The best restaurants on Sawtelle Boulevard

Whether you’re dipping thick, ultra-springy noodles into the deep-brown umami rich broth at the original or spooning up the lighter tonkotsu broth at the Annex across the street, this famous Sawtelle ramen restaurant first helped popularize the area as a citywide dining destination back in 2011. Though the wait for a seat can fluctuate between tolerable and formidable (unless you’re dining solo, in which case you’ll usually be seated at the counter in no more than 15 minutes), Tsuijta is the rare instance where the hype lives up to reality: This is some of the best ramen in the city—at least if you like your broth as rich as rich can be. For tsukemen, or dipping-style ramen, the bowls here are the ones you’ll forever compare to all others, much to your chagrin. Put your name down and wait. It’ll be worth it.

Pull up a tray because you’re going to want a little bit of everything at Marugame Udon, the cafeteria-style chain eatery that serves budget-friendly udon bowls and freshly fried tempura. The fresh noodles get pulled to order and made before your very eyes, then slid into your choice of broth. Regular portions start as low as $5.95, and even the large sizes of most flavors are around $15, but the real gems here are the fried tempura bites hovering around the dollar amount, with a half-dozen or so options hitting the fryer at any given time. Pick your noodle bowl, then add à la carte tempura, eggs, meats and chilled accoutrements to build your perfect meal.

The only curry ramen specialist in town, Menya Tigre on Sawtelle is giving the area’s half-dozen other ramenyas a run for their money with its velvety rich broth whose viscosity straddles the line between soup and a conventional, thicker Japanese curry. Topped with a soft-boiled egg, a few slices of chashu, and bean sprouts, their chicken broth-based ramen bowl is a surprisingly nice addition to the most ramen-saturated block in town. They also offer a curry tsukemen if you’re in a dipping (rather than sipping) mood, as well as a vegan ramen option.

Named after the father of chef-owner Barb Batiste, this takeout-oriented storefront on Sawtelle serves delicious rice and pancit combo plates that incorporate Filipino classics like pork sisig, chicken adobo, longganisa (a chorizo-like pork sausage) and even housemade Spam. Each combo comes with a piece of Big Boi’s pandesal—a plain dinner roll and staple carb within Filipino cuisine. Other than Jollibee, Big Boi is the only place in Los Angeles where you can regularly find Filipino-style spaghetti, a sweet, yellow cheese-covered version of the classic American dish that uses hot dogs and banana ketchup. Just note that Big Boi has trimmed its hours as of late—the restaurant is now only open 11am–8pm, Friday to Sunday.

After opening in fits and starts since the pandemic, this Edomae-style sushi counter along Sawtelle Boulevard has reopened for dinner service with three excellent, budget-friendly set meals deserving of your attention regardless of whether you live on the Westside. Owned by the same group behind some of L.A.’s best ramen bowls, the restaurant was famous for its pre-pandemic lunch specials. While those are long gone, quality and reasonable pricing are mainstays of the current dinner service, where the most expensive offering—the $89 Tokyo set—includes three seasonal appetizers, nine pieces of nigiri, two handrolls and a delectable sake kasu ice cream, which uses the fermented byproduct from rice wine brewing as a base for a creamy non-alcoholic palate cleanser. The less expensive sets ($49 and $69 respectively) swap out premium ingredients like Wagyu and toro out for less pricey cuts, but you’ll still leave here feeling satisfied regardless of which set you order.

At the northern end of Sawtelle, this Hakata-based chain stalwart serves a lighter bowl of tonkotsu ramen that’s just as memorable as the richer options down the street. Look over the order sheet, where you can customize your bowl to your exact specifications—choose the intensity (i.e. saltiness) of your broth, the doneness of your noodles and toppings (egg, wontons, spare ribs, garlic ships, even cod roe)—and combine chicken rice balls, deep fried cheese egg rolls and gyoza additions. Half the fun is ordering too many toppings on your first visit, which will arrive one after another in a parade of bowls, but the fried rice bowls and other specials here are done just as well.

In the narrow, high-turnover spaces that line the ground floor of Sawtelle’s One Westside shopping center, the newest player to enter the ring is Tigawok, a Chinese fast-casual concept powered by automated woks, a.k.a. “robot chefs.” (In reality, they look more like washing machines.) Each tiny, snack-size bowl costs between $3 and $6, with 18 unique entrées to choose from. As of writing, lines already form early and last throughout the day, with diners happy to line up for fairly well-executed, affordable Chinese cuisine. On my visit, I tried every single item on the menu (a feat that requires only about $85), and while not every dish won me over, I would recommend Hunan spicy beef, “Tiga cola” chicken and any of the vegetable sides, as well as the soy-braised Wagyu rice bowl and astonishingly good soup dumplings. Where Tigawok does distinguish itself, however, is on cost—and at a time when dining out is more expensive than ever, I’m more than happy to come back. For those in the Valley: A second location in Burbank is opening in the near future.

The sister restaurant of Mid-City’s Chao Krung has a stylish new home on Sawtelle, where second-generation family chef Amanda Kuntee has expanded the menu with vegan-friendly items and Thai street food-inspired small plates. Although Tuk Tuk began accepting takeout orders in mid-February, the beloved neighborhood spot’s new pale pink dining room has only just opened for dine-in customers. Though you’ll find the usual Thai takeout mainstays here like pad see ew and panang curry, the newer dishes in the Street Noodle and Snack sections, like the kuay tiew hang (dried noodles with crab, barbecue pork, bok choy and wontons) and drinking-oriented barbecue squid provide more than enough justification to deviate from old favorites.