Just blocks from the Manhattan Beach pier, Fishing With Dynamite serves a seafood-centric menu with oysters and raw bar platters.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
11 beachside dining destinations from the 101 Best Restaurants guide
Craggy cliffs, foaming waves and pastel sunsets over an endless ocean horizon draw many to pursue their dreams in California. It’s hard not to feel like anything is possible when sitting on our shores soaking up the sun.
This week, the Lifestyle team released a guide to the 50 best beaches from San Diego to Santa Barbara. There are dog-friendly options, an abundance of amenities for those who prefer a more active day on the sand and most of the beaches on the list pass summer water quality tests.
If you’re looking to bookend your beach day with a memorable meal, you’ll want to keep the most recent 101 Best Restaurants guide on hand. On the annual ranked list, Addison highlights several worthwhile restaurants across L.A.’s major beach cities, including Tunisian cuisine in Hermosa Beach, Sinaloan-style tacos in Long Beach, fresh seafood in Manhattan Beach and much more. — Danielle Dorsey
Showing Places
(Katrina Frederick/For The Times)
Barsha
Hermosa Beach $$
In the seemingly infinite multiverses of Los Angeles dining, the galaxy of North African cuisines feels comparatively underrepresented. Chef Lenora Marouani helps fill the void by embracing the flavors of Tunisia she gleans from her husband, Adnen, and his family. The couple run a wine bar and shop in Manhattan Beach; inklings of Tunisia’s sun-baked, headily spiced cooking flicker brightest through the Cal-Med menu at their Hermosa Beach restaurant. Preserved lemon and harissa light up tuna conserva, spread over crusty bread with mashed chickpeas. Lamb meatballs float atop Tunisian couscous (rolled to the size of small ball bearings) in tomato broth with a dollop of herbed labneh. Even buttermilk-soaked fried chicken, available only during Sunday brunch, reveals hints of tabil, the spice blend abundant in coriander and caraway. Star-shaped pendant lamps and genie bottles cast patterned shadows across the dining room in the evenings, setting the mood for a mellow cocktail of three vermouths and sherry called — what else? — A Night in Tunisia.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Birdie G’s
Santa Monica American $$$
Rich matzo ball soup, a stunning relish tray centered around next-level five-onion dip, petrale sole grilled over oak, an avant-garde jellied berry pie: Birdie G’s ever-evolving menu of comfort foods traces Jeremy Fox’s zigzagging roots through Eastern Europe, the American South, the Midwest and California. Fox also oversees the menu at sister restaurant Rustic Canyon; at Birdie G’s the creativity leans more personal and lighthearted. One great example: Pickle Chick, in which Fox seemingly imagines the flavor possibilities of Southern fried chicken crossed with the brine from a jar of kosher dill spears. Among the courses at an early September tasting-menu dinner, dubbed “Smorgasbird” and guided by chefs Matthew Schaler and C.J. Sullivan, was a crab custard spread over a plate in a thin layer and scattered with slices of honey-sweet greengage plums — a savory flan from an alt-universe of never-ending summer.
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(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
Cassia
Santa Monica Vietnamese French $$$
Cassia arrived as a raucous phenomenon in 2015. Its big-bang moment centered on chef Bryant Ng’s genius culinary merging of his Chinese-Singaporean heritage with his wife and business partner Kim Luu-Ng’s Vietnamese background — coupled with the Santa Monica show-palace location backed by Zoe Nathan and Josh Loeb of the Rustic Canyon Family restaurant group. In retrospect, Cassia’s opening was a zenith in the radical decade when dining in Los Angeles became a full-scale cultural event. These days the restaurant has quieted into a comfortable maturity. Not literally quiet — the interior can still reach earsplitting decibels — but steady in its delights of raw-bar dishes radiating garlic and chile, lush and complex laksa, spice-suffused beef rendang and kaya toast with coconut jam and butter. The most mutable part of the experience is sommelier Marianna Caldwell’s wine list. Look for the section labeled “What I’m Drinking Now” for saline Portuguese whites, skin-contact Riesling from the Mosel and pear cider from Normandy that meet the food in its spirit and zest.
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(Ron De Angelis/For The Times)
Crudo e Nudo
Santa Monica Seafood $$
I spent one of my happiest lunchtime meals this year with visiting friends at an umbrella-shaded table on Crudo e Nudo’s sidewalk patio. We started by scanning the seafood-centered menu on the wall of the restaurant’s storefront, a seatless space for counter ordering squeezed into one of Santa Monica’s densest Main Street blocks. Striped bass, bigeye tuna and poached abalone crudos arrived first, anointed in various oils and lit with high-beams of citrus and pickles and anchovy colatura. Salads of snap peas and melon refreshed; wisecrack dishes like “Venus nachos” (potato chips pummeled with crème fraîche and bright orange roe, rather than the opulent black beads) and head-on prawns that slathered our hands with Calabrian chile paste and basil oil kept the mood buoyant. Brian Bornemann, with musician-designer Leena Culhane, began Crudo e Nudo as a 2020 pop-up revolving around sustainably farmed and locally caught fish. Since opening their location in 2021, they’ve strived to create an equitable model for staffers, training people in rotating positions to diffuse divisions between kitchen and service crew and to share tips equally.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Felix
Venice Italian $$$
| 2019 | #49
Evan Funke and Janet Zuccarini’s 6-year-old pasta laboratory may never quite be considered a neighborhood restaurant. It’s pricey, even by Venice standards, and reservations usually book up too far in advance to accommodate a spontaneous outing for a nice corner table and a bowl of tonnarelli cacio e pepe. The place, though, has definitely settled into the community, more dependable than buzzy. Funke is occupied elsewhere these days, opening blockbusters: this year’s multistory Funke in Beverly Hills, last year’s palatial Mother Wolf in Hollywood. Felix, under the leadership of general manager Luciano Mastromarino, has mastered its formula. We keep coming for cocktails resounding with citrus and amaro; the billowing Sicilian focaccia called sfincione; linguine so delicately scented with lemon it’s always the first empty plate; and roasted meats scattered with arugula. Little surprises still enthrall here and there, as when watermelon granita revealed a faint, mysterious spice. “Is that mace?” we asked our server. He shot us a dubious look but then strode toward the kitchen to ask and came back nodding. I’ll steal the idea for my own dessert-making next summer.
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(Dania Maxwell/Los Angeles Times)
Fishing With Dynamite
Manhattan Beach Seafood $$$
Tables at Manhattan Beach’s star seafood bar have been difficult to reserve for the entire decade it’s been in operation. You’re likely booking at 5 p.m. or grabbing barstools by luck. The off-white clapboard gives an impression of New England in high summer, but David LeFevre’s menu has always suggested farther-flung inspirations. Alongside a dozen oysters you might have hamachi sashimi nipped with apple ponzu and shiso, or shrimp ceviche layered over double tostadas with guacamole and cubed mango. Relishing Koshihikari rice porridge speckled with uni, crab and shrimp followed by a Cajun-style seafood boil full of sausage and potatoes seasoned with Old Bay feels organic to the place. If you eat too many fluffy squash rolls or fries swiped through malt vinegar mayo — well? You’re in the prettiest setting for an after-meal stroll. Manhattan Beach is also within reasonable ride-share distance to Inglewood: I burned calories in September screaming “Happy birthday” to Beyoncé at SoFi Stadium.
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(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Tim)
Mélisse
Santa Monica American $$$$
Josiah Citrin’s 14-seat sanctuary quietly saw major personnel changes over the last year. Chef de cuisine Ian Scaramuzza and wine director Matthew Luczy helped shape the haute cuisine tone of Mélisse in 2019 when it became a restaurant-within-a-restaurant sharing space with the larger, eponymous Citrin. Both have departed. Those roles reverted to longtime chef and partner Ken Takayama and to wine director Kaitlyn Harrah, who oversees beverages for both restaurants.
For diners, the transition will feel seamless: The experience remains the very definition of special-occasion dining. Bookended by one-bite sculptures served on gorgeous ceramics to start and finish, two-plus hours float by in a dance of veloutés and nages, uni and lobster, duck press theatrics and ganache tarts fashioned from Valrhona’s line of blond chocolate. Wine pairings aim to impress jaded oenophiles. The cost, beginning at $399 per person, rivals the price of our most opulent omakase counters. Records play on the topnotch stereo system. It was mostly 1970s and ’80s-era R&B during a recent dinner, and caviar just tastes better with Billy Ocean playing in the background.
For diners, the transition will feel seamless: The experience remains the very definition of special-occasion dining. Bookended by one-bite sculptures served on gorgeous ceramics to start and finish, two-plus hours float by in a dance of veloutés and nages, uni and lobster, duck press theatrics and ganache tarts fashioned from Valrhona’s line of blond chocolate. Wine pairings aim to impress jaded oenophiles. The cost, beginning at $399 per person, rivals the price of our most opulent omakase counters. Records play on the topnotch stereo system. It was mostly 1970s and ’80s-era R&B during a recent dinner, and caviar just tastes better with Billy Ocean playing in the background.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Panelas Brazilian Cuisine
Redondo Beach Brazilian $$
Grief over the loss of Natalia Pereira’s downtown restaurant Woodspoon in May sent me on a quest for Brazilian cuisine in Greater Los Angeles, and eventually to the rewards of Marcia Delima and Adriano Bertachini’s cooking in Redondo Beach. Follow the examples of customers ordering at the counter in Portuguese and go heavy on salgadinhos (fried street snacks): wonderfully stretchy pao de queijo, coxinha de frango (croquettes rolled with shredded chicken), flaky beef empanadas and bolinho de bacalhau (cod croquettes) that liven up with a squeeze of lime. Delima and Bertachini excel at Brazil’s iconic meaty stews. Feijoada, beautifully murky with black beans and several cuts of beef and pork, arrives with sides of farofa (toasted, seasoned cassava flour) and finely cut collard greens; stir them directly into the bowl to add dimension and bulk. Carne de panela, slow-cooked to the texture of ropy, melty pot roast, stands complete on its own. For dessert, the bolo de laranja (frosted orange Bundt cake) zings with citrus without sliding into creamsicle territory.
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(Shelby Moore / For The Times)
Pasjoli
Santa Monica French $$$
Dave Beran’s Santa Monica haute bistro opened only six months before March 2020. Its two rooms, after shutdowns and months of sidewalk dining, still gleam like new. While sipping a cocktail made with persimmon puree or walnut milk, take in the hand-painted silk wallpaper depicting flowers swaying in a springtime breeze, the mossy-green velvet fabrics, the mix of marble, shiny woods and red brick. It’s one of the loveliest spaces in Southern California.
During the pandemic, Beran closed his tiny, cerebral tasting-menu restaurant, Dialogue, so he can be spied in Pasjoli’s open kitchen almost every night. As a chef he’s always been a precisionist brainiac, geeking out on laborious technique and symbolist presentations. The autumn season finds orange and brown micro-flora scattered like fall foliage over a buttery crab crêpe, and loamy duck rillettes in a tart shaped like a leaf and surrounded by black-green lettuces.
The food is evolving. Initially the restaurant aimed to re-create canonical Gallic dishes: steak tartare, a trembling onion tart that subbed for soupe a l’oignon, the gory and glamorous pressed duck that was, at first, tableside theater and now is prepared in the kitchen. Now there are dishes like a pork chop in a reduction sauce made from trotters and ham hocks and finished with a hazelnut vinaigrette, or gorgeously seared halibut over yuzu beurre blanc and a tumble of sautéed broccoli, spinach and pine nuts. It comes off as less controlled and more pleasure-centered. French is still the default shorthand for the cooking. “Beranaise” would be more accurate.
During the pandemic, Beran closed his tiny, cerebral tasting-menu restaurant, Dialogue, so he can be spied in Pasjoli’s open kitchen almost every night. As a chef he’s always been a precisionist brainiac, geeking out on laborious technique and symbolist presentations. The autumn season finds orange and brown micro-flora scattered like fall foliage over a buttery crab crêpe, and loamy duck rillettes in a tart shaped like a leaf and surrounded by black-green lettuces.
The food is evolving. Initially the restaurant aimed to re-create canonical Gallic dishes: steak tartare, a trembling onion tart that subbed for soupe a l’oignon, the gory and glamorous pressed duck that was, at first, tableside theater and now is prepared in the kitchen. Now there are dishes like a pork chop in a reduction sauce made from trotters and ham hocks and finished with a hazelnut vinaigrette, or gorgeously seared halibut over yuzu beurre blanc and a tumble of sautéed broccoli, spinach and pine nuts. It comes off as less controlled and more pleasure-centered. French is still the default shorthand for the cooking. “Beranaise” would be more accurate.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Selva
Long Beach Colombian $$
Carlos Jurado, a veteran chef of Los Angeles restaurants including stints at Vespertine and Border Grill, returns to the foods and the town he knew growing up: His parents relocated from Colombia to Long Beach when he was 3, and he started making regular trips to see family in South America when he was a teenager. His dinner menu revolves around smoky meats and soulful sides like grilled arepas filled with corn and queso, braised greens flecked with pork belly, and first-rate smashed and fried plantains served with hogao, an ubiquitous Colombian tomato-onion condiment. Sunday brunch is my favorite meal at Selva for two keystone dishes. Bandeja paisa is a one-platter feast synonymous with Colombia that arrays steak, grilled chorizo or morcilla, extra-crisp hunks of pork belly, plantains, smoky beans, white rice, an arepa, a fried egg and sliced avocado on one monumental platter. As if that isn’t plenty, brunch is also when Jurado makes his joy-ride version of a Colombian hot dog. A link of paprika-stained Colombian chorizo peeks out from beneath charred onions and peppers, crumbled cotija, green chile jam, aioli mixed with ají (mulchy, punchy Colombian salsa verde) and smashed potato chips dusted with chile powder. This is a two-handed, face-planting commitment to polish off, and I never tire of its layered pleasures.
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(Mariah Tauger/Los Angeles Times)
Tacos La Carreta
Long Beach Mexican $
The partner of a food critic, as you might imagine, eats scores of meals out a year. I don’t expect mine to keep track of details, which naturally go fuzzy; it isn’t his job. But his reaction was striking when we drove to the Tacos La Carreta food truck in Long Beach this fall. We ordered a torito — sirloin carne asada grilled over mesquite, roasted Anaheim chile, minced cabbage, thin tomato salsa and melting cheese lightly binding a flour tortilla — and after the first bite he exclaimed, “Oh, this taco!” We’d first tried it in May at L.A. Taco’s annual Taco Madness event and, no surprise, its meaty, balanced brilliance snared an award. Since 2020, José Manuel Morales Bernal has been forging a distinct, umami-blaring taco style from his family’s Sinaloan recipes. The 10-item menu dips into straightforward tacos and quesadillas, but most customers rightly gravitate to the torito and also the chorreada: two corn tortillas buckled and crisped over heat and spread with a bit of rendered fat to amplify the carne asada’s beefiness. Bernal also serves tripe, which melds equally with his glossy avocado and chunky tomato salsas. The steak, though, is unforgettable.
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