Hilltop is a new daytime cafe on Slauson in View Park-Windsor Hills. It’s a big space with lots of tables, and might be a good place to hang out for a while with your laptop and eat your way through their menu of sandwiches, bowls, and beignets.

This new casual cocktail bar in Little Tokyo has tropical drinks and boozy snow cones, plus bar snacks like shrimp rolls, chicken wings, and tater tot poutine. They’re open until 2am every night, and have a martini called Drink Your Vegetables made with celery bitters and pickle brine to make you feel better about being out way too late on a work night.

Tom Tom, the newest spot from the people behind Bravo reality TV spots Pump and Sur, has both a regular bar and a shots-only bar. They also serve expensive cocktails and some food, but you’ll probably just come here to play Vanderpump Rules cast member bingo on the patio. They’ve been talking this place up on the show for 18 months, so be ready for crowds now that it’s finally open.

Lately is a to-go window in Chinatown that’s doing weekday breakfast and early lunch (they close at 1pm) to warm up for a full restaurant opening later this year. You’ll find typical breakfast things like an egg sandwich, but they’re also serving more interesting-sounding options like a country fried steak sandwich with pickled peaches, and a waffle with miso honey butter.

This all-day coffee shop in East Hollywood serves açai bowls and avocado toast on Fountain. It looks to be pretty small, so seems more like a place to grab breakfast and coffee to-go than a second office.

Highland Park’s Otoño is a modern Spanish restaurant with a lot of seafood, tapas, and natural wines from Spain. If you’ve resolved to sample every jamon iberico in town “for scientific purposes,” there’s a new place to add to your list.

LA Wine is a new wine bar in Chinatown with a big cellar of exclusively California wines. Maybe they’ll have that pinot noir from Paso Robles you had three years ago and haven’t been able to find since.

This high-end kaiseki Japanese spot at The Row in DTLA has a lot going on. At lunch, they do $46 take-out bento boxes (that you have to pre-order) for the next time you want to celebrate something while sitting at your desk. Dinner is a single seating where you’ll get around 10 courses of hot, cold, and raw seafood-focused dishes for $200.

Everything at Monty’s, a new burger window in Koreatown, is plant-based. They don’t call their burger a Double-Double, but having read the menu, this sounds like a vegan Double-Double. They have “shakes” too.

You won’t see the Guerrilla Tacos truck around anymore, but no need to panic. There’s no truck because they’ve just opened a full restaurant in the Arts District across from ERB. As well as some of your old favorites like the sweet potato and the cauliflower, the menu has new tacos, plus quesadillas, tostadas, salads, and a full bar. The line is already out the door at dinnertime, so plan accordingly (and check the website - hours are changing as they figure things out).

There’s no danger of Downtown LA becoming Manhattan anytime soon, but Lupetti is the second New York-style pizza-by-the-slice spot to open there in the last week. They’re open until midnight on weekends, so this could be your carbs-and-cheese pitstop in the middle of your Saturday night Arts District brewery crawl.

Kebbros is a new doner kebab spot with spit-roasted chicken, beef, and seitan options in Hollywood, between a bunch of chain restaurants and strip clubs. There’s plenty of indoor seating and a patio, and could be a good option in Hollywood if you always go for the same reliable places here and want to switch it up.

The most recent addition to the food court at Westfield Century City / Los Angeles fried chicken takeover is The Crack Shack, a San Diego fried chicken spot that’s always busy. At this new location, you can get your chicken either on its own or in a bunch of sandwiches, and sit in a huge space with a patio and full bar.

This tiny takeout-only pizza spot in Downtown LA’s Fashion District is from the same people behind two of our favorite Italian restaurants - Rossoblu and Sotto. Their thin-crust pizzas come by the slice or whole pie.

We checked out Superfine and put it on our Hit List.

Menya Musashi in Sawtelle Japantown is the first American location of a popular Tokyo noodle spot famous for tsukemen-style pork belly ramen. It’s open for lunch and dinner daily, with vegan ramen and donburi served alongside the dip ramen. If you’re looking for a spot on Sawtelle with less of a wait than Tsujita up the street, this could be a place to start.

A daytime cafe near the Grove, Yarrow is open for breakfast, lunch, and coffee every day. The menu is mostly vegan, and very affordable - nothing is over $10.

The teams behind some of the best pizzas and burgers in the city have opened an Italian restaurant in Highland Park. Hippo is a big, upscale space in the same building as Triple Beam (the aforementioned great pizza) with a full bar and plenty of pasta.

We checked out Hippo and put it on our Hit List.

From the same people as Scopa Italian Roots, Dama is a new Latin restaurant in Downtown LA serving dishes like chorizo and clams, oxtail tacos, and pork shank. There’s a big, open-air dining room that looks like it’s at the beach, except instead of an ocean view, you’ll be staring at a bunch of Arts District warehouses.

We checked out Dama and put it on our Hit List.

Bar Garcia has been serving Mediterranean-ish food in the Tuck Hotel downtown for a while now, but it was previously only available to hotel guests. Now, it’s open to the public for dinner and Sunday brunch, and they’ve got an affordable wine list, mozzarella plates, hummus, and paella.

The original location of this Larchmont cafe closed last summer, but the Larchmont Bungalow is back - this time in Echo Park. It’s on Sunset behind Cosa Buona and it has a big patio where they’re serving pretty straightforward breakfast and lunch food.

Lucky’s is a new bar in Culver City from the same people behind Backstage, one of our favorite dive bars on the Westside. They’re open daily from 11am to 2am, and have some bar bites and burgers along with cocktails and beer. We hope they carry over the same free-quesadillas-at-midnight tradition as Backstage, but only time will tell.

This is a new restaurant and craft beer bar in Mid-Wilshire. The dining room is a huge space where you can have dumplings, short ribs, and Korean fried chicken, along with beer they brew themselves.

We checked out 6th & La brea and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

This new Japanese restaurant at the Chateau Marmont is hidden inside of one of the hotel’s bungalows and serves a small menu with lots of different kinds of fish, and a six-course kaiseki option that costs $115.

The owners of Ostrich Farm in Echo Park opened a Mexican restaurant/bar in a complex across the street. The drinks focus heavily on mezcal and the all-day food menu has snacky things like caesar elotes, quesadillas, and lots of different salsas. Seat yourself inside or out on the patio and have some chilaquiles for breakfast or spot prawns for dinner.

We checked out Bar Calo and put it on our Hit List and our Bar Hit List.

Trap just opened and only has five things on the menu. People are excited about the softball-sized chicken sliders, which come two-per-order for $12. It’s open until midnight, which might as well be 6am for a restaurant in Glendale.

For the amount of beach in Santa Monica, not many restaurants have actual views of the water. This new Italian-ish rooftop restaurant does. At Elephante, you’ll find an indoor dining room and a huge outdoor patio, so there are plenty of space to eat or drink with the beach in sight.

We checked out Elephante and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

This is a barbecue and cocktail spot in a strip mall in the NoHo Arts District. It’s a small dining room, and they serve Kansas City-style meats and sandwiches, whole smoked chickens, and typical BBQ sides.

Hasiba is a new hummusiya (a casual restaurant full of hummus) in Pico-Robertson from the same people behind Lodge Bread Co. There are some old Lodge favorites on the menu like shakshuka and pita sandwiches, but the focus here is definitely on chickpeas. As in, you can get four different types of hummus served with housemade pita here.

We checked out Hasiba and put it on our Hit List.

This new casual Italian spot in El Segundo serves salads, lots of housemade pastas, and sandwiches in a tiny location. They’re only open for lunch right now, but will start doing dinner later this summer. Corkage here is only $15, so next time you have a no-obligation afternoon, you know what to do.

We checked out Workshop and put it on our Hit List.

Gramercy is now open every day from brunch until late on a stretch of Wilshire without many places to drink. They have lots of cocktails, bottomless mimosas on weekends, and a food menu with things you’d expect at a bar. There’s a loose New York City theme here, with drinks named after NYC neighborhoods, and a name taken from a famous restaurant in Flatiron.

Tesse is a new French restaurant from the same guy that opened some of LA’s best places to eat, including Bestia, Republique, and Broken Spanish. The big space on Sunset is filled with leather booths and the menu runs from a big housemade charcuterie selection, to pasta, to very large t-bone steaks.

We checked out Tesse and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

This spot right in the middle of Hollywood is a true all-day cafe: they’re open from 6:30am until 11pm, serving pancakes and eggs in the morning, and flatbreads and salads for lunch and dinner, in a big space with a huge patio.

We checked out Spoonfed and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

South Bay-based The Dudes’ Brewing Company has opened a brewery and full restaurant in Santa Monica Place, otherwise known as the mall at the end of the Third Street Promenade. They’re serving pizza and appetizers along with their own beer, and have a projector for sports-watching and outdoor picnic tables for tourist-watching.

We checked out The Dudes’ and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

There aren’t a whole lot of non-chain Westwood lunch options, but this new spot is both not a chain, and has a big enough menu that the salad-eaters, the sandwich-eaters, and the vegan-gluten-free-eaters of the office will all have something to choose from.

In the basement of the Black Rabbit Rose and Dirty Laundry building - and from the same owners - is this new carnival-themed bar. They’ve gone all in with sideshow games, tarot readings, and people dressed as clowns, and they’re open until 2am every night.

Rice Bar is one of our favorite casual lunch places in DTLA, and the people behind it have just opened this full, sit-down Filipino restaurant in Silver Lake. They’re just doing dinner to start, and the menu has some familiar-sounding options from Rice Bar, like the longganisa sausage, plus some new dishes like lumpia with uni, curry lobster, and adobo wings too.

We checked out Ma’am Sir and put it on our Hit List.

Clayton’s is a new pub in Downtown LA in the Spring St. Arcade with a big space, 32 beer taps, and a Victorian theme. Along with the usual pub food and beer, there are also some unusual dishes, like hummus with deviled ham, and many cocktails.

Jinpachi in Weho is already pretty casual, but they just opened an even-more-affordable place on Melrose. Fish Eight sticks to the classics: spicy tuna crispy rice, nigiri, and rolls, plus sushi tacos and an $18 chef’s choice sushi combo.

We checked out Fish Eight and put it on our Hit List.

Palms has a new Southeast Asian restaurant called Mee and Greet, with a menu that covers Singaporean, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Peruvian food. What that means is Hainan chicken, turmeric fried chicken wings, and lomo saltado made with Vietnamese ingredients. Their weekday Happy Hour, with $2 off beer and wine on tap, runs from 4-7pm.

We checked out Mee & Greet and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

Roosterfish was a Westside legend - a divey gay bar that was an OG Abbot Kinney spot and one of the best places in Venice for a night out. After closing a couple of years ago, it’s been re-opened in the same spot (by a couple of Venice locals who also own South End). The cheap drinks and pool games are gone, but hopefully the place hasn’t lost the old Roosterfish magic.

One of the better date spots in Weho, Norah has opened a new bar right next door, ready for your next One-Two Punch. La Fête is a French-themed cocktail bar, open late (until midnight during the week and 2am on weekends), and serving all kinds of martinis that come with sidecars.

Far Bar is a great divey bar in Little Tokyo, so we’re interested to see what their new, not-at-all-divey spot Sake Dojo will be like. It’s an izakaya with a small menu Japanese pub classics, (robata, tempura, karaage), a bunch of sushi options, and lots of Japanese craft beer options. And, if you’re into sake, this will probably be your place - they’ve got a big list and multiple different flights on offer.

We checked out Sake Dojo and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

This new bar in Hollywood is owned by a guy who starred in Dallas and features a lot of wood and leather, but sadly no cowboy hats. It’s on a stretch of Santa Monica with plenty of indie theaters, but not enough places to drink in. Now you’ll have somewhere to have a beer while you brainstorm feedback that sounds like a compliment after watching your friend’s too-long one-man show.

When Tacos Punta Cabras closed last year, we lost some of the best tacos on the Westside. Now the same people are back with a full-blown restaurant. The main space is open for dinner and has a menu that involves both a pig’s head and albacore al pastor tacos, plus there’s a full bar and a chef’s table inside the kitchen, so it’s a big change from the tiny taco shop days. But if you’re feeling nostalgic, Punta Cabras hasn’t forgotten their roots - there’s an all-day casual taqueria attached too.

We checked out Punta Cabras and put it on our Hit List.

It’s starting to feel like we’ll never have to leave the two-block stretch of Fairfax that’s home to some of LA’s best restaurants (see: Jon & Vinny’s, Canter’s, Cofax) and now, the second location of Badmaash too. Like the DTLA original, the space is simple and the menu is a mix of traditional Indian dishes like lamb vindaloo and modern versions like chicken tikka poutine. They’re only open for dinner at the moment, but will start serving during the day in July.

We checked out Badmaash and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

There’s another new cafe to hang out in while working on your next pilot, this time in West Adams. Highly Likely is on Jefferson, and has an interesting-sounding menu that involves a grilled halloumi sandwich, a Japanese breakfast bowl, a burger, and plenty of salads.

We checked out Highly Likely and put it on our Hit List.

A new coffee shop in Historic Filipinotown, Doubting Thomas looks interesting for a couple reasons. The owner is a pastry chef, so the pastries are always changing, and possibly most importantly, they serve a breakfast quesadilla that involves pork shoulder, and a $5 breakfast sandwich.

We checked out Doubting Thomas and put it on our Hit List.

APL is a steakhouse on Hollywood & Vine, but that doesn’t mean you should stop reading this. The space is big and modern (with no red carpeting in sight) and the guy behind it is in something called the Barbecue Hall of Fame. The menu involves almost every steakhouse classic you can think of, and all the steaks are aged in-house in a basement under the restaurant.

We checked out APL and put it on our Hit List.

No More Heroes has taken over the old Now Boarding space in Weho and swapped out the old airplane theme in favor of just being a regular bar. They have a Happy Hour that runs from 7-8pm (so you might actually be able to get there after work), plus frozen (and non-frozen) cocktails alongside beer and a few wine options.

We checked out No More Heroes and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

Until now, Downtown LA hasn’t had a serious oyster bar, but Rappahannock is here to change that. In the still-not-quite-finished Row development on Alameda, they’re serving oysters from their own farms in Virginia, in addition to sandwiches you’d find at a Maine seafood shack - like lobster rolls and tuna melts.

We checked out Rappahannock and put it on our Hit List.

After a couple of months as a brunch pop-up, Little Prince is now a permanent spot on Main St. in Santa Monica. They’re still serving their interesting weekend brunch (there’s a green pea pancake on the menu) along with dinner things like a steak sandwich and octopus with potatoes and garlic.

We checked out Little Prince and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

Hock and Hoof is a new spot serving French-Asian food in Downtown LA. There’s unexpected stuff, like pig head, beef heart tartare, and tripe and tendon with fry bread, and if offal isn’t really your thing, there are also more traditional dishes like a big, $120 steak with mashed potatoes.

We checked out Hock + Hoof and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

This new spot on Beverly is from the same people as Luv2Eat in Hollywood, one of our favorite places to eat Thai food in LA. The menu is pretty similar to the original, with some larger additions like lamb chop curry and grilled salmon. The prices are a bit higher, but if the jade noodle dish is the same as the one in Hollywood, we’ll pay the extra couple dollars to eat them further west.

We checked out Noree Thai and put it on our Hit List.

The inside of this new French place in Weho looks like a set from Moulin Rouge, and serves food you might expect to find in a French bistro, like radishes with butter, mussels, endive and beet salad, and steak frites. We’re not sure if French bistros also make their own absinthe, but Barbette does that too.

We checked out Barbette and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

This excellent Australian coffee shop on Fairfax now has a new location in Downtown LA, in the same development as Rappahannock. They’re serving a daytime menu in a big, bright dining room, where you can watch them roasting beans as you drink your flat white.

We checked out Paramount Coffee Project DTLA and put it on our Hit List.

Good news for Valley residents: you now have a Petit Trois you don’t have to drive over the hill for. Because this is Sherman Oaks rather than a Hollywood strip mall, the new space is much bigger and there are more options on the French bistro menu. Plus, they’ll be open all day - we’ll be needing to try the croissants very soon.

We checked out Petit Trois and put it on our Hit List.

Originally a Greek place in Manhattan where finance people do deals over lunch, Avra now has a new location in Beverly Hills where entertainment people will probably do deals over lunch. The menu is very seafood-heavy, with raw options, a big selection of grilled whole fish, and a handful of non-seafood options for that one person you work with who still won’t eat salmon.

There are lots of bars on top of hotels in Downtown LA, and the one at The NoMad is another to add to your list. You’ll need a reservation just to get up there, even if you’re only drinking, but there’s a full food menu too. The dishes are a little more hotel-y than what you get downstairs at The Mezzanine. But when you’re hanging out next to a giant sculpture spitting water into a hotel pool, a Cobb salad might be exactly what you want.

We checked out the rooftop bar at the Nomad and put it on our Bar Hit List.

Veranda is another rooftop spot - this one’s on top of Hotel Figueroa and has a very big outdoor dining space with a pool and a fireplace. They serve mostly Italian food from a wood-burning oven, including a potato and leek flatbread, branzino, and a whole roast chicken.

The people behind the eternally-slammed Bestia are doing something different for their second Arts District restaurant - Middle Eastern food. They’re serving dishes like duck ’nduja hummus, foie gras halva, lamb neck shawarma, and more, in a big converted warehouse a couple of blocks away from the mothership. Get in to check it out now, before the rest of the city descends and you have to be cool with eating after midnight on a Wednesday in three months’ time.

We checked out Bavel and put it on our Hit List.

Classic Italian sandwiches are weirdly hard to come by in LA, so this place has us interested. It’s a small spot on a busy part of Melrose, serving panini with all the options you’d expect - meatballs, chicken parm, sausage & peppers - plus one called The Godfather that we’ll have to try to see if it measures up to The Godmother at Bay Cities.

We checked out Pirolo’s and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

Employees Only was one of the first famous speakeasy cocktail bars in NYC, and 14 years into its existence, it’s expanding to LA. Like the original location, the West Hollywood spot (in the old Baby Blues BBQ space) will serve expensive cocktails and share plates, and have a psychic stationed at the entrance to tell you if your trainer is actually into you or if he looks at all his clients that way.

We checked out Employees Only and put it on our Bar Hit List.

There aren’t many omusubi (rice balls filled with things like fish or meat) spots in LA, but one just arrived in the Arts District. If you work in DLTA, it could be a good option for a grab-and-go lunch.

This new izakaya in Downtown LA serves bento boxes for lunch and a larger Japanese pub-style menu at night with things like sashimi, some fancy tofu dishes, and a lot of yakitori options.

We checked out Hatch and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

You might have thought you’d seen all you could possibly have seen at bars on Cahuenga, but Tramp Stamp Granny’s is actually offering something new. As well as the usual Cahuenga bar things like cocktails and a rowdy crowd, it’s a piano bar, which means there’s a man at a piano encouraging you to sing along to ’90s pop song and Broadway hits. We’re already warming up.

We checked out Tramp Stamp Granny’s and put it on our Bar Hit List.

In a big dining room near the ocean in Redondo Beach, Gabi James is serving a mix of Spanish dishes like squid paella and fancy jamon alongside French dishes like steak au poivre. It looks like it could be just the right level of upscale for the South Bay - nice enough for a date, but also fine for a post-beach dinner.

We checked out Gabi James and put it on our Hit List.

Yardbird is a classic fried chicken spot in Miami that, in recent years, has started to expand to places around the world like Singapore. Now they’re in LA, with a big space in the Beverly Center and a menu with Miami Beach prices. We’re expecting a bit of scene, but still, it seems worth checking out.

We checked out Yardbird and put it on our Ride-Along-Report.

Silver Lake isn’t exactly overrun with good places to watch a game, so we’re interested in Trophy Wife, which looks like it takes all things sports pretty seriously, with plenty of large TVs, craft beer, and wings on the menu.

Kasih is a modern Indonesian restaurant in Little Tokyo serving things like roast pork belly, satays, and rendang (slow-cooked spicy beef). It’s on the bottom floor of a fancy-looking apartment building, but with nothing on the menu over $15, seems like a place to keep in mind for an affordable dinner.

We checked out Kasih and put it on our Hit List.

Bluebird is a restaurant that brews beer in Sherman Oaks, and it looks like the inside of a monastery, complete with massive chandeliers and brick archways. Their menu is Belgian-ish (including moules frites), all the beers on tap are Belgian-inspired, and they also serve their own beer made on site.

We checked out Bluebird Brasserie and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

This is a new, high-end seafood spot in Sherman Oaks serving a lot of lobster, fish, and pork. The big selection of fresh seafood - like a whole crispy striped bass - is what could make this worth a trip to the Valley.

Read Piencone’s name correctly and you’ll find out what they do here - (pizza) pies and (ice cream) cones. They have a big space in Eagle Rock, some topping combinations worth investigating (like salami with fermented honey), and interesting ice cream flavors like brown butter lavender and sesame caramel.

The second location of a Hawaiian-Cajun spot originally from Waikiki, Crackin Kitchen is a new spot in Pasadena with a giant seafood menu. You might also want to investigate the malasadas, Hawaiian/Portuguese-style donuts coated in sugar.

The dumpling restaurant you’ve at some point waited too long for has opened its first Westside location at Westfield Century City. It looks to be the exact same setup as their many other locations: spend a lot of time in line, order a lot of soup dumplings, and save room for the off-menu chocolate xiao long bao.

Croft Alley can feel like a calm oasis in the designer label chaos that is Melrose Place, and hopefully their second location inside The Standard can manage the same trick with the Sunset Strip. They’re open 24 hours a day, and are serving all the breakfast and lunch things from the original spot, plus more dinner-appropriate dishes like chicken schnitzel, glazed duck breast, and prime rib.

We checked out Croft Alley at the Standard and put it on our Ride-Along-Report.

The burger at the Larchmont was one of our favorites in LA, and we’ve been driving past the empty restaurant looking longingly inside for a little while now. So we’ll be interested to check out the new residents - Fin, the second location of a Japanese spot doing small plates and cocktails.

On a stretch of Robertson that doesn’t have a whole lot of places to eat there’s now all-day operation The Henry. It should come in handy for people who work nearby looking for a spot where they grab a coffee and breakfast before heading into the office or drinks and a snack at the end of the day.

We checked out The Henry and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

What used to be Soppresata in Silver Lake (and before that was Black Hogg), is now Black Hogg. Again. While they’re serving most of the sandwiches they had before, there are also new things like pork belly tacos, a headcheese and pate banh mi, and whatever popcorn bacon is.

Named for the jersey number that owner and former Italian soccer player Alessandro Del Piero wore, No. 10 is a fancy Italian restaurant on 3rd Street with a huge menu that actually looks pretty solid. Still awaiting word if David Beckham is the sommelier.

We checked out No. 10 and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

The second location of the super popular, fantastic Tex-Mex spot in Los Feliz is now open in Highland Park. The menu is exactly the same as the original, but perhaps most importantly, the space is much bigger, with a side patio as well. Hopefully, that means much shorter waits in line for tacos.

The best taco truck in Los Angeles just opened up a brick-and-mortar in Pomona, meaning if you live in the Inland Empire and don’t make it to East LA very often, you’re in luck. Right now, the menu is exactly the same as the truck, but they plan to add new items.

There’s now a second location of this popular craft brewery in Chinatown. The space is double the size of their first spot inside The Hermosillo in Highland Park, with a whole outside area as well. Sounds like a perfect excuse to drink some of the best craft beer in LA.

It’s been slow-going for new restaurants openings on the Westside this year, but we finally got one in Tumbi, and this upscale Indian restaurant in Santa Monica looks worth trying. The menu is stacked with familiar dishes like butter chicken and palak paneer, but there are also more unique-looking things like Pakistani fish and rice fries and a Patagonian sea bass marsala.

We checked out Tumbi and put it on our Hit List.

This is the second location of the Grand Central Market food stall that’s one of our favorite Thai spots in the city. Unlike the original, this place is a full sit-down restaurant with an expanded menu. And that includes their beef panang, which is still one of our favorite curries in the city.

We checked out Sticky Rice and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

Farmhouse, the latest restaurant to open inside the still-being-renovated Beverly Center, is run by an “executive farmer,” who has created a wide-ranging menu of “seed-to-plate” dishes. We don’t know what any of that means, but we’re down to find out.

We checked out Farmhouse and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

This is a plant-based, daytime-only restaurant in the old Hot Hot Food space in Silver Lake. But with items such as pad thai, forbidden fried rice and charcoal-crust pizza, the menu seems a bit more interesting than your typical vegan/vegetarian spots.

We checked out Jewel and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

A new sushi bar at Melrose and Vine. The space itself actually seems fairly large, and their lunch menu is mostly comprised of large sushi combo platters, chirashi bowls, and a full omakase as well.

We checked out Nagoya and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

Somni is a tasting menu-only restaurant located inside The Bazaar, which is located inside the SLS in Beverly Hills. The space is a 10-seat bar looking into the open kitchen, and its 25-course “multi-sensory” menu starts at $235 (before alcohol, tax, and tip). Start saving yesterday.

An all-day Taiwanese/Chinese spot in Highland Park from the people behind one of our favorite all-day Taiwanese/Chinese spots in Silverlake, Pine & Crane. The modern interior and order-at-the-counter setup seem pretty similar to Pine & Crane, but the menu is full of new stuff, including a bao section we definitely want to get involved with.

We checked out Joy and put it on our Hit List.

In this edition of Which Australian Cafe Opened In LA This Week, we bring you Roo Cafe in Silver Lake. The tiny spot in Sunset Junction has a fairly standard flat-white-and-avocado- toast-heavy menu, but given its fantastic location on that park-like triangle (next to Pine & Crane) and front patio, it already got at least a couple things right.

Back from its eight month facelift, Crustacean has reopened in Beverly Hills, giving the area yet another beautiful restaurant for people to sit in and talk about their actual facelifts. Here’s the more important news though - the modern Vietnamese menu also got an update, and it actually looks pretty good.

A new cocktail bar in Historic Filipinotown. Genever’s aesthetic looks like it reads closer to a high-end Hollywood lounge than anything else, but given its quiet surroundings, we’re intrigued.

We checked out Genever and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

One of our favorite pasta spots in town, Pasta Sisters, has opened a second location in Culver City. While their original stripmall location on Pico was tiny, with only three or so tables, their new spot appears to be much bigger, with an expanded menu as well. They also serve beer and wine. See you there.

We checked out Pasta Sisters and put it on our Hit List.

An all-day cafe inside the high-end accessory store, Mansur Gavriel, on Melrose Place. Because after a hard day of spending $1,000 on a bucket bag, the shopping gods want you to have some avocado toast.

We checked out Cafe Flora and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

The all-day Mediterranean-ish restaurant inside the newly renovated Hotel Figueroa downtown, from the people behind the Tasting Kitchen (who also recently opened another hotel restaurant, Viale Dei Romani, in West Hollywood).

We checked out Breva and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

Another day, another rolled ice cream shop that nobody asked for. But wait, this one serves waffles? And smoked salmon sandwiches? This tiny shop in West Hollywood could be a total disaster, but there’s enough weirdness going on here to warrant a drop-in.

The people behind one of LA’s classic diners, Nick’s in Chinatown, have opened a new breakfast spot in Eagle Rock. Despite a name that makes it sounds like a sing-along restaurant at CityWalk, this place looks like the kind of eggs-and-bacon diner we need more of in LA.

A new French bistro right on Ventura Blvd. in Studio City. With items like French onion soup, mussels in garlic sauce, and coq au vin, the very traditional menu reads like a French food Hall of Fame inductee list, but its aggressive-looking 19th Century parlor room aesthetic is definitely something we need to see in person.

We checked out Montresor and put it on our Ride-Along Report.

Tired of arcade bars? Us too. But this low-key spot in a sleepy part of Eagle Rock looks more like a neighborhood dive bar with some pinball machines in the back then a full-on arcade bar. There’s a solid beer list and $3.50 hotdogs.

We checked out Walt’s Bar and put it on our Bar Hit List.

A vowel-adverse breakfast and coffee shop just opened on Vermont in Los Feliz, bringing another all-day option to a neighborhood that clearly wants as many as city planners will allow. They’re serving housemade pastries and coffee now, with an expanded food menu coming soon.

The people behind one of our favorite bars in West Hollywood, Surly Goat, just opened a bar right on the Sunset Strip. With a light-up dance floor, pizza by-the-slice, and the promise of mostly 80’s music, this place will no doubt be a mess on weekends, but one we’re actually excited to check out.

The third restaurant from the mini-Thai food empire that is Night + Market is open in Venice, serving a similar menu to its other locations with some new additions - like a Peking duck pizza that we are very excited to try.

We checked out Night + Market Sahm and put it on our Hit List.

The people behind Mozza and Everson Royce Bar - two of our favorite places to eat and drink - have teamed up to open this new by-the-slice Roman pizza spot in Highland Park. You order at the counter, tell them how much pizza you want to eat, and then you pay by weight.

We checked out Triple Beam Pizza and put it on our Hit List.

The Philadelphia-born craft coffee company has opened a giant new cafe right along the LA River in Frogtown. If you’re planning a bike trip anytime soon, you can stop here for a coffee and pastry or a sandwich beforehand.

A fried chicken sandwich spot is now open in DTLA’s Corporation Food Hall. And if you’re someone who’s picky about your fried chicken, you’ll be happy to know that there are eight types of sandwiches to choose from.

What was formerly H Coffee House in Los Feliz is now a Mediterranean restaurant serving small plates from the chef at Home restaurant next door. Right now they’re open for breakfast and lunch, with dinner coming soon.