LAGuide
The Best Restaurants In Silver Lake
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Ah, Silver Lake. The golden hills of the trendy people. There’s a reservoir that you absolutely can’t (nor should) swim in, boutiques where you can buy vintage Italian sunglasses, and coffee shops that smell like Aesop soap. Silver Lake will always have its fans and haters—and its New York transplants—but everyone can agree that it’s home to a high density of fantastic restaurants. Here are the ones you should be eating at.
THE SPOTS
photo credit: Jessie Clapp
MidEast might not be the first fast-casual spot to serve kebab tacos, but it's easily the most memorable. This tiny Mexican-Armenian spot from the Mini Kabob team folds smoky steak, chicken, and shrimp into tortillas and punches them up with thai basil and chile-spiked garlic sauce. Takeout is big here, but the grilled items are best eaten ASAP on the handful of streetside tables. Hefty rice-filled burritos taste like a Mini Kabob plate wrapped up (a good thing), while thick cottage fries are dusted in aleppo pepper. It’s all good, but the crispy cilantro-green falafel taco might be our favorite, at least when eaten hot from the fryer.
photo credit: Nicolas Zhou
Cafe Tropical has changed ownership a few times over the years, but this 50-year-old bakery on Sunset hasn’t veered far from its Cuban roots. The menu is still dominated by classics, like their famous cubano sandwich and golden-crusted pastelitos with sweet cheese and guava paste. But it's additions like an excellent BEC on cushiony coco bread, lightly floral orange-glazed donuts, and a spicy jerk chicken sandwich that we're most excited to pair with our midday cafe cubano. The sun-lit space is fairly small, with just a row of tables and a small sidewalk patio usually occupied by friends collaborating on a poetry zine. So come early for a guaranteed seat inside Silver Lake’s unofficial social club.
photo credit: Jessie Clapp
Azizam is a Persian daytime cafe with all the ingredients for a leisurely, borderline therapeutic lunch. There’s tons of dangling plants, big windows pouring in light, and a shaded patio where you can watch traffic zoom down Sunset over a spread of homey dishes: warm barbari, fluffy dampokhtak with a juicy chicken leg on top, and grapefruit-sized kofteh tabrizi with walnuts and dried barberries. Dishes are on the smaller side so we like coming here with a friend or two to order as much as possible, including the Persian Mille-Feuille with layers of soft cream. That dessert alone will turn your afternoon around.
photo credit: Jessie Clapp
The Ruby Fruit is a fun natural wine bar that also happens to be LA's first lesbian bar in about a decade. There are a handful of places to sit inside, but the party spills out onto the sidewalk and even the parking lot on a nightly basis. Bring your laptop and come for lunch when this strip mall spot serves some excellent daytime dishes like a mortadella, egg, and cheese on a pretzel bagel, as well as loaded curly fries and an open-faced tuna melt topped with a handful of chips.
photo credit: Matt Gendal
If you’re someone who enjoys food trucks, mariscos, and/or eating sweet and spicy dishes, you'll be very into Simón. The chef comes from a fine dining background in Oaxaca, which shines through in various ceviches and things like a barbacoa octopus taco. If we had to pick a highlight on the menu, it'd be the aguachile negro in an inky black sauce that’s silky, a bit sweet, and punchy. We also love that Simón has its own refrigerated self-serve salsa cabinet. They offer five different housemade options and if you're not sure which one to try, the jar labels provide taco pairing suggestions.
photo credit: Yasara Gunawardena
This Indian sports bar offers stimulation with a capital S. There are three giant flatscreen TVs on each wall showing any game you can imagine and the dining room uses mid-century modern furniture and neon lights in a way that reminds us of a vintage arcade. Plus, the food is just fun. Thin-crust pizzas come topped with saag gravy. Wings are doused in masala and Kashmiri red chilis. Our favorite dishes here are the pastas, though—don't miss the malai rigatoni. Come to watch (but not really watch) a game, but also for casual hangs with friends who want to eat something memorable.
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Eating at Ceviche Project feels like dropping into a Miami club in the ’80s: it’s tropical, there’s flair, and you’re definitely going to have fun. Grab a seat at the marble bar and enjoy vibrant scallops off the half shell, tai snapper ceviche, and their kanpachi tostada—a stunning dish topped with so much trout roe, yellowfish, and avocado cream, it almost reaches all the way to heaven.
photo credit: Jakob Layman
There was a time when Alimento was one of the hardest tables to get in Los Angeles. And for good reason—the chicken liver crostone alone was enough to get us to willingly drive from Venice to Silver Lake on a Friday afternoon. And while the food is as good as it’s ever been, Alimento has relaxed into "Nice Neighborhood Restaurant" territory. You won't have any trouble walking in tonight for a glass of wine and a plate of their pork radiatori (which we think should win some sort of award).
photo credit: Jakob Layman
The second location of the massively popular Thai restaurant might not have the part-time setting and beer towers like its original Sunset Strip locale, but its kitschy feel is the perfect match for Silver Lake. This is some of the finest Thai food in the city, in a casual setting suited for almost anything, just be sure to order the larb and plenty of natural wine to wash it all down.
Of course the oysters here are spectacular (creamy and briny, like someone hand-delivered them from the ocean), but this neighborhood restaurant also serves a solid burger and a wedge salad that's heavy on bacon bits. There’s an upstairs space with a limited menu and Happy Hour specials, and they’ve also taken over the sidewalk out front where well-dressed couples always seem to be sipping white negronis and smiling.
Open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, this American comfort food restaurant lives up to its name. You’ll find them in a bright-red building on Sunset Blvd., slinging hot fish sandwiches and breakfast burritos the size of newborn babies in the morning, then oyster pot pies and NY strip steaks at night. They also offer special dessert orders, like whole chocolate cream pies, banana bread muffins, nutty tahini and brown butter cookies—like we said, they really do it all.
photo credit: Jakob Layman
We’re as tired as you of this whole “NYC vs. The Rest of the World” debate when it comes to bagel-making, so we’ll skip straight to the point: Maury’s bakes a damn good bagel. Operating out of a red-brick building in a more residential part of Silver Lake, this takeout-only spot serves bagels that are pliable and chewy, plus a whole bunch of cured fish options for every breakfast aficionado in your friend group. If you're looking for something beyond the well-done classics, get a bagel with buttery black cod or a $22 version piled high with lox and wasabi tobiko cream cheese.
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Spoon & Pork treats pork like Bowen Yang treats airtime on Saturday Night Live: as an opportunity to steal the spotlight. This Filipino spot serves all sorts of dishes honoring the all-sacred pig, including adobo pork belly, sisig, pork-stuffed lumpia, and more. But the star of the show here is the massive patita: a tender, sweet, spicy, and very garlic-heavy pork shank dish that’s slow-roasted and then deep-fried. Could it last you three meals? Maybe. Will you finish it in one? Probably.
photo credit: La Sorted's
We first became obsessed with La Sorted’s brick-oven pizza as a pop-up. These days, you’ll find them at a takeout window in Silver Lake. Maybe it’s the brick-and-mortar digs, or the power that comes with being so close to Dodger Stadium, but this iteration of La Sorted's has earned a place in the LA pizza pantheon as well as our stomachs. The crust is chewy and bubbly, and toppings range from burrata to artichoke pesto to vodka cream sauce. Our top pick is the “Spicy, But Oh, So Sweet Boy,” a version of the now-ubiquitous pepperoni and hot honey combo set off with Fresno chiles and fresh garlic.
This lively Greek spot in Silver Lake (formerly Freedman’s) feels like a remnant of summer that never left. The dining room is adorned with miniature Greek busts, vines dangle everywhere, and there’s a blue and white patio in the parking lot that—at least after a few bottles of Greek wine—looks a little like a terrace in Mykonos. Order the feta-stuffed phyllo pocket, juicy lamb chops, and the correctly advertised “very lemony” potatoes.
photo credit: Jakob Layman
Whenever we feel like eating half the produce at the farmers market in one sitting, we head to Botanica. Open for brunch and dinner, a meal at this bright, veggie-leaning Levantine spot is textbook pleasant. Light streams in from the windows, cocktails have beets in them, and the seasonal menu is full of simple three-ingredient plates that look like they belong in a Flamingo Estate newsletter. Botanica is seasonal so expect frequent menu changes, but examples of previous produce-centric hits include a white beet salad with punchy sour cherries and seared snap peas under a layer of crispy sea moss.
photo credit: Playita
The team behind local taqueria chain Guisados is responsible for this walk-up mariscos stand on Sunset Blvd. Although the menu here is pretty compact, you still have a good number of options—flour or corn tortillas, shrimp or fish tacos, whether to rip into the bag as soon as it’s ready or wait until you get to the table like a civilized person, etc. Both shrimp and fish tacos are beer-battered and have a nice crunch, and their seafood-packed campechana is the ideal snack while strolling around the neighborhood.
Despite having the word “omakase” in its name, the omakase isn't a required activity at this fun, casual sushi bar from the Izakaya Osen people. You can come to this blonde wood-lined space on Sunset and order everything a la carte, which is good news if you aren’t up to dropping $150 per person. We love the hefty hand rolls filled with things like baked king crab, fried eggplant, and white fish with truffle, as well as the miso crab salmon from the “cold signatures” section. Five giant clumps of snow crab are wrapped in salmon sashimi and drizzled with truffle oil and miso dressing. Is it silly and a bit over the top? Sure, but it's also incredible.
