There are a lot of great Thai places around.  You've undoubtedly had several.  We have too.

Don Antonio's really is a one trick pony.  But it just so happens to be the Seabiscuit of one trick ponies.  There are quite a few good Mexican restaurants in L.A., but how many good restaurants have one dollar taco Wednesdays?  Only one comes to mind.

Located near Pico and Barrington, Don Antonio's is a rather large establishment that clearly makes a lot of its money selling liquor.  This works to your serious financial advantage if you only have eyes for tacos.  On Wednesday nights, people PACK this place to insane levels to get their fill of beer and tacos.  If you want to really feel special (and avoid the 1+ hour wait), come when taco night has barely begun - sometime between 5 and 6:30 pm.  You will be seated immediately, and find yourself stuffing homemade chips and salsa down your throat while feverishly mumbling to your neighbor, "are you sure we aren't cheating the system?"

They have something like six types of tacos, but the hard shell chicken and the soft shell asada are both fantastic.  Order three or four tacos, and you will be full on awesome Mexican for under $5.  Pay your ridiculously low bill and you'll be out in a flash, patting yourself on the back for having a great sit-down Mexican meal for a ridiculously low price.  

If I was tied to a kicking donkey and tickled with 1,000 tiny feathers until I proclaimed one ethnicity of food superior to all others, I would probably say Indian.  Granted, some argue that intelligence gained by torture is unreliable.  You decide.

Strangely, we haven't found a lot of "great" Indian food in Los Angeles (at least for a reasonable price).  In a city this diverse, you'd certainly expect to find a plethora, a gaggle, or at least a handful or good picks.  Not so.  However, as always, if you feel differently, let us know.

Having lived in England for a couple years, I've had some serious Indian meals (trust me, they know what they are doing over there).  Maybe my expectations are too high.  But so far, only one restaurant has merited an addition to this list.  Too many others are hit or miss, overpriced, bland, or poorly executed.

All this said, Tandoor-a-India is certainly a worthy mention.  This little restaurant is located in Marina Del Rey, not far from the beach.  The building looks like a mishmash of wood and lights and it feels like a little piece of Bombay.  Parking is on the roof, and the interior is dark, quiet, and just tacky enough to be awesome.  The prices are reasonable, staying around $8 per main dish.  However, if you want the full experience, I suggest investing a little more money in your meal (think about $15 per person).

For starters, I recommend the mixed appetizers plate - it comes with a variety of fried goodies.  Also the mango lassis are great and worth a buy (cold yogurt mango drink, for newbies), as is often the case with most lassis.  But the real magic is in the curries.

Tandoor-a-India, as the name suggests, features meat cooked in a tandoori clay oven.  This means awesome.  Again, I usually stick pretty close to the standards at this place, because they do it oh so well. I highly recommend the chicken tikka masala, the vindaloo curry, and the karahi curry.  Feel free to request these "spicy" - I've never had them come too hot.

You'll find that a few key things set this restaurant apart:  (1) the vibe is very cool; (2) the chicken and other meats are very quality and cooked perfectly; (3) the curries are dark, rich, and seriously good; and (4) the naan bread, which you must order, is excellent.  Give it a try.

Thai Boom is a little gem.  It probably wins the award for "most surprising."  Located on Venice in Culver City, it's not the greatest Thai place in the world, but it is PERFECT for takeout.

The restaurant is tiny, crammed into a strip mall.  Places like this, you are thinking, are dime a dozen in L.A.  Not so.  The prices are comparable to any other takeout, though perhaps a little cheaper.  But the food quality is definitely a step above.  We don't venture too far from the old faithfuls on this menu - the pad thai and massaman curry are great (ask for "spicy" on the curry unless you are a sissy).  We also love the pad kee mow (flat noodle and spicy sauce with choice of meat).

Again, we are not claiming this as the "greatest" thai place in L.A.  But this is a SOLID takeout location.  The prices are cheap and the food has never done us wrong.

Gaby's is great, but you've got to do it right.  There are a couple of locations, but I can only attest to the Culver City spot, which I've been to close to 50 times.  For us, Gaby's is better for takeout.  Let me explain.

The restaurant is psuedo-outdoors, with most of the tables under a tent.  This isn't a problem - if you like to smoke.  Personally, we aren't in to breathing hookah (this is a popular hookah joint) while we enjoy a meal.  But the food is good enough to make this one of our go-to favorites for Mediterranean food.

We've eaten inside a handful of times (you don't have to brave the smoke every time), but we usually opt for the takeout.  See, when we want Gaby's it is because it is both great AND cheap.  The takeout option eliminates the tip and if you order the right dishes it is seriously reasonable.  I highly recommend the "chicken pita kebab sandwich," which is really just a chicken kebab (Julie likes the shish kebab pita sandwich).  It's fantastic - the chicken is smoky and tangy, right off the grill.  Unlike the other menu items, these are only like $6 and come with a side of fries or a salad.  That leaves a few bucks for an order of hummus - also fantastic.

Gaby's is great in a pinch - if you are looking for a more romantic and classy sit-down meal, opt for Cayenne.

I've got this thing about Italian food.  I just don't "crave" it like I do a great Thai or Indian dish.  In my eyes, Italian food is relatively hard to mess up.  And it's equally hard to knock it out of the park.

With this in mind, it took a few recommendations to get us out the door and over to Al Gelato for dinner.  It was well worth the trip.  Al Gelato is the first Italian restaurant I've eaten outside of Italy that tasted just like the restaurants IN Italy.  The ravioli (I recommend getting half meat, half cheese) comes floating in a bowl of sweet, mild marinara with fresh basil leaves.  Everything is handmade daily, and one of the elderly owners (this is a family business) makes all the desserts at home in the morning and brings them to the restaurant.  Served with the meal is a bowl of fantastic, crusty, fresh out-of-the-oven bread.

If you've still got room, the desserts are great.  You'll see them right when you walk in, just past the gelato window.  Pies standing something like 6 inches high, all kinds of red velvet this and that, and plenty of other tempting offers that I've passed up time and again because of the hefty dinner servings.

The atmosphere is hardly romantic, but it isn't bad either.  But this place is all about the food.  If you've got Italian on your brain, give Al Gelato a spin.  If you've let the endless Thai restaurants entice you away from Italian food altogether, maybe it's time for a reunion.  You won't be disappointed.

Have you ever had chocolates from Vosges?  Its a company that specializes in fine chocolates in unusual and very good flavors and combinations.  Compartes is like a locally owned Vosges on steroids.  It's reeeeeeally good.


The guy who owns this place is usually working the counter.  He's very cool, and has given us plenty of samples and good advice in choosing what to order.  He is constantly inventing new combinations, so it's impossible for me to tell you the "best."  They are ALL good.  We've tried everything from the classic sea salt chocolates to those incorporating mango, rosemary, basil, olive oil, saffron, blackberry, and all other varieties.  Also amazing (and a must have at any visit) are the dark (or milk if you prefer) chocolate dipped peaches, apricots, and orange peels.  Particularly, the peaches.


Check this place out - it's cozy and very cool for a romantic sit down chocolate pig-out.  It's also great for gifts.  Leave your favorite chocolate combos in the comments...

This will undoubtedly be on the lesser known entries we make.  But it is one that needs to be made.

Yoku Yoku, for us, represents the best combination of family ownership, Pinkberry-ish yogurt and toppings, and gelato.  As long as ice cream is not the dessert du jour we had in mind, this is where you'll find us.

I'm not going to get into the argument of who came first between Red Mango, Pinkberry, or any of the other tart yogurt establishments.  I will only say that Yoku Yoku has something special.  Supposedly, they import their "mix" from the same people that Pinkberry does - only, unlike Pinkberry, they combine it with milk instead of water.  I can't confirm this, but I can conclusively say that the yogurt here is creamier, smoother, and all around better (and I do like Pinkberry).

Yoku Yoku is located in a strip mall in West L.A.  There is nothing notable about the decor or interior (which resembles your average yogurt store), although the vice is certainly less pretentious than the average.  There are couches in a corner next to a table full of magazines where people put their feet up and hang out.  The owners were a very cool family who we had come to really love - but they recently were bought up by someone new.  Fortunately, there have been no changes aside from seeing our favorite employees disappear.  This place needs and deserves some support.

The gelato is great, but here is my recommendation:  order the italian with mango, mochi, and chocolate chips.  This trifecta of goodness will not disappoint.  The employees are always cool, and they heap on the toppings.  You'll find all the Pinkberry toppings, plus some extra awesome additions such as REAL graham cracker crusted cheesecake bites.  My wife's favorites are vanilla custard with cookie dough or peanut butter with low fat granola.  They also get high marks from me.

If you are in the mood for a good dessert, give this place a try.  I've been to a lot of frozen yogurt places, but this one takes the cheesecake.

This post will get mixed reactions from readers.  I know that.  But I would be forfeiting my culinary integrity if I didn't include this as one of the (if not THE) greatest places to eat in Los Angeles.  Some people will go to Apple Pan and come away saying "I don't get it.  This place wasn't worth the hype."  Others will go home and write about it in their journal.  I salute these people.

Apple Pan is a L.A. mainstay - a time warp into an earlier generation of the city.  It's tucked away on Pico just across from the Westfield Malls (on what is apparently a pricey piece of real estate - rumors are that people have been trying to buy out Apple Pan's spot for years to no avail).  The interior is rustic and unchanged since its 1947 establishment, and that includes the workers.  On the back of their simple menu, you'll note that some date back to the 1800's (like their famous apple pie).  Almost every single time I have eaten here, I've come across a happy elderly couple who have been enjoying this place since its inception.

If you come at a busy time (which is most times), you'll have to navigate the amorphous seating arrangements.  Apple Pan is bar seating only, and there is no real "line" if all the seats are full.  Instead, people hover around the exterior of the seats, waiting for openings.  There is an unspoken rule that people are seated in the order they arrive, so pay close attention to who came before you (and more importantly, who didn't).

Don't waste time perusing the menu.  Everything is good, no question about it.  But some things are unbeatable.  Go ahead and skip the steak burger (I know, I know, steak is great) and go on and order the hickory burger with cheese and a side of fries (I like to order my fries extra crispy).  You will discover, as other Apple Pan converts, that there is something magical in this meal.  You can try separately nibbling the bun, the patty, the fat stack of lettuce, the sauce or any other element of the burger, but it is impossible to figure out what gives it that extra awesomeness.  Control the urge to do so and just savor this piece of perfection.

I recommend the apple pie a la mode for dessert.  ALL of the pies are amazing, however.  The banana cream is thicker than should be legal and stuffed with fresh bananas and mountains of real whipped cream.  The same goes for everything.  But the apple pie, for me, puts the perfect cap on the meal.

Going to Apple Pan is almost a religious experience for me and my wife, if you haven't yet figured that out.  I am completely in love the old-timey vibe, the sense of pride and ownership that exudes from the servers, and the unmistakable quality of the food.  Yes, I've had the pretentious burgers at My Father's Office.  Yes, I've gorged myself on sweet potato fries and a mountainous burger at The Counter.  Yes, I enjoy a good in-n-out burger every now and then.  But the hickory burger is yet to meet its match.  If you haven't been to Apple Pan yet, now is the time.


Apple Pan
10801 W. Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90064
310-475-3585