Jonathan Gold for The Times

State Bird Provisions is probably the most influential restaurant to have opened in the United States last year, a smallish place in San Francisco’s Western Addition that supplements the small plates issuing from its open kitchen with even smaller plates served from carts circulating the restaurant, kind of like dim sum.

Counter Intelligence: Mari Vanna may have invaded a beloved Melrose Place restaurant space, but lucky fans of simple Russian cooking will feel right at home.

Keizo Seki’s downtown Zo serves one meal: the $145 omakase menu. His sushi is traditional but distinct, with admirable integrity.

If you have spent much time in L.A.’

Terroni in downtown L.A. is a more gilt setting than the pizzeria on Beverly, Jonathan Gold writes, and its cooking has solid virtues.

Counter Intelligence: The wait can be daunting at David LeFevre’s Manhattan Beach restaurant, next door to his MB Post, but it’s also worth it.

Chef Evan Funke combines strong pungencies and seasonal vegetables with fresh pasta at Bucato in the Helms complex. Now, about his rule-breaking cacio e pepe ...

Govind Armstrong has hit a peak at Willie Jane by blending Low Country cuisine with a garden-fresh California presentation.

Marugame Monzo in Little Tokyo is at its best with its traditional udon dishes. Its more modern varieties miss the point.

Allumette in Echo Park is chef Miles Thompson’s follow-up to his pop-up Vagrancy Project, which was in the same space.

Counter Intelligence: Jonathan Gold reviews Connie and Ted’s. The West Hollywood clam shack conjures Rhode Island on the West Coast, be it with clams of all kinds, lobster cooked just right or oysters treated with reverence.

Muddy Leek, from Julie Retzlaff and Whitney Flood, is an inviting restaurant with an Earth-friendly bent.

Across the street from the Hollywood post office, a few short blocks from the 1930s complex that calls itself Crossroads of the World, Littlefork is an improbably rustic roadhouse in the middle of old Hollywood — a spare tavern, a slash of neon scrawl and a slender apron of parking lot you could imagine filling up with Packards instead of Lexus hybrids.

The authentic menu and even the TV are tuned to Hunan tastes. Bring a sense of adventure and keep the water glass handy.

In a modern, luxuriously designed Century City restaurant from David Myers that is part Bond-villain lair, part garden party, the pan-Asian cooking with high-end ingredients leaves an impression.

The atmosphere is dreamy, and when this Italian restaurant gets things right (the costicine), it gets them very right. But consistency is an issue.

Le Ka is one of those difficult places to figure out, not because the cooking isn’t good — it is, very — but because in the narrative of Le Ka, food seems like such a secondary thing.

Cortez in Echo Park is a small-plates restaurant that may divide diners, and its dishes, some delicious, may be difficult to divide among diners.

Josef Centeno’s new Tex-Mex cantina, Bar Amá, does Tex-Mex its own way, queso included.

Counter Intelligence: Chef Ori Menashe knows how to not go too far out with his hearty Italian cuisine.

Have you ever had the bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich at the new Storefront Deli in Los Feliz?

The newly redesigned Beverly Hills restaurant modernizes the dining room and brings a fresh take on Japanese cooking as it plays down its tasting menu and adopts an Italian course structure.

Chef Ari Taymor is cooking like no one else in L.A. at his downtown restaurant Alma, which started in pop-ups. And, oh, those butter-soaked carrots.

Let’s say that a correspondent has asked if you have been to the new Wuhan restaurant in San Gabriel, and let’s say that you answer him, to save face, with the Internet equivalent of a smile and a nod.

It might not be a destination restaurant, but its glammed up dinner-party food and summer camp theme set the stage for a good time.

Meet Kang Ho-dong.

Chef Mario Alberto, lately of Lazy Ox and Chimu, brings an inventiveness to this late-night haven that sometimes hits, sometimes doesn’t.

Tom Bergin’s Tavern on Fairfax is fascinating since Brandon Boudet took over, with rethought Irish American bar food and, if you’re lucky, a killer jambalaya.

Plan Check Kitchen and Bar has a modernist take on the classic burger, engineering it to a different level. Other items on the menu are a mix of good and bad.

With its pan-Asian specialties that include the popular Singaporean chili crab, the kitchen has set up shop as an evening pop-up at Tiara in the fashion district in downtown Los Angeles.

The cauliflower T-bone grabs attention, but the playful, flavor-sampling dishes hew Italian. Jason Neroni and Pitfire’s Paul Hibler are behind it.

Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton looked to the past as they took fine dining forward. Farm to table. Exacting standards. They influenced chefs everywhere.

Hannosuke and Ramen Iroha, popular populist restaurants from Japan, open locations in Mitsuwa and Marukai supermarket food courts.

Casey Lane’s no-substitutions gastropub in L.A. offers fish and chips, burgers, locally brewed ale, pan-fried chicken and more.

Steampunk, stale L.A. scene ideas — it’s the latest from chef Josef Antonishek. It’s best the closer he gets to Russian cooking, but then there’s the ‘goachetta.’

The atmosphere at Sycamore Kitchen is relaxed, but make no mistake: The husband-and-wife team behind the restaurant obsesses over every detail of every dish.

Hui Tou Xiang Noodles House in San Gabriel done a lot of things just fine, but the reason to go is in the name.

Shunji Japanese Cuisine, from chef Shunji Nakao, is located in what looks like a big chili bowl but is upscale and inventive, with special attention paid to vegetables.

Josie Le Balch’s annex scales down the dishes but not necessarily the ambition.

To understand Red Hill, Jason Michaud and Trevor Rocco’s newish place in a converted Chinese bakery just north of Sunset, you could do worse than to look at the bread-and-butter plate, a once-free nicety that has evolved into an item of competition in L.A.’

Have you been to the new Mo-Chica?

Pulling back from the whole gastropub scene, the Pikey offers three beers on tap, food kicked up a notch with fresh ingredients and a little imagination, and an atmosphere even an Iron Maiden roadie could appreciate.

At Maison Giraud, the croissants are as good if not better than ones you’d find in Paris. Alain Giraud may be the last true French chef standing in Los Angeles.

A law against serving the fatted liver of ducks and geese goes into effect Sunday. As some restaurants host farewell dinners, a gaggle of chefs, farmers and connoisseurs sees it as a feather-headed intrusion on culinary freedom.

Ricardo Diaz has another hit with this Whittier spot, offering excellent fried huauzontle, best-in-town guacamole, fiery tacos, satisfying mole fries and a sweet capirotada.

A wealth of imagination is on the menu at the multi-kitchen restaurant: Rethink that pastrami sandwich, a bourbon cocktail, the PB&J.

Wine is important at Andrew Kirschner’s new restaurant, but so is the food, starting with the lardon- and chile-laced popcorn appetizer. From there, it’s a serious but playful mix of wood-fired small-plate temptations.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the crab and pork bun.

Cactus is everywhere at Rocio’s Mole de los Dioses, but what you come for is mole. A Mt. Olympus of mole.

At the new restaurant from chef Daniel Mattern and pastry chef Roxana Jullapat, it’s not a dish you fall in love with, it’s a sensibility.

LàOn Dining, from Jenee Kim (Park’s BBQ, Don Dae Gam), offers ‘Korean tapas.’ Whatever you call the food, this may be L.A.’s first modern Korean restaurant.