Where to get dinner on a Monday night from the 101 Best Restaurants in L.A. guide
There’s something magical about a Monday dinner out. The city hums at a lower volume, offering the chance to walk into some of L.A.’s buzziest restaurants sans reservation and score a spacious booth. You can linger over your food without worrying about turning the table over to another party.
But many restaurants take Monday off and it can be a pain trying to figure out what’s open. To make your search easier, here are 15 options from the most recent 101 Best Restaurants guide by our critic Bill Addison for a delicious start to your week.
— Danielle Dorsey
Bavel
At the table, it means the weightless hummus swirled into a moat filled with duck ’nduja is as wonderful as ever, as are the hulking lamb neck shawarma over laffa and Gergis’ leaf-shaped strawberry pastry balanced with tart sumac and sweet cheese. Anchoring ingredients — market vegetables, grilled prawns, lamb chops both charred and blushing — are canvases for chile pastes, tufts of herbs and deliciously soured dairy in many forms. Some counsel: The dining room, always full, rattles from the extreme decibels. Ask in advance for a patio table for a quieter experience. If you’re into wine, sommeliers can pull you down a rabbit hole of Grecian obscurities and older vintages of all sorts they might have stashed in the back.
Sonoratown
Tsubaki
Between Tsubaki and the couple’s next-door bar, Ototo, Kaplan maintains the most enlightening and thrilling selection of sake on the West Coast. It too changes with the seasons, as brewers release effervescent nama sakes in the spring and fuller-bodied counterparts in the fall. On the plate and in the cup, the duo’s combined sense of experimentation makes the place (and those eating there) feel alive with possibility. Ever wondered where a food critic chooses to celebrate his own birthday? Here’s the answer.
Pizzeria Sei
Pasjoli
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.
Antico Nuovo
Opened in 2019, Antico Nuovo has steadily found its footing and its audience among the crush of fine-dining Italian restaurants in Los Angeles. It might just be the best of them now. Bold or tenuous, each of the pastas stands out with such distinct personalities; they are the meal’s holy center. Begin by swiping crisp, lofty hunks of focaccia through roughly pureed green chickpeas rich in garlic and olive oil, or go lighter with impeccable amberjack crudo. Whether you’re nearly full after spinach and tomato cannelloni, or move on to crisp-skinned roast chicken, or share a massive tomahawk steak in Marsala jus that recalls Colby’s days as Chi Spacca’s founding chef, prioritize dessert. The seasonal ice creams deserve their renown, and the kitchen has lately been fashioning pistachio and chocolate cannolis that rival those I’ve had in Sicily.
Soban
Lasita
Yangban
Everything has changed. During a brief closure in August the Hongs finished making over the restaurant into a clubby room: all coal-black banquettes, rich woods and white cloth light fixtures that resemble friendly, floating ghosts. The renewed format is table service with a structured menu of appetizers, mains and desserts. Many of the Hongs’ original ideas still inform the food. Smoked trout schmear, a favorite from the opening deli case, reappears on wonderfully dense potato bread as a standout appetizer. Matzoh ball rendered to the texture of ricotta fills Korean mandu, set in an almost velvety, triple-strength chicken broth. Rounded out with pickles and black rice, the crackly-sticky chicken wings glazed with garlic and soy make for an exuberant entree, and the buffalo milk soft-serve sundae with pine nut caramel only strengthens the feeling. Now is an ideal time to become acquainted, or reacquainted, with Yangban.
Saffy's
Read the full review of Saffy’s.
Bar Chelou
Read the full review of Bar Chelou.
Holy Basil DTLA
Mariscos Jalisco
Ortega operates three additional outposts, including a counter restaurant in Pomona, with the same menu, and a lonchera on the Westside. If none of them quite reaches the pinnacles of the Boyle Heights truck, it still might be the most amazing seafood taco you’ve ever had, and a fast-track entry into the city’s culinary culture.
Pine & Crane
Crossroads Kitchen
Eat your way across L.A.
Get our weekly Tasting Notes newsletter for reviews, news and more.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.