How a Los Angeles local created a Monocle guide to a city with no centre
Feeling at a loss for what to do in the City of Angels? Here’s a native Angeleno’s cheat sheet to routing the unroutable.
For a place that’s all about image, Los Angeles is surprisingly difficult to capture. The sprawling city comprises a patchwork of cultures and communities, and most visitors from major metropolises such as London, Tokyo and Paris spend their first day here trying to locate the centre before realising there isn’t one. But trying to make sense of it all – its complexities, hidden pockets and nuances – is what makes the place so compelling.
As a Los Angeles native, I have watched it mature into one of the world’s most interesting cultural capitals. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the city lacked a sense of self-belief despite its global influence. New York dominated conversations around art and European cities led on food, fashion and design. Today, that gap has been filled.
Night Gallery has built one of the most impressive programmes in the arts district. Nonaka-Hill and Gallery Castle’s showcase of post-war Japanese artists attracts collectors from across the Pacific. Meanwhile, restaurants such as N/naka and Osteria Mozza have long settled the debate over whether Los Angeles belongs among the world’s most serious culinary cities.
Los Angeles is best experienced through improvisation – but you have to start somewhere and there’s few spots better than Griffith Park, especially before afternoon temperatures arrive. Perk up with a coffee from Go Get Em Tiger on Hillhurst and fill your day with exploration before sitting down to a long dinner in Bestia’s patio.
One of the great joys about spending time in this city is that you can move between multiple worlds – from the Koreatown spas that glow in the night to the Taiwanese bakeries, Chinese seafood restaurants and the Mexican street vendors serving some of Los Angeles’s most definitive meals – in a single day. The ease with which the city’s various faces sit beside each other is a thread that also runs through its art scene, nightlife and creative communities.
The Monocle City Guide to Los Angeles reflects that plurality. The selection of addresses stretches from Highland Park in the northeast to the Santa Monica waterfront – taking in Los Feliz, Larchmont Village, the Arts District and the neighbourhoods in between – each telling a different story about how this city works.
Whether it’s Tam O’Shanter, which has occupied the same darkwood booths in Atwater Village since 1922, or Found Oyster, a natural wine-forward seafood bar, the guide takes visitors to the most cherished, lived-in spots in Los Angeles. Enjoy JF Chen’s cavernous warehouse of museum-quality antiques off Highland Avenue, and fill your suitcase with beautiful stationery at Hightide.
Los Angeles no longer needs qualification or defence. It is sprawling, contradictory and unexpectedly generous to those willing to slip into its slow-moving flow. This guide is simply one way in.
