Things are looking up, L.A.

Unpacking the new frontier in dining, plus MEHKO moves + the dish giving Dunsmoor’s cornbread a run for its money

For the first two weeks of January, The Angel is free. After that, most of our reporting will be behind a paywall.

Hello, angels!

I’m Jamie, and I’ll be keeping the L.A. wheels turning in Emily’s stead—big shoes to fill, but I’m hoping to provide the same mix of reporting-led, narrative-driven stories you’ve come to know and love, with a few twists of my own. I want to start my first dispatch with a quick look at the state of the L.A. restaurant industry as it currently stands, and a few of my hopes for what the new year will bring.

Sorry to start on a bummer note, but December 31st marked the end of (another) no good, very bad year for L.A. restaurants. Wildfires, immigration raids, tariffs, fewer tourists, and the lingering effects of both the pandemic and the Hollywood strikes were the biggest culprits, to say nothing of the constant sense of exhaustion that accompanies these endless proclamations of doom.

But! In the last year, there were glimmers of hope in an uptick of what I would loosely categorize as more personal, more independent, more intentional—and intentionally left-of-center—restaurant openings. From the risqué tasting menus at Baby Bistro, to the genre-blurring izakaya-esque menu at Doto, to the unlikely union of British and California cuisines at Wilde’s, to the delightfully gonzo feel of everything at Café 2001, more restaurants than ever were willing to get out there and take some risks.

I, as a diner deeply disinterested in most of the big-budget, low-soul brand extensions that are as much a part of the L.A. food scene as our late-night taco stands, am extremely here for it. In 2026, I say, bring on the cuisines we don’t get to see much of (hello, Kurrypinch Modern Sri Lankan!), or at least put your own highly personalized spin on ones we do (i.e., Restaurant Ki and its high-concept Korean). Pack an oversized dose of character into a teeny-tiny space (Chainsaw, we’re looking at you). Don’t be afraid to push wines traditionally considered “uncool” (Stir Crazy does this with panache), or to make zero-proof cocktails with all the verve and complexity of their alcoholic counterparts (thank you, Kato).

I know it’s hard, almost impossibly so, to make it work. But L.A. is still, even with all of its challenges, the city with the most creative chefs in the country, with access to the best possible raw materials, and a dining public unusually receptive to new ideas. So have fun. Get weird. Build restaurants with a singular vision, and diners will respond in kind.

When I lived in Los Feliz, I was often frustrated by the lack of actually-good restaurants on the neighborhood’s two main arteries, Hillhurst and Vermont Aves. I now live a few minutes away in Silver Lake, but I am delighted to see the old ‘hood get some fresh blood, with the aforementioned white-hot Wilde’s (and their newly-debuted lunch menu) and Vandell (creative cocktails—yes, full-on cocktails!—and proper bar food in the former Nossa space) on Hillhurst; Old Gold Tomato Pie around the corner on Hollywood for airy focaccia-style pizza by the slice and surprisingly good seasonal salads; and the arrival of Brooklyn favorite Kettl just down the street for all things matcha. There are a few empty storefronts nearby; I am optimistic about the future.

Over in Mar Vista, Beethoven Market, one of the Westside’s hottest openings of the last year, is asking diners to share a note of support about what the restaurant means to them. A few weeks ago, the business was unceremoniously stripped of its liquor license, seemingly at the behest of a handful of irate neighbors. Eater added more color yesterday. We spoke to owner and friend-of-the-Angel Jeremy Adler about the many, many administrative hoops he had to jump through to obtain said license before the restaurant opened, and he is currently working with the city and legal counsel to figure out next steps. In the meantime, the restaurant is fully up and running (minus the alcohol), and when I stopped by this week, the handsome dining room was humming along with families enjoying their rotisserie chicken and wood-fired pizzas. If you’ve been wanting to go, now is the time—Beethoven Market can use all the support it can get.

I do not drink deeply of the Houston’s/Hillstone Kool-Aid, but their model (upmarket American food with a few global flourishes; classy-casual/steakhouse-adjacent aesthetic; top-notch service) continues to inspire. A few weeks ago, the seemingly unstoppable force that is Last Word Hospitality (Found Oyster, Queen’s, Rasarumah, et al.) opened Hermon’s in the tiny South Pasadena/Highland Park-adjacent neighborhood of the same name. On a recent visit, it felt Houston’s-inspired in the best possible way, with chef DK Kolender turning out dishes that feel familiar yet still interesting (vongole with two flat lasagna sheets in lieu of spaghetti; beef tartare shot through with salsa macha and goji berries), in a room that’s all comfy leather booths, warm lighting, and dark wood furnishings. In less practiced hands, this is exactly the kind of operation that can feel cliché; here, it’s surprisingly dialed-in, with thoughtful touches (mini martinis for light drinkers) and charm aplenty. It hit in a way that Super Peach, Momofuku’s similarly Houston’s-coded new offering in the Century City Mall, did not for me.

One of the more intriguing (and very anything-is-possible-in-this-town-feeling) developments in recent history is the rise of the restaurant-inside-of-someone’s-house phenomenon. Last week, designer-musician couple Sydney Wayser and Isaac Watters opened Granada on the ground floor and backyard of their tastefully appointed Angelino Heights home, with coffee from Concierge and pastries by local favorite Sasha Piligan. “We love that small-world, old-school community feeling of being able to walk up a neighbor’s driveway and hang in their backyard,” Wayser says.

For the last few months, chef and baker Dave Wilcox—formerly of Hail Mary and Gjelina—has been selling excellent dark-bake, naturally leavened, whole grain European-style breads under the name Two Rose on Fridays and Saturdays out of Proof Bakery in Atwater Village (I’m partial to his barley-and-oat porridge loaf). But in a few weeks, he’ll be expanding Two Rose to a four-day-a-week operation out of his backyard in East Hollywood, offering breads, prepared toasts, “really cheap” coffee, and monthly pizza dinners. (Loaves will still be available at Proof as well.) “The world is a crazy place right now,” says Wilcox. “I want people to come hang, put down their cell phones, and have a conversation.”

They are following in the footsteps of dozens of other home kitchen businesses, all made possible by L.A. County’s adoption of the MEHKO (Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation) ordinance. Designed to assist aspiring food entrepreneurs, the program began in Riverside County in 2019 and expanded into LA in 2024, a development Meghan McCarron reported on in more detail for The New York Times when it occurred. (An added benefit for Angelenos since the act was conceived: street vendors can now apply to use their home kitchens as commissaries, making an easier pathway for legal street food.)

I’m curious to see where this goes. Some of these permit holders will likely use it as a stepping stone to an eventual brick-and-mortar, but others, like Granada and Two Rose, seem to be more in it to operate in a flexible fashion, make a little extra money, and foster a sense of community—and it’s hard not to root for more of that.

There’s a new cornbread in town.

Pork chop at Betsy Altadena
A juicy, enormous chop from Klingeman Family Farms in Washington, wood-fired then fanned out across a pool of tangy Carolina-style vinegar sauce and aggressively charred winter vegetables: this is a showstopper of a dish that perhaps best encapsulates what Tyler Wells’ open-fire community restaurant is all about.

Tom yum risotto with spiny lobster at Holy Basil Santa Monica
Deau Arpapornnopparat and Joy Yuon are flexing their fine-dining skills in their new Westside location. This rich, fragrant dish—made with jasmine rice and lobster stock, topped with half-roasted cherry tomatoes and whole crustaceans—proves that fusion cuisine can be a beautiful thing.

Masa cake at Little Fish Melrose Hill
There’s so much to love at Anna Sonenshein and Niki Vahle’s new full-on restaurant; much of it, as its name implies, of the seafood variety, but the sleeper hit is this dessert, made with Masienda red masa. Light and airy, served warm in a skillet topped with sour cream ice cream, honey, and lime zest, it gives Dunsmoor’s cornbread a run for its money.

To mark the one-year anniversary of the Eaton and Palisades fires, Eater interviews several impacted restaurants about their losses and rebuilding efforts. A tough but necessary read. [Eater]

Evan Kleiman remembers Christine Moore of Little Flower Baking, “the mom you wish you had.” [KCRW's Good Food]

Following the announcement of Horses’ sudden closure (for now), staffer Charlotte Lansbury has started a fundraiser to be evenly distributed among all FOH & BOH employees. [GoFundMe]

Sqirl says they are (really, truly, after many delays) launching dinner in Feb. [Sqirl]

And finally, a deep dive into the history of The Red Lion, “a Black Forest fairy tale out at the unfashionable end of Glendale Boulevard.” [KCRW]