Unique Eats and Eateries of Los Angeles fits in your glovebox and sets you up for a year of food exploration
Legacy restaurants capture the soul of a city like few other institutions. Of course, you can appreciate the architecture of a place when you travel or admire its museums of theaters, but it’s those rare historic dining rooms that capture my time-travel imagination more than most other aspects of a visit.
I’ll never forget the amazing collection of antique pipes mounted on the ceiling of Keens Steakhouse in Manhattan or the grand luxury of living like a 1970s casino owner at Michael’s Gourmet Room in Las Vegas or the amazing wall of autographed photos at the Tee Pee in Phoenix where you feel like one of the local celebs might come up and slap you on the back. The best of L.A.’s historic restaurants capture the feeling of personally connecting with the culture of another place or time and I am completely obsessed with them.
Kouraku restaurant in Little TokyoCredit: Photo by Danny Jensen
Danny Jensen’s new book Unique Eats and Eateries of Los Angeles is a glovebox-sized guide to more than eighty special restaurants spread out all over the L.A. county. While most of them have a rich history going back decades (including Saugus Café, as old as the Statue of Liberty!) Jensen includes more contemporary joints that have already captured their place in the city’s heart.
Philippe the Original Credit: Photo by Danny Jensen
Rest assured that the Mount Rushmore of historic L.A. restaurants dating back a century or more, including Philippe, Musso & Frank, the Tam o’Shanter and El Cholo are properly and lovingly fawned over. But also be prepared to see these old favorites in the company of post-Covid pop-ups like Lei’d Cookies and the ever-changing flavors of Downtown’s Smorgasburg. Readers are directed to both the 106-year-old Grand Central Market and a couple miles south to its 21st century descendant, Mercado La Paloma, a warehouse converted into a food hall in 2001.
Chili John’s in BurbankCredit: Photo by Danny Jensen
Jensen’s picks run the gamut from the snug counter at Burbank’s Chili John’s to the supper club chic 1946 Smoke House just down the street. He highlights a mini mall donut shop and a weekend food court outside a Thai temple in the San Fernando Valley. Jensen shows off L.A.’s only floating fish joint, our oldest Japanese, Mexican and Cambodian restaurants, Hollywood’s glamorous Formosa Cafe, and even makes a pit stop at the grand temple of googie, Pann’s coffee shop.
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Formosa Cafe in HollywoodCredit: Photo by Maxim Shapovalov
Keep this new guide in your car and you’ll be set for more than a year of weekend dining adventures. I’ll see you at the counter of Pie ‘n Burger where the new batch of butterscotch pie arrives every Tuesday.
Pastrami sandwich at Canter’s Deli Credit: Photo by Danny Jensen
Danny Jensen will be presenting Unique Eats and Eateries of Los Angeles at the Los Feliz Library on Thursday, October 15, at 6:45 pm as part of the Friends of the Los Feliz library‘s Architecture and Beyond series.