Top 25 restaurant dishes: Spring & Summer rankings
The best of New York, LA and a few other quick stops
Bangers & Jams Los Angeles is closing up shop for a few months and hitting the road. I like the routine of swinging through my regular spots before an extended absence, which meant Kato on Friday night followed by some bites at Baby Bistro yesterday evening.
These (faux) quarterly dish rankings have been rattling around in my head for weeks, before Jon Yao and Miles Thompson did their best to fuck up the list at the last minute. One of Jon’s creations from the Kato tasting menu appears below, but any of the 10 dishes coming out of his downtown LA kitchen would belong. The throughline I appreciate most in Jon’s food is a love of simple and impeccably cooked seafood, a boredom with texture for the sake of texture, and a respect for culinary influences without ever feeling beholden to their traditions. It makes for a worthwhile, fun splurge.
LA feels good right now. Back? No, not really. But also not all that concerned with being back from whatever pre-pandemic high we get compared to. Everything good here feels intentionally smaller, more intimate, stable. You see it in the new crop of thriving restaurants, and in the communities gathering inside of them.
I like to say that the whole appeal of Los Angeles is that everything is easy and there’s nothing to do. When friends visit, the plans are organized around pilates classes, grocery runs and movie showtimes. It’s a beautiful place, best embraced for exactly that kind beauty. I hope those interlopers from Austin know what they’re doing.