Eating Los Angeles: 10 essential food experiences

Why a meal in a car park under high-tension power lines might be one of LA's happiest dining experiences.

1. Chase down a taco truck

Sprawling Los Angeles has been fed by food trucks since the '50s, and chef Roy Choi's are the modern holy grail, with their short rib tacos and Korean/Mexican mash-ups like kimchi quesadilla – the perfect, perky, jetlag cure. Three Kogi​ trucks frequent a few easy-to-find spots for travellers, including Venice and El Segundo​. You might find a film crew queuing, a DJ playing from a car park tent beneath power pylons, and a great meal for less than $10. Choi also has cheerful Caribbean (Sunny Spot, Venice), Hawaiian (A-Frame, Culver West) and Koreatown (Pot) restaurants too.

For locations, see kogibbq.com or follow @kogibbq​ on Twitter.

2. Shop at a farmers' market

Spot celebs and celeb chefs among Santa Monica's Wednesday and Saturday farmers' market crowd stocking up for the weekend. Make a picnic of your bounty at Will Rogers State Park (the movie cowboy's charming home and farm on Sunset Boulevard). Though not a farmers' market in the same way, the original, 1934 Farmers Market on West 3rd Street is still a cheap place to grab chilaquiles​ or barbecue on a bun … especially if you've busted the budget at the adjacent Truman Show-styled open-air mall, the Grove, or before catching a movie at the Grove's palatial cinemas. (No joke … they're like a palace). Many other LA suburbs have weekly markets. LA Weekly has a rundown.

Santa Monica Farmers Markets, Arizona and 2nd streets, Wednesday; Arizona and 3rd streets, Saturday, from 8.30am to 1pm. smgov.net/Portals/FarmersMarket/
Farmers Market Los Angeles, 6333 W 3rd Street, Los Angeles 90036 +1 323-933-9211 farmersmarketla.com

3. Try a new-school seafood restaurant

Americans love their chowder, crab cakes, and lobster rolls … and a new breed of restaurants are doing retro seafood with a sense of fun, hopping from the south to the north to the Orient. Think shrimp toast, poke, ceviche, tuna melt, fish in batter, or in tacos, or blackened – sometimes all on the same menu. Try Blue Plate Oysterette​ (Santa Monica), Fishing With Dynamite (Manhattan Beach), Santa Monica Yacht Club (Santa Monica), Son of a Gun (LA).

Blue Plate Oysterette 1355 Ocean Avenue, Santa Monica, (310) 576-3474 blueplatesantamonica.com
Fishing With Dynamite 1148 Manhattan Avenue, Manhattan Beach, (310) 893-6299 eatfwd.com
Santa Monica Yacht Club 620 Santa Monica Boulevard, Santa Monica, (310) 587-3330 eatsmyc.com
Son of a Gun 8370 W 3rd Street, Beverly Grove, (323) 782-9033 sonofagunrestaurant.com

4. Go downtown

Explore the still-gentrifying historic downtown then grab a baco (chef Josef Centeno​'s signature flatbread sandwich, the original with pork belly and beef carnitas) at welcoming Baco Mercat, or pop into one of Centeno's other casually stylish downtown places (Bar Ama is Mexican, Orsa and Winston's omakase). When you're visiting the concert hall, the Geffen and the Broad art museums, pop into Grand Central Market for breakfast or lunch. Egg Slut is a popular stall, but there's plenty more: from deli pastrami sandwiches to Japanese and Salvadorean. Good coffee here too.

Baco Mercat 408 S Main Street, Los Angeles, (213)687-8808 bacomercat.com
Grand Central Market 317 S Broadway, Los Angeles, (213)624-2378 grandcentralmarket.com

5. Do your own star tour

Brentwood Country Mart has a grocer and cafes … it might also have Reese, Taylor and Gwyneth dashing out in Birkenstocks and James Perse T-shirts for a coffee fix. The bar at the Chateau Marmont is a good food lover's spots to star gaze, as are Venice's Gjelina and Gjusta.

Brentwood Country Mart, 225 26th Street, Corner San Vicente, Santa Monica. brentwoodcountrymart.com

6. Explore the new hoods

The city's burgeoning immigrant populations have produced foreign food enclaves that are interesting places to wander and eat. Several companies, including Urban Adventures, offer walking tours of interesting food hoods such as Koreatown and Little Armenia. losangelesurbanadventures.com

7. Eat Mexican

Try delicious downtown newcomer Broken Spanish, to see where native Angeleno Ray Garcia takes Modern Mexican. Mango panna cotta with habanero chilli caramel and cayenne meringue, anyone? Sibling BS Taqueria is a few blocks away. Pioneering Mexican restaurant Border Grill has several locations and a stand in Tom Bradley at LAX too. bordergrill.com

Broken Spanish, 1050 S Flower Street, Los Angeles, (near LA Live) (213)749-1460 brokenspanish.com

8. Do a beach bar crawl by bike

An oceanfront bike path runs 41 kilometres along LA's wide sandy beaches, through towns made famous by the Beach Boys' Surfin' USA, like Manhattan and Redondo Beaches, where you'll be overtaken by rollerbladers and surfboard-carrying beach-cruiser riders in bikinis and boardshorts. Best spots to grab a burger, or down a margarita as the sun sinks slowly in the west and the dolphins play? Santa Monica, Venice, Marina Del Rey, or Manhattan (try David LeFevre's restaurants), Hermosa and Redondo beaches. A few blocks inland at Santa Monica, Cassia's Vietnamese-leaning Asian/French fusion is dished up in a stunning former phone exchange office. It's one of the city's best new restaurants.

Cassia, 1314 7th Street, Santa Monica, (310) 393 6699 cassiala.com

9. Try California cuisine

It's not all kale salads, but gee, they do them well. Wolfgang Puck put smoked salmon on a pizza back in 1982, and his Spago is still on the radar of Aussie-turned-Angeleno food reviewer Besha Rodell (Twitter @besharodell) who has her finger on the pulses (and the grains too) for LA Weekly.

Spago, 176 N Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 385-0880 wolfgangpuck.com

10. Go Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi Oi Oi

Hotspot West Hollywood Asia-Pacific eatery EP and rooftop bar LP have Aussies DJ Grant Smillie as a co-owner and former Longrain Sydney chef Louis Tikaram cooking. Curtis Stone's Maude in Beverly Hills is also winning acclaim. Oh, some of LA's best coffees are Aussie too, including Paramount Coffee Project. (pcpfx.com).

EP/LP 603 N La Cienega Boulevard, West Hollywood, (310)855-9955 eplosangeles.com
Maude, 212 S Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills, (310) 859-3418 mauderestaurant.com

Survival guide

Don't rule out eating early to get in somewhere. Because of its entertainment-industry roots and traffic, it's not uncommon for Angelenos to dine at 5.30pm or 6pm.

Do book. You can often snag a berth online, even at queued-for spots. Ludo Lefebvre's well-regarded 24-seater, Trois Mec (with offshot Petit Trois), is an exception that requires military precision and a 3am alarm (because of time differences when ticket sales open) to get in.

Don't discount a place because there's a TV in the bar. Showing sports, especially college football or baseball, doesn't mean somewhere is not taking its food seriously.

Until you get across portion sizes, you'll save money and kilojoules by ordering half-serves and splitting dishes, especially epic-sized sandwiches.

Don't be afraid of valet parking. It's usually a convenient and often cost-effective option.

LA has more cabs than previously, but it's an Uber town.