Health

Some of L.A.’s best restaurants are open for dinner service on Mondays, including Tsubaki in Echo Park. (Ron De Angelis / For The Times)

Lillie’s Bistro & Garden restaurant at the Culver Hotel is bringing a French twist to its Thanksgiving to-go menu. (Lillie’s Bistro & Garden)

Neo-bistro Olive & Rose, which features a French-California menu, recently opened on the ground floor of the renovated City Center motel in downtown Long Beach. During the day, O&R Bagels offers coffee, tea and bagels out of the same space. (Jennifer Chong / For The Times)

Clockwise from top left: A plate of food at Cipriani, knafeh from Knafeh Cafe, a pie from the Pie Room by Curtis Stone, a burger and curly fries from Goldburger and a slice of cake from Helms Bakery. (Photos by Jenn Harris, Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times. Collage by Brandon Ly / Los Angeles … Read more

I’ll take the jerky at Sophy’s over your Wagyu steak anyplace else Pepper-smeared strips of beef jerky fueled countless late-night study sessions in my college dorm room. I enjoyed the leathery, stringy belts I ate on road trips as a kid to Las Vegas, Palm Desert or wherever my parents drove us in my mom’s … Read more

Fresh produce at Mercado González Northgate Market in Costa Mesa. (Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times) 1 A thousand stimuli charge your senses when you walk into the Mercado González in Costa Mesa. Dragon fruit, colored in lucid pinks and greens, piled in a wooden bin among dozens of other fruits and vegetables displayed with … Read more

Review: A giant meatball is the gateway dish to L.A.’s best new Persian restaurant in years It’s hard to miss the giant meatball. Anyone on their way to ordering at the counter inside Azizam, while passing through its patio along Sunset Boulevard in Silver Lake, might instinctively sweep their gaze over the tables already full … Read more

Review: So many mysteries at Star Leaf. But mainly, where’s the spice? The contradictions surrounding the Asian chain Star Leaf start with the official number of locations: There are 43 restaurants around the globe. Wait, no. Forty-five. Most of them are in China. One might have a Michelin star. The woman who founded the restaurants … Read more

Review: How far for a true taste of Baja? To the center of this modern Mexican tasting menu The plates that roll out of the kitchen at Valle, a nearly three-year-old modern Mexican restaurant inside the Mission Pacific Beach Resort in Oceanside, are relentlessly beautiful. For his eight-course tasting menus, chef Roberto Alcocer might braid … Read more

Review: Aren’t tiny restaurants the best restaurants? A former Melrose coffee shop makes the case For decades Stir Crazy was a coffee shop, a business squeezed among Melrose Avenue’s endless buildings of connected restaurants and shops and offices interrupted only by cross streets. Dino Trucco took over the place in 1994, tore out the Formica-tile … Read more