The Brief

What a year for food and drink in SoCal! I encountered so much excellence that narrowing it all down into one list was tough.

I ranged widely across the region, from Newport Beach to Bell Gardens, and Virgil Village to Chinatown. I had upmarket dishes, old school treats, European classics, and Asian comfort food. It was all tasty and all part of the L.A. mosaic.

In the end, I was able to distill it all into one list of my favorite eats, broken down by month. It may inspire you to make your own.

January: Paella at The Paella Concept

A plate from The Paella Concept, served backyard style.

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Gab Chabrán

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Mother-and-daughter team Natalie and Maria Curie of The Paella Concept

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Gab Chabrán

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I have been privileged to eat paella since I was a child. My parents often prepared it for dinner parties, and when we moved to Madrid in 1999, we ordered it regularly from local restaurants. It meant I developed a special relationship with the dish that I still carry today.

In January, I got to sample The Paella Concept, a pop-up/catering operation from El Coraloense in Bell Gardens. The mouthwatering mix of the seafood, chicken and chorizo, cooked into sticky mounds of yellow, saffron-flavored rice, took me right back to those days in Madrid. It was a perfection concoction, and satisfied the cravings that often creep up on me.

February: Handwich at Disneyland

The chili cone queso features beef chili, cheddar cheese, and corn chips

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I first heard of the handwich and its cult following after watching a YouTube documentary. The Cliff Notes version of the story is that in the late 80s, a concession stand food was introduced at Disney theme parks called the Handwich, a cone-shaped sandwich with a filling. It was seen as the future of theme park food. Enjoy a variety of fillings and still walk around the park!

It lasted until the mid-90s, when it was discontinued for being a commercial failure. In 2012, a revised version was introduced, renamed “Conewich” at California Adventure Park Cars Land's Cozy Cone Motel food stand.

So, on my family’s trip to Disney in February, I made it a point to stop by the Cozy Cone and pay my respects to the temple of the handwich…I mean conewich….whatever.

My family and I shared the chili cone queso, which includes beef chili, cheddar cheese, and corn chips served in a cone bun. Let me tell you: a cone-shaped bun turns out to be a perfect delivery system for getting food into your mouth. It isn’t messy at all and is pretty fun to eat.

As to why it initially failed to capture the hearts and minds of theme park goers, I suspect it was just a little too ahead of its time. I highly recommend it.

March: Smashburger at Mario’s Butcher Shop

The smashburger with added bacon at Mario's Butcher Shop in Newport Beach

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For a while now, my friends living in Orange County have told me about an amazing, no-nonsense smash burger in Newport Beach. So, in March, I finally ventured out to try it.

The perfectly smashed patty maintained its shape, meaning it is not entirely flat, which was a nice touch. The burger’s juiciness paired well with melted American cheese, mustard, ketchup, pickles, and diced onions on a soft bun.

I decided to add bacon to my burger, as I have a general rule of thumb: always add bacon whenever it's an option. I'm rarely disappointed by this decision; that day was no exception. The melted cheese enhanced the dialed-in flavors of the patty's seasoning, and the smokiness of the bacon worked exceptionally well. I would easily go out of my way to try this again any day of the week.

April: BBQ Pork Arancini from Shins Pizza

BBQ Pork Arancini from Shins Pizza

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In April, I had the pleasure of attending the second annual L.A. Pizza City Fest, which took place in the parking lot of L.A. Live in downtown L.A.. It was packed with virtually every pizza maker in the city under one tent for two days.

While I had a lot of great pie that day, my favorite thing I ate wasn’t pizza (apologies to all the stand-out pizza makers). Instead, it was the BBQ Pork Arancini from Chef Melissa Lopéz, who cooks at Shins Pizza, and Barra Santos, located next door to each other in Cypress Park.

It’s a fried rice ball stuffed with slow-cooked barbecue pork and seasoned with furikake, a Japanese seasoning. While it's a small bite, the flavors meld beautifully together, making it something memorable. Next time you stop by for a slice at Shins, where it’s on the regular menu, add one to your order. You won’t be sorry.

May: Dinner at Saffy’s

Roasted celery root made with burnt apple harissa, sauerkraut, allium cream, rose petals, curry leaves and cilantro

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Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gergis's restaurants have followed me through adulthood. Initially, Bestia was an all-out party that served as a last hurrah to my twenties. Then came Bavel, which felt like the next stage, a little more grown up and mature. It was my wife and I's last meal together before we discovered we would have our daughter and decided to move to Long Beach.

Earlier this year, it came full circle when we visited Saffy’s in East Hollywood with our now 6-year-old daughter and another couple with their son, who’s around the same age.

Since Saffy’s is named after Menashe and Gergis's daughter, it felt like the perfect opportunity to bring a few little kids. While they mostly consumed rice and bread, we adults dined on the roasted celery root dish made with a burnt apple harrisa, sauerkraut, topped with rose petals, curry leaves, and cilantro.

The dish was a merry wallop of fresh flavors. containing sweet, tart, and floral notes, highlighted by an earthy creaminess.

We also had the wood-fired shawarma plate, made with lamb and wagyu beef served with tomatoes and cooked onions seasoned with sumac and drizzled with tahini. The harmonious dish danced across your palette with each bite. It was all truly delicious, marking yet another phase in my life.

June: Sandwiches at The Pie Room

Confit duck leg ragu sandwich from The Pie Room in Beverly Hills

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There’s something to be said about a great sandwich, and the offerings at The Pie Room in Beverly Hills are just that. They're typical deli sandwiches, but small and thin, with great care having been taken over their assembly and contents.

You can choose from confit duck ragu pancetta with fennel pollen, arugula, tarragon and parmesan gremolata, or braised beef and mushroom, or slow-cooked chicken.

My favorite was the confit duck, containing decadent and savory flavors with a hint of sweetness. The fresh herbs cut through some of the richness of sandwich, making it extremely well-balanced.

My favorite part about these sandwiches, however, is that you can order them online for delivery. We’d be hard-pressed to think of anywhere else in L.A. where you can get a sandwich from a Michelin-starred restaurant delivered to your door. What are you waiting for?

July: Seiro Soba at Otafuku

Seiro soba and udon noodles with a side of grated Japanese mountain potato and fried shrimp egg rolls

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I received an invite from my friend Luca Servodio, who hosts the LA Food Podcast and the social media account, the LA Countdown, where he documents his food adventures with Herculean challenges, such as eating one hundred noodle dishes, as he did this year.

We met for lunch in Gardena for his number 56 entry on his noodle crawl, where we visited Otafuku, a family-owned Japanese noodle shop known for its fresh homestyle soba and udon. We had their signature Seiro soba, a traditional cold buckwheat noodle dish cooked to a perfect level of al-dente with just the right amount of chew, something I’m always searching for when it comes to noodles.

You also get a side if you order the combo, so we opted for grated Japanese mountain potatoes, known as tororo in Japan, a type of yam. It makes for a starch-on-starch affair as you dip your soba noodles into the grated potato seasoned with soy sauce and shredded seaweed.

The flavor was exceptionally subtle, with the slightest hints of earthiness and umami. However, this was one of the few times on my list where the flavor took a backseat. Instead it became all about the texture: a lush creaminess paired with the slight pliability of the noodles. It was fascinating, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it all this year.

August: Taco Hell Burger at Terrible Burger

The Taco Hell burger from Terrible Burger, a Long Beach pop-up.

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Oh, the friends you make along the way. During LAist's Tournament of Cheeseburgers this year, I learned about the Long Beach pop-up operation Terrible Burger, run by husband-and-wife team Ryan and Nicole Ramirez.

The pair started their burger pop-up during the Hollywood strikes in 2023, which left them both out of work (Nicole works as a caterer on film sets, Ryan is a teamster). Their burgers feature fun, pop culture-inspired takes, like recreating the Big Kahuna burger from Pulp Fiction, not to mention their ongoing series “Will It Burger?” where Ryan takes various odd-ball ingredients such as Slim Jims and Popeye’s Fried Chicken to both horrifying and hilarious results.

All party tricks aside, Terrible Burger makes a great burger. I tried their Taco Hell burger with a packet of Taco Bell hot sauce. It’s made with double patties seasoned with taco seasoning, shredded cheese, lettuce, sliced tomato, and Mexican crema. The spicy, creamy burger delivered just the right amount of Taco Bell aura while still maintaining a well-made burger's character. The quality of the burgers at Terrible Burger superseded my expectations, making them worth the drive the next time they pop up in Long Beach.

September: Dinner at Olive & Rose

Aged rib cap with frites & au poivre from Olive & Rose in Long Beach

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Gab Chabrán

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I wrote about Heritage, located in Long Beach, earlier this year. The small restaurant won big at the Michelin Awards for California in 2023, earning both a star for its excellent food and a green star for its sustainable business practices and zero-waste cooking style.

Still, the pre-fixe of $150 without the wine pairing can feel a bit steep. So in September, Chef Phil Pretty and his sister and business partner Lauren opened Olive & Rose inside City Center Motel in downtown Long Beach. It has an a la carte menu perfect for when you don’t want to drop big bucks on a meal.

I enjoyed the Iberico pork presa plate, a beautiful mosaic of thin slices of cured Spanish ham, and the aged ribeye cap with fries served in an au poivre sauce . That, with their burnt marshmallow ice cream served with honeycomb, would make for a damn near perfect meal next time I'm there.

October: Lil Tony sandwich at LaSorted’s

The Lil Tony only available at the LaSorted's in Chinatown is city of L.A. in sandwich form.

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Somehow, owner Tommy Brockert timed the opening of his second location of Dodger-themed pizzeria LaSorted’s in Chinatown perfectly as the boys in blue were crushing their way through the post-season.

I was lucky enough to snag a table the night we beat the New York Mets 10-5. That night, there was magic in the air across Los Angeles, as well as inside the restaurant, where every table was packed and every inch of the wall covered in the team’s memorabilia.

While the pizza at LaSorted’s always hits, one new item stole my heart that night: the Lil Tony sandwich. Currently only available in Chinatown, the sandwich features a sesame seed bun piled high with fried mortadella, drizzled with hot mustard from Philippe’s, located just down the street.

The name itself is a double entendre worthy of a Kendrick Lamar lyric. The name Lil Tony references Anthony Bourdain's favorite sandwich, as noted in his 2016 cookbook, Appetites. But it’s also an homage to Little Joe’s, the Italian American restaurant built in 1897 in Chinatown that was a hangout for Hollywood stars and Dodgers fans before a baseball game. This is L.A. food history at its finest.

November: Korean Army Stew at Yuk Dae Jang

LAist Food editor Gab Chabrán enjoys his bounty at Yuk Dae Jang in Koreatown

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Brian De Los Santos

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When that slight chill hit the air in L.A. last month, it could only mean one thing: soup season. That’s why I decided to visit Yuk Dae Jang's Koreatown location for some Korean Army Stew, in my view one of the best in the game.

First, there was the large helping of soup, and yes, it could feed an army, a spicy broth packed with Spam, tofu, instant noodles, rice cake, and their signature sausage, served with various banchan dishes. Then there was the bossam, a thinly sliced pork shoulder dish, which you're encouraged to pile high with tofu topped with sesame seeds, purple rice, a variety of kimchis and other assorted accoutrements. It all made for a wonderful mouthful of greatness.

December: Dinner at Budonoki

Naem, made with thai pork sausage, crispy rice, and herby slaw

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I can’t say exactly what my expectations were when I visited this Virgil Village neighborhood restaurant. I try to enter a new place without knowing too much about it, for the same reason I don’t like watching film previews — sometimes it can give too much away.

Pretty much all I knew was that it was an izakaya restaurant, a Japanese word meaning “stay-drink-place.” Izakayas usually serve bar snacks that can be enjoyed with beer and cocktails.

That’s precisely what Budonoki does, through a lens that leans more Thai. It's a nod to chef Dan Rabilwongse's upbringing, who grew up in nearby Echo Park in a Thai immigrant household.

Snacks included the DIY spicy tuna rolls over crispy rice with freshly toasted nori to wrap it up in, richly textured agedashi tofu and naem, a Thai pork sausage, served with crispy rice balls, and herby slaw.

The food was excellent, thoughtfully creative, fun, and interactive — I love using my hands in a dining experience. But beyond that, it’s a great hang, with good service and a well-curated playlist. Everything was on point. I hope to be back soon.

An Orange County judge has approved a $125 million settlement with the company that owns a chemical tank in Garden Grove that failed earlier this year, forcing about 50,000 nearby residents to evacuate for days as the tank threatened to explode.

The agreement between the Orange County District Attorney and GKN Aerospace sets aside up to $100 million for a claim program for residents and businesses who were forced to evacuate.

What’s covered in the claim program?

Those affected can be reimbursed for expenses like hotel stays and loss of wages. That includes:

• Up to $300 a night for lodging, up to five nights
• A $500 payment per household for the loss of using their home
• Up to $500 per day in lost wages for hourly employees who missed work due to the evacuation, up to three working days
• Up to $5,000 per day in lost profits for businesses that had to close during the evacuation

An additional $8.5 million will be used to reimburse government agencies that responded to the emergency.

The company has agreed to a safety plan, which includes new equipment and upgrades to existing equipment, and monitoring and oversight for at least the next seven years.

What’s next?

GKN says it will hold a community event on Oct. 27 so residents can learn about the claim program, though details about the event haven’t yet been released.

The company says now that the agreement has been court-approved, the claim program will open “as soon as possible.” To prepare, GKN said residents should keep receipts related to their expenses during their evacuation.

"Additional guidance on acceptable documentation will be provided when the program opens," according to a company FAQ site.

Police in Santa Ana are investigating the theft of trading cards worth at least $963,000 that were taken from a FedEx truck parked outside of a company that verifies memorabilia.

The truck was broken into on Oct. 13 near Professional Sports Authenticator, also known as PSA, which authenticates trading cards, autographs, comic books, and other memorabilia and grades their condition, Santa Ana Police Department spokesperson Natalie Garcia said in a news release. Pokémon and sports cards were among the items that were stolen, the release said.

The driver had left the truck unattended, Garcia said in a follow-up email Tuesday. How long the driver was gone is part of the investigation, she said.

The truck’s lock was gone and two pallets were taken, she said. A third pallet was disturbed.

“The estimated value of the stolen cards at the time of the incident was $963,000. However, the exact value of the stolen items has not yet been determined,” Garcia said in the news release.

Nick Andrews, a card collector near Boston, told The Associated Press the value of what was taken could be much higher.

PSA’s parent company, Collectors, said it has “deactivated the certificates for the stolen cards and notified marketplace partners so they can be on the lookout for rare and serialized items.”

The company also said it contacted affected customers directly and arranged for compensation based on fair market value.

Both FedEx and Collectors said they are working with law enforcement.

“The security of our customers’ shipments is a top priority,” FedEx spokesperson David Westrick said in a statement.

FedEx referred additional questions to police.

Some people who identified themselves as customers posted online that they got an email from PSA explaining what happened to their cards. They were worried they would never see them again or receive proper compensation.

Andrews, who collects vintage sports and Pokémon cards, told the AP in a phone interview that he was not affected by the theft but has heard from at least two dozen people who were.

“Thousands of cards, most likely, and millions of dollars, most likely,” he said of the losses collectors suffered.

He said one person who submitted cards for grading on behalf of several people told him that they lost half a million dollars in declared value.

PSA’s parent company did not get into specifics on losses in its statement.

“We understand the impact this has on collectors involved, many of whom see these cards as far more than a financial asset,” the statement from Collectors said. “Our team is focused on supporting them. We take this incident seriously, and we will continue working with law enforcement to hold those responsible accountable.”

Democrats and public school advocates have until the end of the year to make a tough decision: Whether to embrace a Republican program that might help some public-school families pay for things like tutoring and summer school – even if it will also pour taxpayer dollars into private schools.

Colorado's Jared Polis was the first Democratic governor to opt in to the coming Federal Scholarship Tax Credit, a new program the Trump administration is calling "America's first nationwide school choice program."

"An obvious decision," says Polis of his choice to embrace the policy that, with the help of a generous tax credit, could raise billions of dollars in taxpayer donations nationwide.

"Of course I want Colorado kids to be the beneficiaries of that," Polis tells NPR. "I think many other governors would like kids in their state to be the beneficiaries of that."

Many Republicans, yes. But his fellow Democrats aren't so sure.

"That is never going to happen," Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said earlier this year when asked if he would be opting his state into the program for 2027. "We are not doing it."

In between Polis and Walz, between yes and no, 15 Democratic governors, as well as the mayor of Washington, D.C., remain undecided, according to a tracker by Ed Week. And the clock is ticking. To be able to participate next year, they have to opt in by Jan. 1.

"This is really, really hard because the policy is designed to try to make these [political] wedges," says Jessica Levin, litigation director at Education Law Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy group that opposes private school vouchers.

She says Democratic governors may feel they can't pass on this program "because they think, 'Oh, there is a benefit for public schools, and I'm going to get flack.'"

But Levin, along with many of her fellow public school advocates, sees the program as a kind of Trojan horse. Billed as a boon to public schools, she says vouchers can lead some families to leave for private schools, which can then result in declines in public school funding.

How the tax credit will work

Beginning in January, qualifying taxpayers will be able to donate up to $1,700 to a scholarship-granting organization, or SGO. The SGO will then convert those donations into scholarships, also known as vouchers, to help families cover a wide range of education costs, including private school tuition as well as tutoring, summer school and even new computers.

The government's end of the bargain is that, in exchange for making a scholarship donation, these qualifying donors will get every penny back come tax season: For every dollar they contribute to one of these SGOs, they will owe the IRS a dollar less in federal income tax up to $1,700.

Put another way, if you're thinking of donating, "It's not your money. It's money that you would have sent to the IRS," says Marguerite Roza of Georgetown University's Edunomics Lab.

More than 138 million people could qualify for the full tax credit, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Plus, given the generosity of the credit, the U.S. Treasury Department predicts it could raise nearly $26 billion in scholarship donations by 2030.

For comparison, the largest source of federal education funding, known as Title I, sent more than $18 billion to schools in 2023 to help them serve low-income students.

Of the 31 states that have signed on to the new program, most are led by Republicans. Just one Democratic governor has willingly joined Polis: Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York. In Kansas, Kentucky and North Carolina, top Democrats fought the program but were overridden by Republican legislatures.

If a governor does not opt in, that state's taxpayers can still make donations to SGOs and receive the tax credit, but families in that state won't qualify for scholarships or vouchers to pay for educational expenses.

Governors who have opted in for 2027 can also choose to opt out for 2028 or vice versa.

Why some opponents feel they need to get on board

Like many of the nation's Democratic governors, groups that have championed public education in Republican-led states now face a similarly uncomfortable choice:

Continue to fight the scholarship program on principle or make a practical pivot, encouraging school districts and public school families to embrace the program so they can benefit from it.

The Southern Education Foundation (SEF) – created in the aftermath of the Civil War to guarantee schooling to the children of formerly enslaved people – chose to pivot.

"The question for me became less about whether I agreed with every aspect of the program, because I don't, and more about what happens now that the program is moving forward," Raymond C. Pierce, SEF's president and CEO, said in a press release.

"We've always been an organization that has promoted public schools, and we oppose private school vouchers," says Fred Jones Jr., SEF's senior director of public policy and advocacy.

Jones says foundation leaders fought "very hard" against the new program but decided to change their approach after most of the states where they operate opted in. The group is now launching an alliance of SGOs to focus specifically on raising funds for public school students.

"If we have tutoring, if we have afterschool programming, if we get summer learning… I think a number of students in the public school system could be tremendously better off," Jones says. 

Deborah Gist felt the same way. "I am making sure that public school students benefit," she says.

The former superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools, one of Oklahoma's largest districts, Gist recently founded Future School Fund, a national SGO focused on serving public school students.

"I pulled up the bill language itself and saw right there that public schools were very explicitly included," Gist says. "So I immediately started wearing my public school educator hat. I immediately started thinking about all the kinds of things that we could fund." 

Even with help from organizations like SEF and Future School Fund, public schools in states that have opted-in will have a lot of catching-up to do.

Many states already have state-level tax credits focused on helping families pay for private school, and very few of the SGOs that are already up and running are public school-oriented.

In other words, Jessica Levin explains, private schools already have the SGOs, the infrastructure and the advertising budgets.

That's one reason Levin, along with many other public school advocates, continues to push back against the tax credit. She predicts, "The vast majority of the money is going to be used on private school tuition and other private education expenses."

To get the money, public schools will need to start charging fees 

Marguerite Roza says public schools hoping to benefit from the tax credit will now need to decide which of the services they provide might legally be reimbursed.

"You can't charge a fee for math class," Roza says, or for much of what public schools do.

At its most basic, the program allows families to use donations to pay for education services that they'd normally have to cover out of pocket. That's a challenge for public schools, since they are required to provide education free-of-charge — they can't start charging for traditional services just so they can receive donation dollars through the new tax credit.

Private schools, on the other hand, can legally charge tuition, and the Republican program can easily be used to reimburse families for that cost. What can public schools charge for?

Roza has some ideas. "A fee could cover field trips, assemblies, access to tutoring, access to aftercare, homework drop-in hours, end of the year parties."

That doesn't sit right with Levin, though. She says, even if this kind of reimbursement is allowable under the law, "it's very wrong and very dangerous. Public schools don't charge for most of what they provide because that's the entire point of public education."

The best way to support public schools, she says, "is to fund public schools. It is not to accept a privatization program that throws a few crumbs at public school students."

When it comes to generating money for public schools, Roza agrees this new tax credit is "the most convoluted, circuitous way possible anybody could have ever laid out — and with all sorts of caveats in it."

But, she says, it's also a real program that won't benefit districts unless they actively embrace it.

For the tax credit to raise a meaningful amount of money for public school communities, Roza says, they will not only need to team up with public-school focused SGOs. They'll also need to convince local employers to include the option to donate as part of their regular payroll operations. School districts will want to fold it into their own payroll systems.

"The money is not showing up automatically," Roza says. "Districts will have to play this game in order to get the money. And where districts shrug their shoulders and say, 'I'm not doing this, I'm not gonna participate,' then they're not going to get any."

Wealthier public schools will have a big advantage

Even if some public school communities do everything right, and money pours in, an old problem is sure to surface: The schools that need the most help, may benefit the least.

"It's the public schools that are in wealthy communities that have the most money locally that they can raise," says Jon Valant, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its Brown Center on Education Policy. "And if the patterns of giving for this program look like patterns of giving for other programs across the country, we expect that most people are going to give to [SGOs] that then give back to the schools in their communities."

Valant and a team of Brookings researchers estimate that the wealthiest counties will generate roughly three times as much money through the program as the nation's poorest counties.

And that means, for lower-income, rural communities to benefit, they'll have to rely on wealthy donors' willingness to give beyond their own communities. That's not likely, Valant says.

What's more, the program is not limited to helping low-income families.

A student can qualify for help as long as their household earns less than 300% of the gross median income in their area. That's roughly 95% of all students, according to the Treasury Department's own estimates. Valant says, "There are kids across the country whose families make a half-million dollars a year who are income-eligible."

Given how disproportionately the program is likely to benefit wealthy communities, Valant warns, "there's a real chance that we end up seeing this program as Title I for rich kids."

All of which makes the decision to opt in or out that much harder for hold-out Democrats.

For Fred Jones Jr., of SEF, embracing the program was purely practical. He doesn't like it, and would advise those undecided Democratic governors to opt out. But, in the South, where SEF works, most states have opted in. It's real, like it or not.

And Jones says, if there's no conscious effort in those states to raise funds for public school students, then it simply won't happen and most of the money will, indeed, go to private schools.

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