10 DineL.A. Items You Can Only Get During Restaurant Week

If your New Year's resolution is to eat more delicious food, then dineL.A. Restaurant Week—that biannual food fest—is here at the perfect time. From Jan. 19 to Feb. 1, you'll get to sample different prix fixe lunch and dinner options from restaurants you've been meaning to try. Some newcomers to the two-week noshing event include Alimento, Butchers & Barbers, Connie & Ted's and Gracias Madre. This time around, the showrunners at dineL.A. are adding a twist—they've encouraged their participating eateries to offer special dishes that are exclusive to the event.

We've picked out the exclusive dishes that we're most excited about. These ones will be options on the restaurant's prix fixe menus, which range from lunch menus at $15, $20 or $25, or dinner options priced at $30, $40 or $50. Check out the dineL.A. website here for more info. Make sure to make a reservation before you dine as these joints get packed fast.

Abigaile: It's a little trek out to Hermosa Beach, but Abigaile, which isn't just a restaurant serving creative global cuisine but also a stellar craft brewery, is offering their take on the Japanese savory pancake, Okonomiyaki. Theirs will be made with octopus, cabbage, sweet mayo, egg and bonito flakes.

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Acabar's Beef Carpaccio (Photo courtesy of dineL.A.)
Acabar: Acabar in Hollywood is an immersive experience in Mediterranean food and with its Moroccan-influenced decor. Their special dish will be their Beef Carpaccio with a crispy pulled beef, bone marrow vinaigrette, arancini and horseradish.

Butchers & Barbers: As the name of the restaurant might suggest, the folks behind Butchers & Barbers aren't afraid of making meat the prime focus. Right next to No Vacancy and helmed by the Houston Brothers (Harvard & Stone, Good Times at Davey Wayne's), for dineL.A., they'll be presenting a crispy skin duck breast with slow-cooked black kale, curry butternut squash purée and roasted onion duck jus.

Blue Plate Oysterette's Crab Roll (Photo courtesy of dineL.A.)
Blue Plate Oysterette: Blue Plate Oysterette, with its two locations in Santa Monica and Beverly Grove, is one of those spots you go to when you have a hankering for fresh seafood, a lobster roll or bowl of clam chowder. For dineL.A., they'll be whipping up exclusive crab rolls, made with crab meat from Georges Bank, Massachusetts, and served on a hoagie.

Cafe Gratitude's "I Am Resolved" dish (Photo courtesy of dineL.A.)
Cafe Gratitude: For the vegetarians or even those looking to eat healthier this year, WeHo's Cafe Gratitude's special "I Am Resolved" bowl is chockfull of southern black-eyed peas, sprouted probiotic brown rice, pureed garnet yams and citrus collards.

Culina's Flake Crudo (Photo courtesy of dineL.A.)
Culina: The high-end Beverly Grove Italian restaurant Culina is featuring on their prix fixe menu a flake crudo dish.

K-ZO: Culver City's K-ZO likes to meld Japanese and French cuisine, and their exclusive dish touches upon both of these cultures with their Uni Crispy, which has fresh sea urchin on crispy brown rice, and topped with seared hollandaise sauce.

Night + Market WeHo's "Yum Som Oh Boran" (Photo courtesy of dineL.A.)
NIGHT + MARKET WeHo: This WeHo restaurant is known for its spicy and addictive Northern Thai street food dishes. They'll be offering a dish called "Yum Som Oh Boran," which is a pomelo salad in the style of the Ayutthaya province of Thailand; it's wok-roasted coconut shards, fried shallots, peanuts, dried shrimp, onion, cilantro, chile, lime, garlic and fish sauce.

SmokeHouse Restaurant: Okay, SmokeHouse Restaurant has gotten our attention. The Burbank steakhouse, which has been around since 1946, is throwing a classic special occasion item our way. Their exclusive dish is the Lobster Thermidor, a French-style of cooking lobster where you mix lobster meat, egg yolks, and brandy and put it in a lobster shell.

STK Los Angeles' Kurobuta Pork Chop (Photo courtesy of dineL.A.)
STK Los Angeles: WeHo's upscale and hip steak house STK Los Angeles will be offering a Kurobuta Pork Chop, a smoked ham hock with brussels sprouts and a rosemary apple chutney on their dineL.A. menu.