To understand what immigrants mean to California, eat at any restaurant

Los Angeles Times

12-06-2025

Taquerias, dim sum parlors, sushi counters, noodle shops, kebab stands, strip malls filled with businesses serving 12 different Vietnamese specialties: Immigrant excellence powers every single restaurant on the L.A. Times' first ever 101 best restaurants in California guide. Without exception.
Even in the white-owned places serving Euro-centric dishes, who is doing the cooking or delivering the plates to the table? I see the greatness of immigrant contributions to our dining culture everywhere.
Given the past week in Los Angeles, amid the accelerated immigration raids and anti-ICE protests, and the many obfuscations across social media and national coverage in their portrayals of L.A. and Angelenos, it feels important to say plainly: The top-to-bottom glory of culinary California feeds and influences the nation and the world, and it would not exist without our immigrants.
That's reflected in our new statewide 101 essential restaurants project, which went live this morning.
This list isn't full of super-secret, 'undiscovered' amazements hidden in the furthest regions of the state. No. It's built from fantastic restaurants of all kinds — the standouts, telling a collective story about who we are and what we eat.
Did I rank them? No, though of course I'm aware plenty of people crave stars and status to argue over.
The No. 1 reason to take the time to read over the guide is to see that, in the spirit of usefulness, the 101 restaurants are jumping-off points. There is too much brilliance to highlight at every level in California. So along with many of the write-ups, you'll find 'extra helpings' of restaurants similar in style or cuisine or geography.
For instance, you might glance down the list of places in San Francisco — the U.S. capital of fine dining, full-stop — and say, 'These are out of my budget!' Keep reading, and you'll see I've also included more affordable dining recommendations in the city.
Eating well in California has outgrown simplistic notions of perfect fruit on a plate.
For almost 50 years, the architects of the modern California-wide dining culture drove the ethos of 'seasonal' and 'local' into eye-glazing cliches, and we know who farms all our beautiful produce.
But over the last decade, the foods of the state's longest-standing immigrant communities — Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino and Middle Eastern, among others — have become engines of creativity for a new generation of chefs cooking from their heritage.
At the stove, each person could choose to hue close to tradition or veer wildly into innovation. Someone could re-create their grandmother's pozole, another could infuse the dish's broth with Asian herbs and garnish it with edible flowers.
If it was delicious, it found an audience. It was a big element when, in the early 2010s, media and food lovers finally began acknowledging Los Angeles on the world map as a dining destination.
That approach — it can go by 'third culture cuisine' or 'identity-based cooking' — is no less thrilling these days, but it's become a welcome part of our culinary consciousness.
The reaction isn't so much, 'Whoa, this take on mapo tofu is wild' as it is, 'Ah, this is what you bring.' It's the closest I have to a modern, working definition of the overly broad term 'California cuisine.'
Staying in
John says, 'I was thinking about leaving a promising career in the corporate world working 50-60 hours a week to become a teacher. My dad asked me why. One reason was that I would be able to spend more time with my kids. He was retired from a job where he worked 50-60 hours a week and said that he wished he had worked less because he missed out on so much of my and my siblings' lives. He told me to never put work before family like he had done.'
Katie says, 'I grew up in Washington, DC, and was lucky to have a father who loved to take me out to eat at all kinds of restaurants. My father taught me from a very young age to always read the dessert menu first, so you could plan your meal accordingly.'
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On June 12, 1967, the Loving vs. Virginia decision deemed bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional. In recent years, the anniversary of that decision has been informally celebrated by multiracial families across the country.
In 2016, The Times invited readers to share their Loving Day stories and how interracial relationships have affected them.
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