If you're from LA, or know anything at all about this city,
you know that downtown LA is a busy place during the workday crawling with accountants, bankers, and lawyers; but once
the sun goes down, the place is a ghost town.
But in recent years, LA's downtown has been going through a bit of a revival with old high-rise buildings being converted into lofts and condos, businesses coming in, and of course, to feed the influx of people, new restaurants opening and old ones coming back to life.
If you've got a whole day free, here's how you can dine downtown from dawn 'til dusk ('til dawn again, if you're so inclined):
- Breakfast - You can't go wrong with the Original Pantry Cafe on Figueroa, that serves breakfast all day, every day. If you can't stomach textbook greasy spoon so early in the morning, there's Pentolino, one of the smaller, newer stars in the Patina universe. A breakfast sandwich and coffee from this little cafe is perfect if you're on the go in the morning.
- Lunch - Grand Central Market is a permanent structure that has been around forever. The Market is filled with the requisite produce vendors that sell fresh fruits and vegetables for dirt cheap, but there are plenty of booths that hawk food. There are Asian foods, but at this Market, stick with the Mexican since you have the rest of the day to explore either Chinatown or Little Tokyo. Mexican pastries, carne asada, carnitas, tortas and tacos, and though I'm not a fan of the stuff in general, flan. If you're really craving Asian for lunch, pop over to Chinatown to any of the enormous restaurants that serve dim sum every day: Empress Pavilion, Ocean Seafood, or CBS.
- Happy hour cocktails - I've already talked about Ciudad, the pan-Latin restaurant from the Too Hot Tamales. They have good deals on a few food items on their Happy Hour menu, but the best deal of all is their Mojito. If Ciudad is a little too trendy, head over to Senor Fish for big food, small money.
- Dinner - Nick and Stef's is a masculine steakhouse, or you can go a little more old-school American at two restaurants in the spirit of the trains that used to breeze through downtown LA: The Pacific Dining Car or Engine Co. 28. If you prefer something even more raw than than a rare steak, get sushi in Little Tokyo.
- Midnight munchies - The Diner at the Standard is on the ground floor. If you're lucky (and pretty), you might get upstairs to the bar, but there's always a cover charge, and that doesn't include the $9 grilled cheese sandwich. Of course, you can always go back to the Original Pantry, too.
