9 perfect restaurants

Brought on by a state of exhaustion

I’m a habitually early person, which is how I ended up at Stir Crazy last Friday night feeling absolutely torched by a wine list. With 20 minutes to kill until my friends arrived at this Los Angeles snack bar, I flipped from the pet-nats to the magnums looking for something we could split. The pages ran about 100 bottles deep, and the 10 I wanted had been crossed out. A couple Puzelat-Bonhommes, a Martha Stoumen, a Ruth Lewandowski. All gone.

I looked around and recognized the crowd. Fellow millennials who used to devour BA Hot 10 lists and built wine tastes based off the Wildair Instagram feed in 2016. People, like me, who enjoy dining out more than almost anything else, but have also become fairly predictable.

I left Stir Crazy quite happy. There was a bold, interesting crudo. A simple sausage. A well-cooked black bass. Two delightful desserts. The reservation was easy to make, the staff was hot and kind. It was an experience I’d had before across the country, just executed extremely well.

This is fine. If I ran a restaurant, I’d want it to look a lot like Stir Crazy — fun, busy, successful, and most of all, relatively manageable, given the size of the kitchen, the scope of menu and the sparse yet considered space. These kinds of restaurants are intentionally only ambitious to a certain degree. They’re run by skilled people who work hard to deliver a great experience. They’re also less focused on cranking out mind-bending dishes or concepts.

If I still lived in LA, Stir Crazy might be one of my perfect restaurants. The kind of place that over the course of multiple visits proves it can captures a tenuous magic across food, service and vibe. Spencer Hall posted a thread about perfect songs a few years ago. No-notes tracks that get everything right, from the length to the hook to the lyrics. He led with George Straight’s Amarillo By Morning, a gem I can run on repeat 15 times in a single day.

Perfect and best are very different things, just like bangers and jams. I’ve lost my stamina to seek out the best restaurants, the most creatives bites of food, the top-ranked whatever. I just want to settle into places that feel perfect for me and the moment I’m sharing with friends. In different ways, these nine restaurants do that, and always have.