L.A.’s Best New Restaurants

After the Pacific Rim thing, "eclectic" cuisine is probably the buzziest style these days--the standard American grill menu viewed through a lens of the juices and spices and mephitic, fishy stinks of the developing world. San Francisco and Boston have dozens of these places, peopled with the nose-ringed and staffed with the recent cooking-school grads; Los Angeles has relatively few. 2424 Pico, popular among the young Hollywood crowd, is one of those small, bare places, loud but comfortable, where plates bulge with Moroccan-spiced this, Korean-spiced that, lots of seared fish and chiles in everything but the dessert. Give the place bonus points for its well-chosen wine list--a tour of the more interesting young California producers.

Los Angeles Magazine

Spago/Beverly Hills - 176 N. Canon Dr., Beverly Hills 310-385-0880
Jozu - 8360 Melrose Ave. 213-655-5600
Chez Gilles - 267 S. Beverly Dr., Beverly Hills 310-216-1558
Mimosa - 8009 Beverly Blvd. 213-655-8895
Cicada - 617 S. Olive St. 213-655-5559
2424 pico - 2424 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica 310-581-1124
Pinot at the Chronicle - 897 Granite Dr., Pasadena 818-792-1179
Pastis - 8114 Beverly Blvd. 213-655-5822
Restaurant Devon - 109 E. Lemon Ave., Monrovia 818-305-0013
Michi - 903 Manhattan Ave. Manhattan Beach 310-376-0613