Don't leave without these.

Michael Cimarusti's seafood tasting menu has been the city's most serious kitchen for twenty years and finally holds three stars, plus a Green Star for how the fish is sourced. Restraint, technique, and a plate of California seafood that no one else here can match.

OrderThe tasting, with the uni and caviar supplement if it's offered. The 'ugly bunch' tuna course and the whole-fish preparations are the ones people remember.

Jon Yao's Taiwanese-American tasting menu was promoted to two stars this year and is the most personal fine dining in the city: night-market memories reworked with Californian produce, in a minimal room off Alameda. The bar takes walk-ins for a shorter menu.

OrderThe tasting at the table; at the bar, the toasted honey-garlic bread and whatever the sour-cabbage fish course is that season. The guava shaved ice to finish.

Gilberto Cetina's Yucatecan seafood counter inside a South Central food hall holds a Michelin star and a 4.8 on Google from three thousand people — a combination no other restaurant on any of these rolls can claim. Ceviches, aguachiles and tacos of a quality that shouldn't exist under fluorescent lights.

OrderThe kanpachi taco and the octopus taco, the scallop aguachile, the tuna tostada, and the caldo de mariscos if you're staying. Ask for the hot sauces — they're kept at the counter.

Nancy Silverton's mozzarella bar has kept its star for over a decade by doing the same things perfectly: fresh cheeses at the counter, hand-made pasta, bread that reminds you she invented La Brea. The most consistent starred room in Los Angeles.

OrderStart at the mozzarella bar — the burrata and the burricotta with spiced walnuts — then the ricotta-and-egg raviolo and the butternut-squash tortelloni. Olive-oil cake to finish.

A Sonoran taquería downtown whose flour tortillas — thin, blistered, hand-pressed from flour brought up from Mexico — are the single best thing to eat for under five dollars in Los Angeles. New to the Bib list this year and overdue.

OrderTacos de asada and the chorizo burrito, then the chivichanga (a griddled burrito) with the braised beef. Coconut horchata.

A truck on Olympic Boulevard that has served one dish since 2001: a fried shrimp taco, crisp shell, soft filling, drowned in salsa and avocado. Every food critic in the city has called it the best taco in Los Angeles at least once. Cash only.

OrderTwo tacos de camarón and the Poseidon tostada (shrimp, octopus and ceviche). The shrimp ceviche tostada if you're still hungry.

The pastrami argument with New York is settled here: hand-cut, steamed for hours, on double-baked rye with a crust that cracks, since 1947. The #19 — pastrami, Swiss, coleslaw, Russian dressing — is the one sandwich every Angeleno agrees on.

OrderThe #19 and a bowl of matzo ball soup. Purists get the pastrami plain on rye. Closes at four; go for lunch.

Justin Pichetrungsi turned his family's Valley Thai restaurant into the most exciting table in the city — a Bib, a Beard finalist, a natural-wine list, and a Tuesday night when the whole menu becomes Thai-spiced tacos. The fried chicken alone justifies the drive over the hill.

OrderThe southern Thai fried chicken, the crab fried rice and the papaya salad any night; on Thai Taco Tuesday, the bass tacos and the fish tostada. Book the day reservations open.

Open twenty-four hours on Western Avenue, with a line at midnight for one dish: galbi jjim, short ribs braised in a spicy sweet-soy broth with rice cakes, arriving in a cast-iron pan and, if you ask, under a torched cap of cheese. Koreatown's most beloved feast.

OrderThe galbi jjim, medium spicy, with the cheese, for two or more. The seolleongtang (ox-bone soup) for one, at any hour.

Chris Bianco brought the most famous pizza oven in America from Phoenix to the Arts District, and the pies are the same — thin, blistered, dressed with restraint — with a Bib to prove Michelin noticed. Lunch, no line, is the secret.

OrderThe Rosa (red onion, rosemary, pistachio) and the Margherita, a bowl of the beans with burrata to start. Don't skip the gnocchi.