These three new additions to our 101 list showcase the best of L.A.’s diverse dining
Your morning catch up: L.A.’s 101 best restaurants, we’ve got your guide to the L.A. city attorney’s race and more big stories.
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Last night, The Times unveiled its 14th annual guide to the 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles.
Fellow critic Jenn Harris and I spend several intense months each year, eating through the city in every possible facet: devouring tacos at corner stands, scouring strip malls and savoring sushi at eight-seat counters after hard-won reservations.
In obsessing over final selections, Jenn and I pore through all the reviews of newly opened restaurants we have written since the previous year. The 2026 guide has 29 new gems; that number includes a few places that had formerly dropped off the list but now return, having amazed us once again.
To help you dive into L.A.’s dining riches, here’s a closer look at three restaurants that have made the 101 list for the first time.
A rare-for-L.A. window into Puerto Rican cooking
The Puerto Rican cooking at Taínos in Woodland Hills has a specific and wonderful soulfulness, as Jenn detailed in her July review.
“Los Angeles has many Latin American enclaves, but the city still lacks a concentrated hub for Puerto Ricans, prompting [Odessa Rodriguez, a former event planner] to create her own,” she wrote.
To create Taínos, Rodriguez connected with her uncle Edwin Torres, who worked for decades as a chef in Puerto Rico.
The menu includes garlicky mofongo, sidled up to lush roasted pork or peppery beef threaded with sliced onions; alcapurrias, crackly fritters sometimes filled with crab meat as a special; and dishes less-often seen on Puerto Rican menus, including a shrimp and rice stew fragrant with sofrito (the herby puree that flavors many traditional dishes) and a variation on gazpacho laced with bacalao (salt-cured cod).
Jenn keeps coming back for the rellenos de papa, comparing them to the famed versions at Porto’s Bakery. “The mini-chain’s picadillo-stuffed, fried mashed potato balls have served as the gold standard for rellenos de papa in Los Angeles for decades,” she writes. “Until now.”
A modern Mexican supernova returns
From the pandemic to the twin Hollywood strikes and the Eaton and Palisades fires in January 2025, the L.A. restaurant industry has suffered through a brutal decade. Too many community anchors closed forever.
It’s amazing, then, when a luminary unexpectedly reappears.
Ray Garcia was forced to close his groundbreaker Broken Spanish in August 2020. After looking for years for the right space, he decided to relaunch his marquee restaurant in a more casual guise: Late in 2025, he moved into a steep-roofed building in Culver City where previous tenants included Roy Choi’s A-Frame and, in the beginning, an IHOP. Garcia added “Comedor” to the name, a word meaning “diner” or “cafeteria.”
His style of Alta California cuisine registers as personal to him but also meaningfully particular to the city. He reimagines chicharrón into a crisp-soft pinwheel of pork belly and dreams up duck albondigas permeated with the smokiness of chipotle and bacon.
Whether you’re reacquainting yourself with Garcia’s cooking or experiencing it for the first time, start with the refried lentils, whipped with quesillo into a creamy mash and scooped with warm, just-pressed corn tortillas. To drink alongside? Comedor has an incredible list of tequilas and mezcals; the bartenders make excellent recommendations.
A new fine-dining crown jewel snags the top spot
After months of dining and debating, Jenn and I both felt certain about the guide’s new No. 1- restaurant — which opened less than a year ago.
Lielle, set in a glamorous subterranean room on West Pico Boulevard, is the culmination of Swedish chef Marcus Jernmark’s years of experience in high-end temples around the world. He moved to Los Angeles in 2022. With unusual wisdom, he took his time understanding Southern California and, while staying true to his own inner compass, what Angelenos most desire from finer dining.
The result: a four-course menu, changing every six weeks or so, for $150 per person, reasonable in our era of $400 tasting menus.
Plates are gorgeous, and full of the fresh and seasonal ingredients that hallmark the cooking of our best chefs, yet something in the combinations of meats and fruits or brightness and richness tastes distinctly Nordic, something novel for our region. It’s also the tiny things that catapult Lielle into its own category: the ridiculously good cultured butter made by the kitchen, and the boozy cardamom buns that I scarf like a kid every time I have them.
Read my full review for more on why Lielle is so special, make a reservation and see if you agree with us.
The week’s biggest stories
The Race for L.A. City Attorney
- Your guide to the L.A. city attorney’s race: McKinney vs. Roy.
- Incumbent Hydee Feldstein Soto was ousted in the primary amid criticism over her handling of costly lawsuits and opposition from the union for rank-and-file LAPD officers.
- Lifelong prosecutor John McKinney didn’t think he’d ever be a lawyer. Now, he might be L.A.’s next city attorney.
- Inside Marissa Roy’s Bollywood-bumping, group-project bid to become L.A.’s city attorney.
The Trump Administration, its policies and reactions
- Many Latinos are done with Trump. That shift is especially striking in Texas.
- President Trump’s approval rating among Latino registered voters has fallen to 24% from 38% at the start of his second term, polls show.
- President Trump says he ordered a lawsuit from the Justice Department over Alaska’s U.S. Senate race.
- An ICE agents tackle and injures a U.S. citizen student with disabilities, according to local officials.
Crime, courts and policing
- A man kills his teenage ex-girlfriend in Arcadia and then shoots himself.
- Suspect Paul Anthony Cruz Jr. allegedly broke into the apartment where the girl lived with her family and fatally shot her, according to the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.
- A man who is facing a murder charge in the death of another man near Costco gas pumps is a rabbi, records show.
- California police bust a $54,000 Hot Wheels thief.
More news
- A time bomb for renters: L.A. County’s cheapest apartments are getting old, fast.
- California has overpaid a private firm in a $180-million water deal in what critics say is a “really bad investment.”
- A mediator will decide whether the trust fund of Nick Reiner, who killed his parents, can pay for defense in his murder case.
- Former Rams running back great Marshall Faulk shares his Parkinson’s diagnosis and hopes to help others.
- The Atlanta Falcons posted a profile pic featuring their throwback logo. Comparisons to Nazism probably wasn’t what they expected.
Editor’s pick
Malibu millionaire Alexander Lewis didn’t say which animal charities should receive most of his roughly $28-million fortune. That decision was left to his longtime friend and personal assistant, Victoria Marie.
More picks
- Why Dodgers fans need to be cheering for the Brewers in this World Series, writes sports columnist Bill Shaikin.
- Muslims have always had to prove our Americanness. Enter Abdul El-Sayed, writes columnist Lorraine Ali.
Things to do
- 🐍 First look: Disneyland’s popular Indiana Jones ride, known to have hourlong waits, reopened on Friday with more capacity — and more spiders.
- 🕵️ Celebrated network TV show “Unsolved Mysteries” is moving to a new frontier: video podcasts.
- 📕 Book Review: After “Bojack Horseman” came a midlife reset for animator Lisa Hanawalt that included polyamory fails, panic and pure joy.
Today’s recipe
Former Times columnist Ben Mims used to note that “there’s no more comforting or classic fall dessert than apple pie.” The amount of recipes out there match the variety of opinions. This recipe for double crust apple pie delivers a mix of tart and sweet along with cinnamon that is crispy, delicious and is worth the indulgence.
Photo of the day
Games
Here’s today’s mini crossword, plus our other free, daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and jigsaw games.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Jack Dolan, investigative reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, Fast Break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew J. Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.
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