Why we are celebrating California’s greatness in 101 restaurants right now

A truth of journalism: You conceive a long-term project and you set a publish date months in advance. You can’t possibly predict what will be happening in the world on the day a project is scheduled to go live.

The 101 Best Restaurants in California

This week, The Times published its first-ever guide to the 101 Best Restaurants in California, an undertaking that builds on our annual 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles tentpole and for which I traveled statewide for much of the past year.

It arrives amid unsettling turbulence: accelerated immigration raids in Los Angeles and across California; President Trump’s extraordinary deployment of U.S. Marines and National Guardsmen to L.A. and pursuant challenges to their presence in court; federal agents shoving U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla to the ground and cuffing him for interrupting a news conference with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem; and countrywide planned “No Kings” demonstrations to oppose the Trump administration’s policies.

Like most Angelenos, I have no patience for the mischaracterizations of Los Angeles in national conversation, particularly around the recent anti-ICE protests.

Edgar Hernandez ladles agua fresca at his family’s food cart just off the L.A. Plaza de Cultura y Artes earlier this week.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

My colleague Stephanie Breijo reported on how downtown’s restaurants and bars are struggling, given the 8 p.m. curfew in areas that extend beyond the hot zones for anti-ICE protests. Breijo, Lauren Ng and Karla Marie Sanford also specifically asked vendors in Grand Central Market how they’re weathering the moment. And Sanford talked with taqueros and other street vendors about their safety fears. Consider what these businesses have already endured in the last five years.

So it’s understandable to bookmark a list of great places to eat across California for another time … or? Take a scroll as a breather from the chaotic news cycle. Because if there’s one positive effect out of the ugliness, it’s that many Californians are feeling more united in spirit right now. Anyone who writes about food in Los Angeles or California considers the diversity of our communities constantly. It’s implied in every narrative. Read about these restaurants and it couldn’t be plainer: The glories of culinary California feeds and influences the nation, and the world would not exist without immigrants.

A bigger look at our essential dining culture

Since starting with The Times in late 2018, I’ve written or co-written six annual guides to the 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles. Each year, I’ve tinkered with the same thought: What would it be like to take that guiding 101 number and expand it to the whole state?

The idea was partly from experience. Months before moving to Los Angeles, while working as the national critic for Eater, I had joined colleagues in tackling a project naming California’s 38 essential restaurants. Crisscrossing the state then only made me want to see, taste and understand more.

Los Angeles is a cultural world of its own. It changes too quickly and covers too much ground, in many senses, to cement its definition. Which is why, with the L.A. 101 guide, it’s always been thrilling to ask: Which mix of restaurants tells the most compelling, complete and delicious story about Los Angeles right now?

Charred broccoli taco, left, and taco de camote at Tacos Oscar in Oakland.

(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)

A broader working answer to that question drove with me across the state.

I did not rank the restaurants on this list, though of course I’m aware plenty of people crave stars and status to argue over. Ranking restaurants in Los Angeles once a year is hard enough.

Take in the entries and you’ll see that, for maximum usefulness, the named 101 restaurants are starting points. There was too much excellence to highlight at every level in California. It made sense in many cases to embed “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. Or you might be spending the afternoon in Orange County’s Little Saigon district, so along with my favorite overall restaurant and pho shop, I mention some other area jewels.

“The Holic” at Phoholic in the Little Saigon district in Orange County’s Westminster.

(Shelby Moore / For The Times)

One answer to a frequent question

An early question I’m hearing about the California 101 project: “What surprised you the most?”

One answer: Among California’s cities, I knew our state capital the least before this endeavor. I spent nearly two weeks there experiencing as much as I could. While I turned to peers (like my counterparts at the San Francisco Chronicle) for guidance in other areas, I relied on some unusually well-fed friends in Sacramento.

I’m particularly remembering my second night, dining at a place that turned out to be solid but not exceptional, and I said to the three locals at my table: “OK, so what do you all think is the absolute greatest restaurant in this city?” And they all looked at each other and said, pretty much in unison, “Restaurant Josephine in Auburn.”

So 30 seconds later, I was snagging the last reservation at 5:30 p.m. for the next night at Josephine, a worthy 30-mile drive up I-80 from the city’s center. Over a California-French meal of deep-shelled oysters, duck liver mousse, garlicky escargot and a pork chop nestled among bacony cabbage with apples, the same group leveled their gazes at me as if to say, “See?”

I saw.

English pea-filled vareniki at Restaurant Josephine in Auburn, outside Sacramento.

(Angela DeCenzo / For The Times)

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