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GuideUpdated July 15, 2026

20 Best Lunch Restaurants in Los Angeles

20 Los Angeles restaurants worth the midday plan — from quick business lunches to longer weekend meals.

The best lunch restaurants in Los Angeles are Chubby Cattle BBQ | Little Tokyo, Taqui Taqui, Urban Plates, and more. Start with Chubby Cattle BBQ | Little Tokyo if you want the strongest overall first pick.

By Carlos Mendez•20 ranked picks•Published July 15, 2026•Updated July 15, 2026
Methodology•Editorial team
Chubby Cattle BBQ | Little TokyoTaqui TaquiUrban Plates
20 Best Lunch Restaurants in Los Angeles
Google

Top picks at a glance

#1Chubby Cattle BBQ | Little TokyoJapanese • Little Tokyo • value#2Taqui TaquiMexican • Los Angeles • value#3Urban PlatesAmerican • Playa Vista • value

Who this guide is for

The best lunch spots in Los Angeles understand that the midday meal has a different pace. These picks balance speed, quality, and room energy for everything from a working lunch to a leisurely Saturday. Picks span Little Tokyo, Los Angeles and Playa Vista.

Quick picks

Chubby Cattle BBQ | Little Tokyo
Japanese • Little Tokyo
Chubby Cattle BBQ | Little Tokyo is an easy japanese option in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles to suggest without needing a long explanation.
Taqui Taqui
Mexican • Los Angeles
Here's the thing about Taqui Taqui: it closes at 3 p.m.
Urban Plates
American • Playa Vista
Urban Plates is an easy american option in Playa Vista in Los Angeles to suggest without needing a long explanation.
Browse all Los Angeles restaurantsBack to Los Angeles hub
Editorial details
Published: July 15, 2026
Last updated: July 15, 2026

On this page

  1. 1. Chubby Cattle BBQ | Little TokyoView →
  2. 2. Taqui TaquiView →
  3. 3. Urban PlatesView →
  4. 4. Tacos y Birria La UnicaView →
  5. 5. Philippe The OriginalView →
  6. 6. Castaway BurbankView →
  7. 7. Original Tommy'sView →
  8. 8. GuisadosView →
  9. 9. Crossroads KitchenView →
  10. 10. The Grain CafeView →
  11. 11. MajordomoView →
  12. 12. Bacari PDRView →
  13. 13. In-N-Out BurgerView →
  14. 14. RépubliqueView →
  15. 15. Raffi's PlaceView →
  16. 16. El Tepeyac CafeView →
  17. 17. SonoratownView →
  18. 18. Tsujita LA Artisan NoodlesView →
  19. 19. Wood Ranch BurbankView →
  20. 20. GranvilleView →

How the restaurants compare

Editorial restaurant image stand-in for Chubby Cattle BBQ | Little Tokyo
Google
Chubby Cattle BBQ | Little Tokyo
Little Tokyo • Japanese
9.5/10
TastyPals Score
4.9
Google
Price
value
Best for
Little Tokyo dinner
Mood
Little Tokyo
Editorial restaurant image stand-in for Taqui Taqui
Google
Taqui Taqui
Los Angeles • Mexican
9.5/10
TastyPals Score
4.9
Google
Price
value
Best for
Tacos
Mood
Casual
Editorial restaurant image stand-in for Urban Plates
Google
Urban Plates
Playa Vista • American
9.0/10
TastyPals Score
4.7
Google
Price
value
Best for
Playa Vista lunch
Mood
Playa Vista
Editorial restaurant image stand-in for Tacos y Birria La Unica
Google
Tacos y Birria La Unica
Sawtelle • Mexican
9.0/10
TastyPals Score
4.7
Google
Price
value
Best for
Birria
Mood
Sawtelle

How we chose

We looked for restaurants that feel like a strong fit for the guide topic, not just the most obvious names in the city. The shortlist favors rooms with clear mood, dependable pacing, and enough distinction to help someone decide faster. Read our full methodology →

Room tone

Lighting, pace, and general energy all need to support the reason someone clicked this guide.

Food fit

We favored restaurants that feel best suited for the moment, not just restaurants with broad reputation.

Useful range

The final list tries to give readers enough variation in neighborhood, price, and style to compare real options.

20 ranked picks

Taqui Taqui — Here's the thing about Taqui Taqui: it closes at 3 p.m. and shutters entirely on Sundays, so this Mid-City spot on Pico isn't your late-night savior. It's your morning-through-lunch one. Run by two brothers who actually work the floor — they'll hand first-timers a free drink and let you sample meats before you commit — it's the kind of place where the cafeteria-style setup feels less like a compromise and more like home cooking that just happens to move fast. The tortas are the headline, made from scratch and the reason the sign exists. But the carne asada gets the love it deserves (one regular swears it's "seasoned to perfection"), the birria tacos have a small cult, and people genuinely argue these are among LA's best burritos. Finish with the $5 tres leches. Prices stay friendly — three taquitos run $12.95 — though a few combo plates creep toward $25. Open since 2018, no awards, no chef worship, no pretension. Just brothers, meat, and a deadline of 3 p.m. Plan accordingly. View restaurant →

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Majordomo — David Chang's Los Angeles outpost lands in Chinatown with a concept that is structurally, almost philosophically, a group-dining proposition. The menu is built around large-format preparations — the kind that require a table of six or eight to make sense of, both economically and ceremonially. For two people, the math and the spirit of the place work against you. For a gathered crowd, the room reportedly clicks into something genuinely celebratory, the kind of dinner where the occasion itself feels like the point rather than a pretext. The menu centers on two anchoring large-format dishes that diners consistently cite as the reasons to commit to the group format. A whole steamed fish with ginger and scallion — a preparation rooted in the southern Chinese canon — is known for arriving with enough tableside presence to organize the meal around it, demanding that everyone eat together rather than drift into individual plates. The crispy whole pig is the other centerpiece: reportedly rendered to produce crackling skin without sacrificing the interior, and carved at the table with the kind of ceremony that justifies the advance planning. Smaller sharing plates round out the pacing, understood by regulars as bridges between the large-format arrivals rather than the meal's foundation. Practically speaking, Majordomo rewards intentional planning more than most rooms in Los Angeles. The large-format dishes require advance ordering, the group size shapes what the dinner can actually be, and Chinatown's parking and foot-traffic dynamics are worth factoring in on weekend evenings. If your group is assembled and committed, the reservation is worth pursuing on its own terms — this is one of the more purposefully designed group-dinner experiences the city has to offer at this price level. View restaurant →
République — Walter and Margarita Manzke's Républiqe occupies the Charlie Chaplin building in Hancock Park — a structure whose architectural weight most restaurants would buckle under rather than actually inhabit. By every account, this one meets it. The space is consistently described as soaring and warm, with a scale that could easily tip into echo-chamber grandeur but reportedly holds enough buzz and human density to feel lived-in rather than staged. It is the kind of room that photographs like a monument and, according to those who frequent it, actually functions like a neighborhood restaurant — a combination Los Angeles rarely pulls off without the neighborhood feeling like a consolation prize. The restaurant's reputation as the city's premier all-day destination is specific and earned through consistency across dayparts, not just dinner. The morning pastry program is widely regarded as exceptional — built on laminated doughs that demand both technical precision and genuine investment in process, the sort of work that separates a bakery with ambitions from one with credentials. Weekend brunch centers on moules frites that diners consistently cite not for novelty but for correctness: mussels sourced with apparent care, broth built with depth. At dinner, the whole roast chicken has become something of a Los Angeles reference point — a preparation whose reputation rests on sourcing and restraint rather than spectacle, which in this city is its own form of ambition. Hancock Park gives Républiqe a residential gravity that shapes the room's pacing — this is not a reservation designed around being seen, but around the meal lasting the right amount of time. Book the weekend brunch if you can; the pastry counter alone justifies the detour. Dinner on a weekday tends to offer more room to breathe. View restaurant →
Raffi's Place — Raffi's Place has held its ground as a Glendale institution long enough that regulars measure newcomers against it — and by most accounts, the comparison lands in Raffi's favor. The menu centers on Armenian grilling rooted in the community it serves rather than calibrated for an outside audience, and that distinction matters. The mixed kebab platter is the anchor: diners consistently point to the freshly ground meat and seasoning as the kind of thing that reflects a culinary tradition refined over generations, not a shortcut version of it. The hummus and meze spread rounds out the table alongside tabbouleh and lavash, all of which are reported to be made in-house and brought out fresh — the kind of detail that separates a neighborhood staple from a facsimile of one. The format is built for sharing. Everything worth ordering here is designed to land in the center of the table: the hummus and meze spread as the foundation, the mixed kebab platter as the main event, and lavash as the connective tissue that holds the whole meal together. Tabbouleh is consistently mentioned as arriving crisp and well-dressed. The room is known for handling genuine groups — not the intimate four-top kind, but the sprawling, twelve-person, multiple-generations kind — without requiring a private event setup or a prix fixe commitment. This is the kind of place where regulars have been coming for years and show up with that certainty. The price point stays accessible even when the table order gets ambitious, which makes it a reliable call for group dinners that need to satisfy a range of preferences without negotiation. Book ahead for weekend groups of six or more; the room fills with those loyal regulars, and they do not give up their tables easily. View restaurant →
Sonoratown — Sonoratown is the downtown taquería that built its reputation on a single, deceptively simple commitment: the flour tortilla. Not the mass-produced, shelf-stable kind, but the hand-rolled, scratch-made tradition of Sonora, the northern Mexican state where flour tortillas are as foundational as corn is elsewhere. That regional specificity is the whole concept, and it has turned a bare-bones counter operation in downtown Los Angeles into what serious taco people apparently cross the city for. The room reflects the priorities — a griddle, a counter, a few stools, nothing decorative. The cooking is where all the attention went. The menu centers on the Sonoran canon, and the chivichanga and carne asada taco are consistently cited as the essential orders. The carne asada is mesquite-grilled, a preparation that diners and critics repeatedly describe as carrying real smoke into every element of the taco. The lengua, when available, has developed a following of its own, known for a depth of flavor that rewards the order. The costra — a crisped-cheese taco — is reportedly the move for anyone leaning indulgent. But the throughline in virtually every account of Sonoratown is the tortilla itself: thin, pliant, made in-house, and treated as the point rather than the vehicle. The salsas are consistently praised as sharp and well-calibrated to the rest of the menu. Sonoratown lands on both the best-restaurants and best-budget lists, which is a combination that doesn't happen often. A full meal here reportedly costs almost nothing by any Los Angeles standard. Lines form at peak hours and move at a reasonable pace. This is a counter-lunch place or a casual stop — not a lingering dinner situation. Come with a clear order in mind and skip the hesitation. View restaurant →

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GlendaleFairfaxWest HollywoodJapaneseItalianAmericandinnerGroup Dinnerlunch

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Save these spots to your Los Angeles list

Save these spots to your Los Angeles list in the TastyPals app, then explore similar restaurants when you want a tighter shortlist for the night.

Personalized city picksCleaner shortlistsBuilt for iPhone and Android
TastyPalsTonight
Your taste. Our picks.
Smarter follow-through after the guide: better restaurant context, quicker narrowing, less second-guessing.
For tonight
Date night spots with warm rooms and polished service
Next step
Keep exploring in the app when you want a tighter shortlist