I eat out a lot. Probably more than I should. And living in Los Angeles means there's never a shortage of new places to try — the city runs on openings. Every week there's a new spot in Silver Lake with a James Beard nominee behind the line, or a tasting menu in Arts District that costs more than my car payment, or a pop-up in a parking lot that Eater wrote about and now has a two-hour wait.
I've been to a lot of these places. Some of them are great. Most of them are fine. Almost none of them are places I'd go back to.
Going back is the thing. Anyone can have a good meal once. The question is whether you want to sit in that room again, eat that food again, be treated that way again. Whether the experience holds up when the novelty wears off.
Here are three places in LA that I keep going back to. None of them are new. None of them are trendy. None of them will get you likes if you post about them. They're just good.
Takao
Takao is a Japanese restaurant on San Vicente in Brentwood. It's been there since the nineties, and it looks like it. The decor hasn't been updated. The lighting is low. The tables are close together but not uncomfortably so. There's a small sushi bar where the same chef has been working for longer than I've been alive.
I come here for the simplicity of it. The fish is excellent — not because it's flown in from Tsukiji or presented with tweezers on a ceramic slab, but because the chef knows what he's doing and the fish is fresh. The yellowtail sashimi is clean. The salmon skin roll is crispy. The miso soup tastes like someone's grandmother made it, which in a city full of overly conceptual Japanese food is worth more than people realize.
But the real reason I keep coming back is the pace. Nobody rushes you. Nobody asks if you're "still working on that." The meal takes exactly as long as it takes, and the check comes when you ask for it. In a city where every restaurant seems designed to turn tables, Takao feels like it was designed for people who want to sit down and eat.
I bring people here when I want to have an actual conversation. The noise level allows it. The food doesn't demand your attention — it just rewards it when you give it.
Lunetta
Lunetta is on Wilshire in Santa Monica, in a stretch of storefronts that you'd drive past without noticing. It doesn't look like much from the outside. Inside, it's warm — exposed brick, wood tables, candles that are actually lit and not just decorative.
The food is California Italian in the way that phrase used to mean something — simple preparations, good ingredients, nothing trying too hard. The burrata is the best I've had in LA, and I don't say that lightly. The pasta is made in-house, and you can tell because it has that slightly rough texture that commercial pasta never has. The short rib is braised until it gives up.
What I like about Lunetta is that it's a neighborhood restaurant that takes the food seriously without being serious about it. The servers know the menu well enough to have opinions. The wine list is short and thoughtful. The portions are generous enough that you don't leave doing math about what you just spent.
I've been going here for a couple of years, and the consistency is what keeps me coming back. The burrata was perfect the first time I had it. It was perfect last week. That sounds obvious, but in LA, where kitchens turn over staff every few months and quality fluctuates with whoever's on the line, consistency is a rare and undervalued thing.
Jitlada
Jitlada is a Thai restaurant on Sunset in East Hollywood. It's been written about extensively, so I'm not breaking any news. But I'm including it because it's the one restaurant in LA where I think the food is genuinely better than you'll find anywhere else in the country, and possibly the continent.
The space is chaotic. The walls are covered in celebrity photos and newspaper clippings. The tables have plastic tablecloths. The menu is a hundred pages long and organized in a way that makes sense to no one. You will be overwhelmed. This is correct.
What you order matters. The southern Thai dishes are the point — the crying tiger beef, the morning glory, the curries that are built on a foundation of shrimp paste and bird's eye chili that will rearrange your understanding of what Thai food can be. This is not pad thai territory. This is food that comes from a specific place and a specific tradition, cooked by people who are not interested in making it approachable for you.
The heat is real. If they ask you what spice level you want, know that their "medium" is most restaurants' "we need to call someone." I say this with admiration. The first time I went, I ordered a curry at a three out of five and spent the next thirty minutes in a state that I can only describe as beautiful suffering. The flavors underneath the heat were extraordinary — coconut, lemongrass, galangal, something fermented and funky that I still can't identify.
I've taken people to Jitlada who didn't like Thai food and watched them change their minds by the second dish. That's rare. Most restaurants confirm what you already know about your preferences. Jitlada expands them.
The common thread
These three places have nothing in common aesthetically. Takao is quiet and minimal. Lunetta is warm and candlelit. Jitlada is loud and covered in memorabilia. The food spans three continents. The price points are all different.
But they share something that I think is the only thing that matters in a restaurant: they're honest. The food is what it is. The space is what it is. Nobody's performing for you. Nobody's trying to create an "experience" or a "concept." They're just cooking food that they care about, in a room that they've been in for a long time, and serving it to people who want to eat it.
That's all I want from a restaurant. And it's harder to find than it should be.