The Most Talked-About Dishes in Los Angeles – May 2026

If there is one dish that has taken over the conversation around Jacaranda, the new fine-dining outpost from chef Daniel Patterson and Sara Lewitinn, it’s the artichoke. Picking a favorite from the restaurant’s tasting menu is no easy task. KCRW Good Food host Evan Kleiman recently praised the experience as “the best meal I’ve ever had in a restaurant. Or at least my favorite.” Yet it’s the deeply considered artichoke that keeps surfacing whenever diners debate the menu’s standout dish.

Patterson builds the plate around the vegetable’s natural sweetness and bitterness. The leaves are carefully opened around a soft artichoke purée and a second purée of onion and green garlic sharpened with Champagne vinegar. Covered in ribbons of sweet potato and pea tendrils, it sits in a vivid green stock made from mint and pea tendrils. It’s the kind of quietly technical California cooking Patterson has always done at his best: ingredient-driven, precise, and far more complex than it initially appears.

It’s undeniable that one of the city’s most obsessively remembered burgers is the Evan Funke burger from his time at Rustic Canyon. Now, more than a decade later, the burger is back at Bar Avoja inside Mother Wolf and already triggering the kind of nostalgia usually reserved for restaurants that no longer exist.

Available only Thursday nights after 8 p.m. and capped at 20 orders, the return feels less like a menu addition than a piece of L.A. restaurant lore resurfacing. The burger still hits all the notes people remember: prime brisket, melted Tillamook cheddar, onion fonduta, pickles, and herb remoulade, all packed into a glossy brioche bun that somehow manages to hold the whole thing together.

But what people are really chasing is the memory of it: the late-night Rustic Canyon era when a burger like this still felt slightly hidden, passed between cooks, regulars, and industry insiders before the cult burger became a genre all its own.

There are cheese pizzas and then there is Cheesus. At Lynx, chef Josh Skenes turns the idea of a plain cheese pie into something maximalist and deeply serious at the same time.

The newly opened Arts District spot, recently added to the MICHELIN Guide California new additions list, is already drawing attention for its cryptic “product bar and pizza” identity. It feels as enigmatic as Skenes himself, the former three-Michelin-star chef behind Saison.

Cheesus layers smoked scamorza from Il Casolare, Pecorino Romano, 30-month Vacche Rosse DOP parmesan, Amatrice Ma-Trù cheese, volcanic tomato, basil, and California olive oil into something molten, salty, smoky, and borderline excessive in the best possible way. The crust arrives inflated and blistered like an experimental art project, covered in more microplaned cheese, with the cheese collapsing into the center in near fondue-like ribbons.

In a city overloaded with neo-Neapolitan copycats, Skenes is making pizza that feels more like conceptual cooking disguised as comfort food. It’s wonderfully weird, cerebral, a little chaotic, and impossible not to talk about afterward.

Skenes is known for changing things up, so if Cheesus is no longer available when you visit, there are plenty of other pies worth ordering.