And The Best LA Restaurant Is...In OC?

LOS ANGELES, CA — Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold has picked his 2018 Los Angeles Times "Restaurant Of The Year," and it's in -- Costa Mesa.

Taco Maria and chef Carlos Salgado were praised for "regarding tortillas with a seriousness familiar to any fanatical French baker, using perfect seasonal produce and treating regional Mexican dishes with both imagination and respect."

And the restaurant in the distant suburbs of Orange County was described by the Times critic as an "almost anti-luxurious dining room, in a Costa Mesa hipster mall, an hour's drive from many of his fans and colleagues."

That, Gold said, is "almost a miracle."

"Taco Maria has given not only Los Angeles, but his native Orange County a sense of place a place where roasted guinea hens with mole, tortillas stuffed with sturgeon and asparagus velout with spring garlic stand beside crocks of mushroom chorizo and marinated Baja blood clams."

The pick was named to kick off the Los Angeles Times Food Bowl, a monthlong celebration of edibles, which kicks off this week.

City News Service; Photo: Shutterstock