This Wednesday, March 12, Michelin added 15 new restaurants to its California guide, including seven in the Los Angeles area. All additions are considered “recommended” and could go on to receive either a Michelin star or Bib Gourmand (the guide’s budget-friendly category) later this year. Other additions up north include Stationæry in Carmel-by-the-Sea and Four Kings in San Francisco. In L.A., all new guide additions have opened since last summer.
Among them you’ll find Tomat in Westchester, which I recently featured in a longform review for its ambitious restaurant garden within smelling distance of the LAX In-N-Out, and West L.A.’s Mori Nozomi, which also earned a profile on its eponymous chef, Nozomi Mori, one of the city’s few rare female sushi chefs.
In alphabetical order, the seven L.A. area restaurants are as follows, with full inspector notes available via Michelin’s official press release. All restaurants are within city limits unless otherwise specified; we’ve linked to Time Out’s write-ups for each, and noted our own star designations with brackets.
- Bar Etoile [4 stars]
- Kusano (Culver City)
- Mori Nozomi [5 stars]
- Rasarumah [3 stars]
- Seline (Santa Monica)
- Tomat [4 stars]
- Restaurant Ki [4 stars]
For those unfamiliar with how Michelin restaurants are selected, here’s how it works: Anonymous Michelin inspectors travel across a given region, awarding the best of the best anywhere from one to three stars. Here in L.A., that’s meant both ultra-special occasion meals like Hayato and Providence, as well as more slightly less expensive, date-night friendly restaurants like Orsa & Winston and Gwen. Bib Gourmand makes up a second category of budget-friendly restaurants considered notable by inspectors. These relatively newer picks generally acknowledge the more diverse cuisines of Los Angeles beyond the French and Japanese fine-dining spots typically favored for awarded stars (Michelin will announce those as well as more Bib Gourmands at an awards ceremony much later this year).