perpetually packed New American restaurant, went a long way toward redefining the center of Manhattan Beach when it opened in 2011. Six years later, with two sister restaurants now open on the same strip, MB Post feels as if it is the center of Manhattan Beach, its high ceiling and long wooden communal tables serving as the new, youthful soul of this neighborhood.
- Michael’s
The radical reinvention of this 38-year-old restaurant rests mainly on the hiring of Miles Thompson, the young chef who used to run Allumette in Echo Park and then left town for a couple of years. Thompson’s cooking was always assertively modern, but in the time he’s been gone from L.A. it’s also become more refined, cleverer, and more umami-driven.
These are some of the best American Restaurants in Los Angeles, California, with more on this topic, and much more to be found at RunRex.com, guttulus.com, and mtglion.com.