3 SoCal Restaurants Are Among New York Times' 50 Most Exciting Eateries In The U.S.

ORANGE COUNTY, CA — It's a great time to be a foodie in Southern California. Angelenos were well represented at this year's James Beard Awards and last year a whopping 30 SoCal spots made the Michelin Guide.

And now, three new Southland restaurants are among what the New York Times calls the "50 places in the United States that we’re most excited about right now."

This year's "The Restaurant List" is the third ever by the publication.

"It wasn’t easy to narrow it down, but here are the 50 restaurants that excite us most right now," the Times wrote.

The LA spots on the Times' list are Yess and Perilla L.A, which both opened earlier this year, and Quarter Sheets, which opened in 2022.

Here's what writer Tejal Rao had to saw about the Yess, which started as a food truck before opening as sit-down Japanese spot in Los Angeles' Arts District in May:

In this peaceful dining room, surrounded by a cheerful staff in all-white uniforms, it might seem as if Yess were the headquarters for an arcane Southern Californian cult. But no, this isn’t that kind of fine-dining restaurant! Junya Yamasaki’s cooking is as precise and controlled as his menu is inviting and flexible: Put together exactly the dinner you feel like eating, whether that’s a cold beer and hot, crispy katsu doused in Worcestershire sauce, or a long and luxurious sequence of mesmerizing dishes, like the rockfish with citrus ponzu and the vegetable-packed “monk’s chirashi sushi.”

On the border of LA's Chinatown and Echo Park is Perilla L.A, which opened in July. Rao wrote this about the Korean restaurant:

This cozy, casual banchan shop spills out into a courtyard where you can feast on warm seasoned rice, sweet pepper muchim, marinated okra, perfect spirals of rolled omelets and more of whatever Jihee Kim has cooked in her tiny open kitchen that day. Ms. Kim, who started Perilla as a pop-up during the pandemic’s first wave of restaurant shutdowns, is guided by Korean cooking and fermentation techniques as much as by what excites her at the farmers’ market. The results are wonderfully unpredictable and delicious.

Rao wrote this about Quarter Sheets, the square-pizza joint that opened in LA's Highland Park in January 2022:

Aaron Lindell and Hannah Ziskin’s Echo Park pizzeria confidently shifts from thick, airy, crisp-edged Sicilian corner slices inspired by, say, California Pizza Kitchen’s barbecue chicken pizza one day, to cracker-thin bar pies jeweled with Jimmy Nardello peppers the next. And we don’t have room to get into the perfection of the salad and its dressing, but it seems important to note that even the simplest sides here are a delight. Ms. Ziskin’s daily dessert specials and seasonal layered cakes would be reason enough to join the small, loyal crowd that tends to gather outside on the cracked sidewalk just as soon as the restaurant opens its doors. These slices — both savory and sweet — are always worth the wait.

See the full list from the New York Times online here.

Patch staffer Max Bennett contributed to this report.