Los Angeles has created the perfect setting for just about anything you need to do over dinner. Fall in love. Break up. Argue with loved ones. Read a text aloud three times while your best friends help you read too much between the lines. Obviously, the food is important, but so is finding a room that can accommodate whatever you’re bringing to the table.
Welcome to The Unofficial likeafriendsaid Restaurant Awards, where we’re recognizing restaurants for the occasions that somehow haven’t made it into the usual “best of” lists. A first-time visitor needs the LA fantasy. Your best friend needs strong margaritas and a full breakup debrief. That outfit you bought a year ago needs witnesses.
For whatever’s going on in your life, we can at least help with where to eat...
Best Restaurant for a Family Argument
Winner: Miceli’s Italian Restaurant — The singing waiters will regularly interrupt your fight while simultaneously giving it the theatrical gravitas of an Italian opera.
Runner-Up: Cipriani Beverly Hills Jazz Café — Take the argument upstairs, where live jazz provides an appropriately dramatic score and, hopefully, drowns out whatever you’d rather the next table didn’t hear.
Best Restaurant for People Watching
Winner: RVR — Grab a counter seat facing Abbot Kinney and watch what feels like the entire population of Venice walk by.
Runner-Up: The Polo Lounge — Sometimes the obvious choice is the right one… Execs talk business in a variety of languages, birthday brunch groups dressed like pageant queens beneath the patio’s century-old pepper tree and an A-lister orders the famous McCarthy Salad minus everything but the lettuce (firsthand reporting).
Best Restaurant to Take Someone Visiting LA for the First Time
Winner: Chateau Marmont — Old Hollywood, the Sunset Strip, palm trees, a view, and possibly a secret Miley Cyrus concert (something even us locals are secretly hoping for—nobody’s too LA to be excited about that). Basically, the LA fantasy they came here expecting.
Runner-Up: Oleander at The Sun Rose — Go at sunset for dinner on the rooftop above Sunset Boulevard and let that LA panoramic skyline moment do the work.
Best Restaurant for a Long, Leisurely Lunch With No Plans After
Winner: Nobu Malibu — Settle in at the bar overlooking the Pacific, order lunch and a cocktail, then another cocktail, and see where the afternoon takes you. Ideally, nowhere you need to be on time.
Runner Up: Calabra— Grab a sun-dappled table, order their watermelon mocktail (add tequila), and let the plates arrive one at a time.
Best Restaurant for Martinis Worth Canceling Your 8am Workout
Winner: Tower Bar — Martinis that “skate” (meaning ice-cold, for the uninitiated alcoholics) are a Sunset Tower ritual. With live jazz, Old Hollywood charm, and waiters in white tuxedos, staying for another round feels like a luxury you can’t dismiss. Your workout never stood a chance.
Runner Up: Lucky’s Malibu — Tableside martinis at an old-school steakhouse in the Malibu Country Mart don’t sound like a smart plan before an 8am workout. The trick is to order a steak, settle in, and let that tableside mart-oon service convince you that you weren’t even committed to that workout anyway.
Best Restaurant to Convince Your friends to Travel West
Winner: The Tasting Kitchen — Newly reopened, with food everyone will verbally admit was worth the drive and an intimate Venice setting that makes crossing the 405 feel like a smart choice (which takes a lot).
Runner Up: Wallflower — This underappreciated Venice spot is good enough to remind your Eastside friends that the Westside can, in fact, cook. Expect high praise followed by an insistence that you come East next time, because one fantastic meal won’t settle the custody battle over where everyone should meet.
Best Restaurant to Convince Your friends to Travel East
Winner: Dunsmoor — Live-fire cooking and a meal good enough to justify whatever the 10 put you through to get there. Just make sure your friends have a few bites in them before asking them how their drive was.
Runner-Up: A Tí — The kind of Echo Park dinner that makes the trip East feel like a proper night out. Now your friends who “never come over here” want to know where you’re taking them next.
Best Restaurant to Finally Wear the Outfit That’s Been Hanging in Your Closet Just Waiting for an Occasion
Winner: Bar Seco — You’re going to run into everyone you know, and somehow everyone will be dressed slightly better than you. It’s basically a nightly Los Angeles fashion show, so give that outfit you’ve been saving for a fictional occasion its proper debut.
Runner Up: Dudley Market — Venice’s interpretation of dressing up: slip dresses, vintage denim, cowboy boots, and something that could be DÔEN or a flea-market find. At least everyone is trying.
Best Restaurant to Spend Hours Dissecting Every Detail of Your Best friend’s Breakup Over Dinner
Winner: Casa Blanca — The margaritas are dangerously strong, the room is loud and lively enough for an honest assessment of any relationship without risk of being overheard, and if things get too emotional, turn their attention to the fresh tortillas being made right in front of you. It’s dinner with the option to become a pregame, depending on how quickly they progress from being too sad to “Where are we going after this?”
Runner-Up: Bar Etoile — They’ve even thought about the noise from shaking cocktails and banned it, so a packed room feels lively without requiring you to yell across the table. Your friend needs somewhere buzzy to go, and you need to hear every word of the text she’s about to read aloud so you can offer actual commentary instead of just nodding along and hoping your face is doing the right thing.
And if your own company is the occasion, find our favorite spots for dining solo here.
— Your friend
