Best of 2025: 5 winning restaurants in the San Fernando Valley

Crafting a list of “bests” is a curious experience — an exercise in the fun and games of culinary calisthenics and contradictions. The list is based on food … and not based on food. It’s based on buzz … and not based on buzz. It’s based on vibe … and not based on vibe. It’s based on price … and not based on price. I don’t even know if it’s based on my choice of Best Restaurants, Best Meals or simply Best Dishes.

What I do know is this: The following are the restaurants I’d return to in a heartbeat. They’re the places I’d gladly take my fellow eaters, heavy forks every one of them. They’re where I’d want to take my foodie daughter when she drops into town. They’re the places I rave about while eating at lesser eateries, dreaming of suddenly finding myself in one of my places of choice.

They also made me happy, in what Charles Dickens referred to as, “the best of times … the worst of times … the season of light … the season of darkness.” They’re the places that — with a fork and a napkin, a sizzle and a sauce — gave me joy. I could, and I can always find solace throwing myself into a good meal.

I’ve written about restaurants for a long time. And I never — never! — lose that sense of excitement when going to someplace new (or when introducing a good eater to a madcap discovery).

We are blessed to live in a part of the world where food is never dull. Where Kraft Mac ’n’ Cheese is a punchline — unless it’s made with porchetta and trumpet mushrooms. And our local chefs do wondrous things with tater tots. Eating well is always a bright light in a world where darkness lurks around the edges.

What restaurants gave me much happiness over the past year? Bear with me while I recall every bite:

Restaurant of the year

Alto Fire to Table

12969 Ventura Blvd., Sherman Oaks; 747-202-1661; www.alto.la

Alto Fire to Table is a restaurant with a curious schedule. It’s open for dinner only, from Wednesday through Saturday. Considering the amount of work that went into the restaurant’s creation, this limited availability makes a statement — which is that Alto is a very special occasion. An event, really. A meal to approach with anticipation and wonder.

We are told it draws its “inspiration from the vibrant culture of the Rio de la Plata region … the time-honored culinary customs of Uruguay and Argentina with a contemporary twist … traditional open-fire cooking techniques from the Pampas region [using] locally sourced ingredients from California’s finest family farms.”

At Alto, the fire blazes at the back of the main room — a pyre of logs, glowing and crackling, and pulling all your senses in their direction. It’s a fire that mesmerizes. It perfumes. It cooks and it brands the dishes with its mark — the mark of Pelé, of Prometheus, of Vulcan. It’s primal — and so far from the many sushi bars that have defined Ventura Boulevard for decades.

I do wish there were a bar in front of the flames, so that I could have a better sense of which dishes are cooked over the open flame … and which emerge from the kitchen.

That the dry-aged bone-in short rib — the asado banderita — is touched by fire is clear. Ditto the lamb saddle — the cordero Patagonico, aged in beeswax for 14 days and grilled over rosemary leaves. The Japanese eggplant, braised in honey and bay leaf broth. The peppers “slowly confited in beef oil” over the charcoal. And the pork “Txuleta” — an applewood smoked chop, roasted in kombu seaweed.

The wood flames are also busy with the boneless Black Angus ribeye with wild mushrooms. The Surf & Turf of skirt steak and Maine lobster. And the roasted “Lions Mane” mushrooms, charcoal oven roasted with grilled spinach and cauliflower purée.

Of the half Jidori chicken marinated in lemon and herb oil, flavored with roasted pepper aioli, I cannot say. But the potatoes “rescoldo” — definitely, for the term “rescoldo” refers to burning embers used for cooking. In this case with a potato and crème fraîche foam.

This is a remarkable restaurant where the accessory flavorings read like culinary poetry: rosemary honey tomato butter, roasted onions and peppers nectar, chimichurri butter, roasted garlic crumble, pistachio and fennel pesto, preserved lemon Basque refrito, eggplant smoky sauce, covered with foam, garlic chili oil, provolone crisp, cauliflower purée. Say it loud, and it inspires. Say it softly, and it turns into a prayer.

Other restaurants of note

Tun Lahmajo

2202 N. Glenoaks Blvd., Burbank; 626-553-8717

I don’t think I’ve ever given the Google app on my phone a bigger workout than trying to negotiate the menu at Tun Lahmajo — a casual Armenian café with food so good, you’ll spend a big chunk of your meal texting photos to friends of dishes you can’t stop eating.

I asked Google to define drinks with names like “tan” and “akroshka.” To explain “ghavurma,” “maravilla,” “xash,” “imeritakan” and “megrelakan,” To give me some notion of what sort of soup “spas with ishli” is. To offer me previews of “qrchick,” “tjvjik” and “ker u sus.” And that’s just from the English half of the menu. The other half is in Armenian script — and my Translate app doesn’t offer Armenian.

Just ordering here is an adventure. An adventure the affable servers are glad to take you on, with lots of suggestions, explaining that the lahmajo with cheese and ground meat is like a pizza … but better. Indeed, everything I tasted was like something else — but better.

This is a restaurant to go to with a band of heavy forks, happy to order everything. Show up on a Saturday evening, and the oven just inside the entry is ablaze with slabs of lavash and loshik, and the namesake flat rounds that are the Armenian pizza without pepperoni or anchovies.

For those who show up early, there’s a brief selection of breakfast dishes: omelets with asparagus, with peas, with tomatoes and with the spiced, air-dried beef called basturma, which is akin to pastrami … but very Armenian. Much like the Armenian take on tabbouleh — which is familiar, but also very different. And very good.

The grains are far smaller than most Middle Eastern version. There’s more olive oil … and a lot more spice. This isn’t just a carb on the side of the plate. This is a salad worth eating all on its own.

Indeed, a meal of tabbouleh, lahmajo with cheese and meat, and a glass of tan is as satisfying a lunch as I can imagine. Perhaps toss in a bowl of the Armenian take on borsch, which isn’t so much a soup as it is a vegetable stew of beets, cabbage, potatoes and so much more.

I grew up eating borscht (with a “t”), too often out of the jar, where it was really just beet juice. I had no idea what I was missing in the real thing. And if you want to put Google through its paces: maravilla is a variant on lahmajo, but rectangular and perhaps even crisper.

Dolma is, of course, grape leaves stuffed with meat and spices. Harisa is a porridge of ground wheat with meat and butter. Tjuvjik is fried chunks of liver with onions and tomatoes. Spa is a yogurt soup, made with egg, sour cream and herbs. Khash (spelled “xash” on the menu) is a legendary soup-stew of beef bones and beef parts. Khashlama is a barbecue of lamb and vegetables. Aveluk is a salad of sorrel leaves, pomegranate seeds and walnuts. And pasuc dolma is a vegetarian version of meat-filled dolma. “Pasuc” means “fasting” — and it’s the dish to eat during Lent.

For dessert, there’s Armenian sweet bread called “gata.” And, of course, paklava, which sounds like baklava because it is. This is cooking that’s traveled very well.

Read more: Cheap eats: 5 restaurants with great food in the San Fernando Valley

Monaia Mediterranean Cuisine

19642 Sherman Way, Reseda; 818-514-6204; www.monaiala.com

I do believe that, eventually, my diet will winnow itself down to nothing but small plates. If I could, I’d live on nothing but highly focused, deeply flavorful, but not overly challenging dishes. A 48-ounce ribeye is work, and lots of it. Hummus is easy as, well, pie. But lots healthier if it’s protein and fiber that you’ve come to worship as the dietary gods of the moment.

There are numerous Middle Eastern restaurants where mezze dominates. Though few as totally as at Monaia Mediterranean Cuisine. While they offer kafta kabob, filet mignon, lamb chops and sundry shawarma, along with a bestiary of sandwiches, it’s the adoration of the small that brings me to this affably diminutive café in a Reseda mini-mall.

It doesn’t take much for the place to fill up. And fill up it does, with large groups confronting more small plates than seem possible for the kitchen to crank out. But then, 13 of the mezze are cold. And cold dishes, along with pita, emerge instantly. At which point, if you’re like me, you’ll fall into a small dish stupor, eating everything in sight, and craving yet more. A need satisfied with an additional hot mezze. (Which Monaia lists under “appetizers.” A small dish by any name, is still a small dish.)

Thoughtfully, the restaurant offers a number of pre-set mezze plates, allowing you to dive in without the bother of thought and consideration. Trust me: If it’s there, you’ll eat it.

The vegan mezze platter runs to hummus, baba ghanoush, tabbouleh, falafel and stuffed grape leaves. The Monaia Meza Platter adds muhammara, cheese rolls, sambousek and fried kibbeh. There’s also a combination plate of the three raw beef dishes, called nayyeh — in this case, kibbeh nayyeh (raw meat mixed with kibbeh, onions and spices), kafta nayyeh (a mix of raw meat and parsley), and habra nayyeh (heavily spiced raw meat).

I love raw food — steak tartar, oysters, clams, sashimi, Ethiopian kitfo. Always have, despite warnings and tongue cluckings. Nayyeh is raw food lifted to a dazzling height. And as a small dish goes, it shines.

I can delude myself, with ease, into believing it’s devoid of calories. It’s cooking that adds calories, right? No cooking = no obesity. Easy. Also … not true. But hope springs eternal. And so does my passion for hummus, which at Monaia seems a bit thicker than others, and better spiced as well.

The hummus here is also served with sautéed minced meat and pine nuts, giving it a texture shift that amazes. For spice though, the muhammara is a real kick — roasted red peppers, chopped with walnuts, spiced and flavored further with olive oil. It’s a dish that dazzles with every bite.

As a committed yogurt-oholic, I also worship the labneh, the kefir cheese topped with olive oil that has a yogurt tang that brings goodness with every bite. And for even more yogurt, there’s the fatteh — crispy pita topped with a layer of well-soured yogurt, garbanzo beans, toasted pine nuts and, if you want, sliced beef.

And, for a dish that’s halfway between mezze and a main course, try any of the four pies, which look a bit like open-faced knishes, with a thick crust, well browned, and an open interior of spinach and onion, cheese, zaatar spice, and ground beef with tomatoes and onions. The menu calls it lahm bi ajeen. I’ve long called it lahmajoun. Order one with the falafel salad — crunchy and crunchy with crunchy. Follow the path of the mezze, and there’ll be room to spare.

Birrieria Apatzingan

10040 Laurel Canyon Blvd., Pacoima; 818-890-6265; https://birrieria-apatzingan.restaurants-world.net

Birrieria Apatzingan shares its location with a convenience store — a block house adjacent to a recycling center that can get very busy on weekends. It’s named for a city of 100,000 in Michoacan, famous for its birria — and especially its birria made with goat meat.

Birria is a joyous dish, a special occasion stew cooked for birthdays, Christmas, Easter and any other celebration. As in Mexico, at Birrieria Apatzingan it’s made with either beef or goat — which in the long-cooked birria can be a bit hard to tell one from the other. Taste the two meats side by side, and you’ll find the goat to be tad gamier, perhaps a touch stringier. But not unpleasantly so. (Curiously, goat meat is kosher. Who knew? It’s not often found at Brent’s Deli. Never, in fact!)

In the long-cooked birria, the meat is reduced to its basic elements, flavored with an adobo of vinegar, chiles, garlic, and likely cumin and bay leaves. At Birrieria Apatzingan, it’s served with rice and beans. And it has a cult following in the local community.

Birrieria Apatzingan is not the only birrieria in the San Fernando Valley. But it’s one of the most popular. So much so that there’s a wait for one of the few tables. You show up at the front counter, give them your name … and they give you a beeper that flashes red when your table is ready.

While you wait, you can watch cars and trucks loaded with bags of aluminum cans and plastic bottles pull up to the recycling center — and send everything off to new purpose heaven. There’s a hypnotic quality to the process. All it lacks is music.

Inside the birrieria, you’re handed the menu, which offers a modest selection of plates, classic Michoacan dishes, soups, quesadillas, dishes typical of Apatzingan, seafood platters, chilaquiles, tostadas and breakfast dishes — for the restaurant opens at 8 every morning (and closes at 5 every afternoon).

Warm tortillas, freshly made, flour or corn, come with every dish, flying out of the small kitchen visible behind the counter — a happy space packed with bubbling cauldrons of birria and more.

It was the birria that brought me to Birrieria Apatzingan — in particular, the goat. If you want, it can be ordered as a combination with the beef birria … and, why not? Though I did have to ask the server which was which? In the deeply reddish-brown of the birria, it’s hard to tell them apart.

It was a wonderful meal, as good as any dish I’ve had at the many down-home Mexican restaurants of the San Fernando Valley. The meat and the spices had basically melded into a single element, in which the taste of each element would surface, briefly, and then descend again into the whole.

As a counterpoint, the mild flavor of the tortillas were perfect. The beans had been cooked to a point where they were more a concept of a dish than a dish in fact. The rice had a perfect texture — and more flavor than rice really should have.

Saqartvelo Georgian Cuisine

15317 Vanowen St., Van Nuys; 747-208-8043

Situated in the South Caucasus, on the fabled Silk Road, Georgia was gifted with a multitude of dishes and cooking techniques by those passing through, to and from the Middle East, Asia and Europe.

But despite that varied influence, there’s a singular consistency in the many regional cuisines — a bread cooked in an oven called a tone, filled with cheese and butter, and both eggs that bake in the oven, and eggs that are hard-cooked, along with beet leaves, potato, cottage cheese, kidney beans, beef and pork.

Sometimes the khachapuri are round like pizzas. Sometimes they’re square. Sometimes they’re a crescent. And in the case of the most popular khachapuri at Saqartvelo, they look a bit like a human eye … or, perhaps a pan with handles on both sides — called an Adjaruli khachapuri, from the region of Adjara, which is in the southwest, on the shores of the Black Sea. It’s partly cooked in the open kitchen by a pair of women wearing scarves on their heads, and then finished at the counter where an egg is dropped into the molten cheese to cook on its way to the tables. It’s served very hot. It’s a pizza on steroids.

Once you’ve tasted the Adjaruli teardrop, there’s the Imeruli round pie, the Guruli dumpling crescent, a mini round khachapuri, and the pita-like lobiani filled with beans and onions.

After you have your bread in order, the hot dishes — some small, some large — demand attention, for though one can live in khachapuri alone, a plate of khinkali makes the meal that much better.

Khinkali increases my sense that there was more than silk moving along the Silk Road. The two types would fit very well at any of the dumpling houses of the San Gabriel Valley.

There’s khinkali kalakuri, which are steamed with rippled edges, and filled with minced meat, onions, garlic and pepper. Khinkali also comes fried, round and brown and looking a lot like macaroons. There’s a Georgian kebab — a long, spiced meat that’s a close cousin to kefta, served in a slab of pita with onions and tomatoes. If they played baseball in Georgia, this would be their hot dog.

There’s more: Chakapuli is a stew of beef, wine and a sauce made with three types of plums called tkemali. Shkmeruli is roast chicken in a sour cream sauce. And chashushuli is beef, onion peppers and walnuts. Which connects with another section of the menu, headed “Walnut-based Dishes.” At Saqartvelo, ground walnuts are used to flavor eggplant, spinach and beetroot. You’ll find them in a salad of tomatoes and cucumbers as well.

The salad is also flavored with Svanetian salt, which is salt and so much more. Salt is mixed with garlic, coriander seeds, blue fenugreek seeds, dill seeds, red chili peppers, marigold and caraway seeds. It’s also used in the fried potatoes.

To call Svanetian salt “salt” is like calling your Thanksgiving turkey “a bird.” This is salt and so much more. It’s like calling the topping on an Everything Bagel “seasoning.” It’s like calling Saqartvelo Georgian Cuisine a mini-mall restaurant. It’s in a mini-mall. But it’s a journey to a land that to me is more myth than real.

Merrill Shindler is a Los Angeles-based freelance dining critic. Email mreats@aol.com.