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Despite what the rest of the world seems to think about the Los Angeles dining scene, chances are that most of you reading this live pretty close to an awesome stretch of restaurants. Even if you're not in the vicinity of La Cienega's fabled "Restaurant Row," there are still many pockets of that range from the Valley to the South Bay and beyond. This morning's ABC7 broadcast featured some of these other areas where there is a concentration of great restaurants (Citysearch also covered them, but did a crappy job of actually linking to restaurants).
Yes, La Cienega might still hold the title of Best Restaurant Row (you can't really argue with Matsuhisa, Lawry's, or even those inexplicably popular tourist traps The Stinking Rose and Benihana's), but West Hollywood's Melrose Avenue also makes a strong showing, with hip, modern restaurants like Lucques, Ago, and newcomer Comme Ca. But even the outlying counties like Riverside and Orange have their own restaurant meccas, and Long Beach's Pine Avenue also gets a warranted shout-out.
I'm particularly fond of the Little Tokyo-ish area of Sawtelle in West L.A. (you Westside haters can suck on that), where standbys like Asahi Ramen and Hurry Curry have withstood the influx of hot new izakayas and eclectic galleries, turning this corridor between Santa Monica Blvd. and Pico into one of the best places in the city to spend an afternoon, wandering from ramen house to ramen house. (The market across from Asahi Ramen sells cheap beer if you want to BYOB while you slurp down some noodles.)
Is there a neighborhood near you that they're missing?
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I always heard that section of Sawtelle referred to as Little Osaka. Is that not right?
is it??? that makes sense.
It's a little smaller than downtown's Little Tokyo, so I know folks who call it "Microscopic Tokyo."
Sawtelle is a gem of a place if Little Tokyo is out of the way for you. Have lunch there then visit Giant Robot.
Go Sherman Oaks with its Woodman and Ventura restaurant row! Over here, we call it East Sherman Oaks, or at least I do along with the LAPD.
don't forget Mori Sushi (since no one can find it) is also in that little stretch of restaurants on pico/sawtelle!!! mmmm.
I go to Nijiya there in Little Osaka all the time...
http://www.discovernikkei.org/forum/en/node/1052
House of Curry (or is it The Curry House?) is far better than Hurry Curry - it's across the street from Hurry Curry in the plaza. There's also a little karoake studio there, but it's been ridiculously busy the last few years.