Los Angeles for first-time visitors

Best restaurants

Downtown Los Angeles eats on a tighter map than the city's freeway sprawl suggests. The twelve restaurants below sit inside a fifteen-block square anchored by Little Tokyo and the Civic Center — a stretch of 90012 ZIP codes where a courthouse lunch, a ramen counter open past midnight, and a tasting menu in a 1929 firehouse all share the same cross streets. The list is built for someone working a weekday in the Civic Center, lingering after a show at the Music Center, or wandering 1st and 2nd Streets between the Japanese American National Museum and Central Avenue. It is a Japanese-leaning list because Little Tokyo is a Japanese-leaning neighborhood, but it also makes room for a Korean BBQ counter, a pizzeria, an Eastern Mediterranean late-night, and an American kitchen run by Homeboy Industries. Hours and addresses are taken from each venue's OpenStreetMap and official-site record; treat them as the starting point and call ahead if you are crossing town for a specific dish.