Restaurant Review

This is Beverly Hills?, I wondered, oh so many years ago when a friend took me to lunch in a sweet little house with a fireplace on South Beverly Drive. Chez Mimi later moved to Santa Monica, and Urth Caffé now dispenses soy lattes and iced green tea from that rose-covered cottage. Back then (and now), South Beverly Drive didn't seem fancy at all, more like a small-town Main Street where you'd find shops selling nightgowns and one-piece swimming suits, baseball cards and birthday gifts.

Italian favorite Gino Angelini finds a bigger stage, but is that necessarily better? 9201 W. Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, (310) 278-2060, rivabellarestaurant.com PRICES Pizzas, $14-$27; antipasti, $10-$26; salads, $12-$22; pastas, $14-$22; main courses, $28-$40 DETAILS 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Mondays to Fridays, 5:30-10:30 p.m. Sundays and Mondays, 5:30-11 p.m. Tuesdays and Wednesdays, 5:30 p.m.-midnight Thursdays to Saturdays....

A few months ago, a colleague invited me to dinner at Newport Beach's Tamarind of London, which he considered probably the best Indian restaurant in Southern California, a full-fledged satellite of a Mayfair restaurant that had been among the first kitchens ever to win a Michelin star for its Indian cuisine. I had been to the London original about a decade ago, and while I had been more impressed by the clubby plushness of Cinnamon and the direct, vibrant flavors at Rasa and the late Kastoori, I was impressed by the Mayfair Tamarind and its frank attempt to produce Indian food with the sheen and polish of white-tablecloth European cuisine.

Angelini Osteria is almost everyone's favorite Italian restaurant in midtown: an informal room with well-designed trattoria cooking, a place to settle into for a plate of bombolotti or a Sunday saltimbocca, where whatever diet you happen to be on at the time will be accommodated without a fuss. Some nights, it feels as if everybody in the room knows one another, but you're in on the party too. You drink well, you eat well and you go home. A lot of chefs have come out of that kitchen, including Ori Menashe of Bestia.

Angelini Osteria is almost everyone's favorite Italian restaurant in midtown: an informal room with well-designed trattoria cooking, a place to settle into for a plate of bombolotti or a Sunday saltimbocca, where whatever diet you happen to be on at the time will be accommodated without a fuss. Some nights, it feels as if everybody in the room knows one another, but you're in on the party too. You drink well, you eat well and you go home. A lot of chefs have come out of that kitchen, including Ori Menashe of Bestia.

Muddy Leek is in kind of an odd location, just a block or two away from the restaurants in Culver City's Helms complex yet seemingly well outside of the area. It's part of a building that briefly served as a design museum before it was converted into architects' offices, in an awkwardly proportioned space that runs through restaurant identities like Spinal Tap goes through drummers. The neighborhood is rich enough in gelaterias and boutique art galleries that it is nearly impossible to find a parking space on Saturday nights, and the big windows face out onto a panorama that includes two liquor stores, the ice cream sandwich shop Coolhaus, and a shop that flashes slides of sleekly designed kitchens on its exterior as if they were movies at a drive-in.

I'm crazy for oysters, always have been. At Hog Island Oysters near Bodega Bay, I've been known to down three or four dozen at a time, all shucked, slowly, by me. Wherever I'm headed, you can be sure I've got the oyster bars mapped out ahead of time. So when news came that a new oyster bar was about to open across from LA Mill in Silver Lake, I was thrilled. Even sweeter, the partners in the new spot are Dustin Lancaster and Matthew Kaner, the duo that brought Los Feliz the quality wine bar Covell.

The differences between hot and cool restaurants have been well-explored: At a hot restaurant, as at an amusement park, you plug yourself into a prearranged scenario; at a cool one, more involving, you determine your own role within the context of the restaurant environment. There is a third category, the "warm" restaurant, which exists mostly outside intensely urbanized areas and hardly at all in L.A.

The first time you come to n/naka, a kaiseki restaurant a bit north of Sony studios in the Palms area of Los Angeles, you will inevitably soar right by the place, a low, featureless building in a strip of dry cleaners and tarot-card readers surrounded by a raked zen garden in 50 shades of gray. There is no sign, no valet parking, no hint that you are entering a restaurant instead of a high-toned back office. When you find your way through the front door, you will be greeted by name - reservations are mandatory - and led through the spare, elegant dining room to a serene private room or possibly a nook that looks like the sleeping alcove in an expensive Manhattan studio apartment.

With the new Wolfgang Puck at Hotel Bel-Air, the Austrian chef who, along with Alice Waters, begat California cuisine, has finally achieved a quintessentially Californian restaurant, one with a legendary outdoor terrace in a verdant setting with swans gliding through ponds and enormous old trees overhanging walkways and tumbling streams. And what a difference: For the first time in recent memory, the historic hotel has a serious restaurant with some seriously good food. Puck may no longer be the youngest kid on the block, but he's tough and smart and, more important, he knows how to make food that is genuinely delicious.

Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold returns Wednesday for his weekly live chat, "Lunchtime With Mr. Gold. " Stop by at noon and bring your questions. He'll answer as many of your dining queries as he can get to in half an hour. So get ready!  Got a craving for BBQ? Need to get your hands on a glazed doughnut? Need a recommendation for someone who loves Indian food? Have more culinary questions? Gold's your man. More Jonathan Gold quizzes: Sandwich time | Pickles | Birds Come back here Wednesday at noon.  LIVE Lunchtime with Jonathan Gold » ALSO: What I'm drinking now: David Rosoff of Osteria Mozza Food & Wine names Michael Voltaggio of L.A.'s ink. a best new chef Jonathan Gold | L.A. restaurant review: Muddy Leek gets comfortable in Culver City  

Muddy Leek Because sometimes all you really need is a comfortable, stylish place that serves good food. LOCATION 8631 Washington Blvd., Culver City, (310) 838-2281, muddyleek.com. PRICES Small plates $5-$13; entrees $21-$29; desserts $9-$10. DETAILS Open 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 10 p.m. Tues.-Sat.; happy hour 4 to 6 p.m. Tues.-Fri.; AE, MC, V Full Bar. Occasionally difficult street parking. RECOMMENDED DISHES leek and egg; shrimp and grits; diver scallops with fennel.

Muddy Leek is in kind of an odd location, just a block or two away from the restaurants in Culver City's Helms complex yet seemingly well outside of the area. It's part of a building that briefly served as a design museum before it was converted into architects' offices, in an awkwardly proportioned space that runs through restaurant identities like Spinal Tap goes through drummers. The neighborhood is rich enough in gelaterias and boutique art galleries that it is nearly impossible to find a parking space on Saturday nights, and the big windows face out onto a panorama that includes two liquor stores, the ice cream sandwich shop Coolhaus, and a shop that flashes slides of sleekly designed kitchens on its exterior as if they were movies at a drive-in.

A few months ago, a colleague invited me to dinner at Newport Beach's Tamarind of London, which he considered probably the best Indian restaurant in Southern California, a full-fledged satellite of a Mayfair restaurant that had been among the first kitchens ever to win a Michelin star for its Indian cuisine. I had been to the London original about a decade ago, and while I had been more impressed by the clubby plushness of Cinnamon and the direct, vibrant flavors at Rasa and the late Kastoori, I was impressed by the Mayfair Tamarind and its frank attempt to produce Indian food with the sheen and polish of white-tablecloth European cuisine.

Across the street from the Hollywood post office, a few short blocks from the 1930s complex that calls itself Crossroads of the World, Littlefork is an improbably rustic roadhouse in the middle of old Hollywood - a spare tavern, a slash of neon scrawl and a slender apron of parking lot you could imagine filling up with Packards instead of Lexus hybrids. Littlefork is the new restaurant from Jason Travi, whose Mediterranean-style cooking you may have tried at the late Fraîche in Culver City, and from David Reiss, a Westside bar owner whose portfolio includes A-frame, Sunny Spot, the Alibi Room and the Brig.

Across the street from the Hollywood post office, a few short blocks from the 1930s complex that calls itself Crossroads of the World, Littlefork is an improbably rustic roadhouse in the middle of old Hollywood - a spare tavern, a slash of neon scrawl and a slender apron of parking lot you could imagine filling up with Packards instead of Lexus hybrids. Littlefork is the new restaurant from Jason Travi, whose Mediterranean-style cooking you may have tried at the late Fraîche in Culver City, and from David Reiss, a Westside bar owner whose portfolio includes A-frame, Sunny Spot, the Alibi Room and the Brig.