LA Food Guide

I havent lived in la in 7 years but as a frequent visitor these are/were my frequents. Some have closed since I first started this project in 2018 but this isn't exactly a food guide or anything like that, more of a food Journal.

Map of Restaurants

A. Los Angeles Regional Food Bank

1734 E 41st St, Los Angeles, CA 90058

This food related establishment might not be a restaurant per se but if you only visit one place on Conway's Corner this is the place. After working up an appetite you can visit any other place on the list and have a guilt free meal knowing you did something positive!
Visit here to sign up
Parking: Enter from the 41st st entrance
Recommendations: If you want a lifting workout carry the sorted boxes to the weighing station
How I found this place: I was looking for a place where I could volunteer with some high school friends to catch up

B. In-N-Out Burger

420 N Santa Anita Ave, Arcadia, CA 91006

The most LA food is innout. Just like how bagels are new york, deep dish is chicago, bojangles is the south, or broccoli on pizza is SF, innout started right in LA's suburbs in Baldwin park and as a result you won't have any trouble finding one closeby. This one is the closest to my home so it's my go-to but any innout will do
Parking: Every innout has a drive through(besides the unholy sf one) and anything ranging from a few tables outside to a fully indoor seating area.
Recommendations: double double animal style whole grilled onion raw onion extra toasted, a well done fry, and a flying Dutchman mustard fried with chopped grilled onions, and spread and then I have a diy animal style fry with meat for only 2 dollars more than the regular animal style fry

C. Great Steak

1400 W 190th St Ste A, Torrance, CA 90501

A childhood staple of the Westfield Santa Anita mall that got replaced by the even more chainy franchise Charlie's cheesesteak. But the legend still lives on(in the greater Los Angeles area) tucked away in a random strip mall in Torrance. Any day and any time of the week you will find locals chowing down at this franchise run by Korean ajummas. Their name and branding might imply the cheesesteaks are what's up but in actuality their potatoes are basically baked potatoes squirted by their triple nozzle butter dispenser, and topped with what might normally go on a cheesesteak.
Parking: Anywhere in the strip mall
Recommendations: Get either the great potato(with steak or pastrami) or the King potato if you want that classic bacon cheddar sour cream baked potato

D. Factory Tea Bar

323 S Mission Dr, San Gabriel, CA 91776

LA has the best boba in America(this is a fact). I have no idea what the kids these days are drinking but I was a huge fan of ftb from 2012-2019. Factory tea bar serves their boba balls warm and that first sip is absolute perfection. The texture is perfect, offering just the right amount of resistance when you bite down, offering a light snack of chewy delightfulness at the end of each sip.
Parking: Try to avoid their parking lot as its extremely hard to maneuver, street parking is easier to get in and out of and is there are 20 minute spots for a togo order or 2 hours if you want to sit and hang out
Recommendations: The nom nom milk is a classic(come on tuesday for their happy hour special). Their nom nom green tea is also delicious. If you are in the mood for something overly sweet I used to get the caramel milk smoothie. Don't forget to add boba to your order!
Honorable mention: half and half: has more locations but I'm too loyal to ftb to go anywhere else while I'm home

E. Yama Seafood

911 W Las Tunas Dr, San Gabriel, CA 91775

A hole in the wall, cut to order sashimi, run by an awesome old japanese man named Yama. Yama bends over the counter butchering and portioning the fish to put on display. There are separate fridges by the register with sushi rolls and such ready for consumption.
Parking: the entrance is right next to the Jack in the box drive through and has plenty of space in the lot behind the store
Recommendations:get a fatty piece of bluefin tuna and then rolls to fill up on

dimsum

next up in places I literally can't find a replacement for outside of LA(besides China and possibly Vancouver) is dimsum. For those of you that don't know, dimsum is basically Chinese brunch tapas. Its original name is yum cha which means drink tea. It all started in Guangzhou wehn tea houses began preparing small dishes to go along with the tea and became what we know today as dimsum. All these restaurants don't do carts and instead have checklists which you order off of and servers bring the dishes streaming hot straight from the kitchen to preserve freshness.
Recommendations: Siu Mai, XO sauce stir fried Lo Bak Go, Egg tarts, Har Gow, Spare Ribs in Black Bean Sauce, Liu Sha Bao(salted egg yolk),

These restaurants also do dinner well but come before the afternoon because most places switch to dinner after around 3.

F1. Monterey Palace

1001 Garvey Ave, Monterey Park, CA 91755

the most authentic and this is the place my family goes to with friends who visit from china. This also means it's the cheapest but it also means it's the busiest, least foreign friendly, and has the most rude staff and customers hence the 3 star rating in Yelp and standard white people reviews giving it a 5 stars for food and 1 star for service.

Monterey Palace food picture — The little fried crescent shaped dumplings are super underrated. Fried Glutinous Rice Dumplings 鹹水角

F2. Sea Harbour

3939 Rosemead Blvd, Rosemead, CA 91770

This place has its walls plastered with Chinese celebrities dining at the restaurant and you certainly get celebrity prices eating here. A lot of modern dimsum takes elements from western cooking and the origin of a char siu bao is actually thanks to baking powder. It does things like truffle topped siu mai instead of the traditional shrimp topping. Because of the reputation and use of ingredients like truffle this is the priciest dimsum coming in around 30 per person

Sea Harbour food picture — Underrated egg white choi sum dried scallop fried rice

F3. Lunasia Chinese Cuisine

500 W Main St, Alhambra, CA 91801

This is a very American friendly dimsum restaurant. There are two locations and has solid food and pricing,

F4. Shanghai No. 1 Seafood

927 E Las Tunas Dr, San Gabriel, CA 91776

I've only been here once and we went because according to our mom one of the famous dimsum chefs started working here. It's a little cramped and has oddly extravagant decor here but the food is still great.

sundubu

This is korean tofu soup. There are chains like bcd but I find these places have better soups and have better value than the chains i see outside of LA. These are all Korean restaurants that serve other dishes as well. But I recommend getting a combination with sundubu and la galbi(fun fact: LA galbi can either refer to the way this short rib was cut as popularized in LA, or it could reference the way the bones are cut on the Lateral Axis.)

G1. A Ri Rang Tofu House

529 E Valley Blvd #128, San Gabriel, CA 91776

This is my close friend's favorite place and I think it's great too.

G2. Young Dong Tofu House

927 E Las Tunas Dr, San Gabriel, CA 91776

I have been eating at this restaurant since I was a kid and it has rarely disappointed me.
Beef sundubu with la galbi.

G3. CLOSED Beverly Soon Tofu Restaurant

2717 W Olympic Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90006

A victim of covid, the shop closed in September 2020 and I made the drive from SF the day after I heard the news from an eater article. My sister called 103 times so we could do a phone order before I got there. They didn't pick up and I was welcomed to LA after a 5 hour drive to a line of 20 people who had already placed orders online in the afternoon. I sucked it up and placed an order for the next day and picked it up on the way back to SF and ate it for dinner that night with my sister and parents I had also picked up the day before because the air quality in SGV was so bad because of a fire a couple miles from my parents. I heard about this place watching anthony bourdain parts unknown. It probably has the best soup but it is a little more expensive compared to the other 2 but also more central to LA

Beverly soon tofu exterior pictures — Somber fans of Beverly Soon getting togo one last time before they closed.

viet pho and crawfish

There's a huge Vietnamese population in LA and two of my favorite vietnamese foods are pho and crawfish.

H1. Pho Filet

9463 Garvey Ave ste a, South El Monte, CA 91733

My goto pho place

pho filet food picture — A blurry pic for the food Journal

H2. The Boiling Crab

230 N Garfield Ave, Monterey Park, CA 91754

Although boils are traditionally southern, the idea of adding the boiled seafood to a bag with tons of butter and seasoning was an idea by the Vietnamese population in the south. This “southern vietnamese” tradition was carried onto vietnamese populations across the US and Boiling Crab is one of the first to bring it to LA. Boiling crab and other viet cajun shops make shrimp and crawfish taste oh so good.

H3. Golden Deli

815 W Las Tunas Dr, San Gabriel, CA 91776

So this is the famous golden deli. My order differs from the standard pho because I like to tack on an order of durian smoothie to my order.

H4. LaoXi Noodle House

600 Live Oak Ave, Arcadia, CA 91006

Ok so this isn't vietnamese at all but i've been talking about noodles and i just wanted to mention this gem in arcadia. They serve northern chinese noodles and my favorite is the wifes special with tomato egg.

very hyped restaurants

These places have tons of reviews and are mainstream but heck I still like them and the hype is real

I. Tsujita LA Artisan Noodle

2050 Sawtelle Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90025

Alright so you know ramen, but have you heard of tsukemen? This place is an og of tsukemen, it's characterized with a thicker wavy noodle that the almost gelatinous extremely warm pork broth readily adheres to. I like to add garlic to help cut the fat of the soup. Don't forget to ask for soup to be added to your leftover broth to dilute it and warm it up to be drunk after you finish your meal. It's typically dashi and the way you ask in japanese is スープ割り or “Soup Wari(split)”.
And nearby there is Tsujita Annex which is the same deal but with more spice and garlic. I also like the Annex Dry Style dish for some variety.
I've actually been food poisoned by Annex 3 or so times and I still come back…

tsujita annex tsukemen food picture — A blurry picture of the spicier, garlicier, likelier to be held in the danger zone annex.

J. Bavel

500 Mateo St, Los Angeles, CA 90013

from the creators of Bestia, Came Bavel which seems just as established in their own right. I haven't been since 2018 when they opened but I still vaguely remember the meal so they must be doing something right.

bavel food picture — A collage of some pics of half eaten food I ate that night.

K. CLOSED Din Tai Fung

1108 S Baldwin Ave, Arcadia, CA 91007

Din Tai Fung, one of the first American outposts of this taiwanese hit serving xiao long bao(little steamer basket buns). From the wiki: In 1996, the first international (DTF) location opened in Tokyo, and the first North American store opened in Arcadia, California in 2000. It would be a regular staple of my childhood and disappointed me when they close the original Arcadia location in June 2020 because of covid.

AYCE ALL YOU CAN EAT

LA just does AYCE better. It has the real estate and lower cost of living to create a well run AYCE establishment that sf and nyc can't get the hang of.

L1. Show Sushi

957 Arrow Hwy, San Dimas, CA 91773

The best quality all you can eat sushi at a quality price. Must order for me are the baked mussels and the must not order are the rolls. All nigiri and mussels baby.

show sushi food picture — not pictured:The baked mussel

L2. OO-KOOK Korean BBQ

5405 Rosemead Blvd, San Gabriel, CA 91776

solid kbbq but I haven't been here in a long time. maybe 2019. Good quality meats at a slightly higher price and nice salad bar situation, ayce fruit as a dessert hits different.

L3. Yerim Korean BBQ

300 S Hobart Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90020

Cheap and good.

L4. Hae Jang Chon

3821 W 6th St, Los Angeles, CA 90020

Long waits and a cast iron pan style instead of grill grates.

HJC grease collection picture — Look at that fat accumulation rendered out of the meat from 2 guys. Yum.

L5. CLOSED Shin-Sen-Gumi Yakitori & Shabu-Shabu

111 N Atlantic Blvd #248, Monterey Park, CA 91754

This place used to do a sick ayce weekday yakitori deal. One guy would just be at that long charcoal grill churning out yakitori and piling it all up on a plate in front of him and people would just get up and take as many sticks as they wanted.

L6. Mokkoji

815 W Naomi Ave, Arcadia, CA 91007

This location closed but the chain lives on all around the LA area and continues to serve ayce veggies along with your meat order and the best Goma(sesame) dipping sauce of all time imo. They used to make porridge with the leftover stock but the other locations I've been to don't do that but I just take the leftover broth home and DIY.

L7. Golden Palace Mongolian BBQ

3681 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91107

Add as much or as little noodles as you want. Go as many times as you want. Add some tasty broccoli and make your own sauce combos. They also have a fun weigh your leftovers and pay for them togo system. The only qualm I have with AYCE mongolian bbq is the meat quality isn't as good as kbbq and it's a little overcooked to my liking and my stomach often does not agree with me the next day.

essert

All these desserts are not overpoweringly sweet. Pass the asian mom test.

M. The Donut Man

915 E Rte 66, Glendora, CA 91740

There's something alluring about their strawberry donuts and how beautiful and tasty they are. And then there's the story of the founder being a japanese man originally coming to america in 1972 with his wife to open and run a chain shop of foster donuts and eventually making it his own independent shop and inventing the strawberry donut recipe when there was an overabundance of strawberry from the farms that once surrounded the area. Oh and it's open 24 hours.

donut man food and exterior picture — Make sure to check their strawberry dontus are in season!

N. California Snack Foods

2131 Tyler Ave, South El Monte, CA 91733

Candy apples. Usually thought of as a tooth breaker with some coating of unappetizing chunks of nuts. Well these are unlike those at all. The California Snack Foods company has tons of candies ranging from the cotton type to frozen pop type. But the star of the show are these apples that are coated in this red candy like caramel. sold in boxes of 24 their rendition of the candy apple called the karm'l dapple. And it's not covered in some weird nuts but deez nuts have been replaced by delicious nougat bits. Get 'Em.

O. Angel Maid Bakery

4542 S Centinela Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90066

I had some strawberry shortcake from Harbs in New York which got its start originally in Japan in 1976. I came back to LA during the summer and I had to find a comparable Japanese strawberry shortcake and happened across Angel Maid. Good reviews and a history just as rich, founded by Japanese immigrants in 1972. The first time I visited in November 2018, it was close to closing and they had no cakes left and it was another 9 months until August 2019 when I reserved a cake for pickup and was blown away by the quality. I found my replacement. In the 3 years since, I've racked up SIXTEEEEN visits.

angel maid cake display case — Come early so the display clase isn't empty for first come first serve items!

P. 21 Choices Frozen Yogurt

85 W Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91105

The best sampling experience I've ever had where I came in on a quiet weekday and wanted samples and couldn't decide on one and asked if it would be possible to do all the flavors and the person running the store got a normal cup and did one pull of each flavor and turned the cup so the whole inner circumference was lined with vertical lines of 8 different flavors. It was awesome but I settled on plain tart because plain tart is awesome. If they had the circus animal cookie flavor I would have gotten it because it's a childhood classic.
Parking: This structure is free during the day for the first 90 minutes