How Los Angeles Has Changed (In a Good Way)

Sun, sand, sightings of celebrities in their natural habitat: tourists have long been flocking to Los Angeles for a combination of the above. If you love that cocktail, rest assured it will stay on sale — wrestle your way to a coastal hot spot like Nobu Malibu or Giorgio Baldic and you can enjoy it with abandon.

But Los Angeles has more to offer than the obvious. New, genre-transcending restaurants and bars have cemented the city’s status as the culinary capital of the world. Stages, outside and inside, are fully booked with acts, large and soaring. Museums including the long-delayed $484 million tribute to Hollywood, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, are courting multitudes. Travelers arrive in droves.

“Los Angeles’ comeback story is well underway,” said Adam Burke, the president and chief executive officer of the city’s tourism board, adding that Los Angeles is expected to attract more than 46 million visitors this year, close to home. at the all-time high of 50.7 million tourists in 2019. “We are optimistic that we will see a full recovery in Los Angeles by the end of 2023,” said Mr. burke.

While California lifted nearly all regulations on Covid masks in February, officials in Los Angeles still require masks at public transit and transportation hubs, including airports, buses and rideshares. (On a late April morning, about half of travelers at Los Angeles International Airport appeared to be wearing masks. “It’s not really enforced,” one check-in agent said.)

Restaurants and Bars

If Los Angeles wasn’t the nation’s preeminent sushi city before, it is now. sushi tama† Morihiro and Kinkan are some of the high-end streamers of omakase, chef-curated tasting menus, that opened during the pandemic and won fans over with takeout boxes of fish that glisten like jewels. Now you can reserve seats at their respective sushi bars, but plan in advance: Seats at the Kinkan counter, where meals range from $125 to $250 per person, can be especially hard to find.

The Black Lives Matter movement brought renewed attention to Black businesses in Los Angeles, especially restaurants. Critics are excited Barberan Ethiopian-inspired vegan restaurant that opened in Santa Monica in 2021 (most dishes are under $20), and it would be hard to find a nicer latte than the one served in Bloom & Plume, a coffee shop and café that famed florist Maurice Harris opened just before the pandemic next to his flower shop on the east side (espresso drinks start at $3.50). Several websites offer guides to the best Black-owned restaurants in the city; Thrillist’s is particularly robust.

Low-carb clichés are damn, pizza is having a moment. Cake after cake flies from the open kitchen of Mother WolfHollywood’s busiest new restaurant—fans include Rihanna and Michelle Obama—which is housed in a gilded Art Deco landmark, the Citizen-News building. (Heard at the bar: “When you squint, it’s almost like being in New York.”) Downtown, de la nonna serves granny style pies ($16 and up) and crispy Negronis. In Echo Park, on the east side of town, Love makes a case for pizza as a health food, with its organic sourdough base, “seasonal ferments” (kimchi, pickled cucumber salads), and natural wine, which incidentally has inspired so many new bars, you might think someone had stumbled upon an underground offering.

in Silver Lake, Melodywhich opened in 2017 and was renewed during the pandemic, Voodoo Vin and The wine pharmacy are all within a mile of each other. The neighborhood is also suitable for cocktail connoisseurs, with pelleta Cuban-inspired cocktail bar that opened in February, and of good planta Tulum-inspired patio, open in March, specializing in tequila and mezcal. Non-drinkers, know that elixirs without ABV (alcohol by volume) can be found all over the city: Bolita, for example, serves several spritzes ($8 and up) you won’t get a hangover.

Museums and Live Events

The great museums of Los Angeles are open again: from May 21, the wide will showcase a new collection of works by Takashi Murakami, as well as a range of art themed around the American flag. Many of the city’s museums, including the Broad, de Gettythe Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which opened in September and contains six floors of movie industry memorabilia, must be pre-booked and have their own masking and vaccination protocols. It is best to check their websites before visiting them.

There is no shortage of events that unite lovers of different styles. The Hollywood Bowl and the greek theater, Los Angeles’s premier outdoor performances, have returned with a full range of concerts. Foodies break bread on May 21 and 22 at EEEEEATSCON LA (yes, that’s really how it’s spelled), a May food festival hosted by restaurant review website The Infatuation (tickets from $10); baseball fans gather at Dodger Stadium for the MLB All-Star Game on July 19; just south of Los Angeles, jazz aficionados gather for the Newport Beach Jazz Festival in June. Rockers Rejoice: Pasadenas This is not a picnic brings together dozens of rock bands in August, including The Strokes and LCD Soundsystem.

Sports fans take note: With the addition of Angel City Football Club to the National Women’s Soccer League, Los Angeles now has 11 professional sports teams — the most of any city in the country. NFL fans flock to newly opened Inglewood SoFi Stadiumwhere potential quarterbacks can tour and test their skills on the field where the Los Angeles Rams won the Super Bowl in February.

In the same complex as SoFi Stadium, the new one YouTube Theater has a robust lineup of Latinx artists this summer and fall, including Rosalia, Gloria Trevi and Sebastian Yatra.

for decades, Los Angeles’s Pride Festival & Parade has been one of the largest LGBTQ Pride events in the world and will be back in full effect the weekend of June 11. Old attractions have been updated: the Warner Bros. Studio Tour has reopened with a state-of-the-art welcome centre, and Universal Studios Hollywood added a “Secret Life of Pets” ride.

Luxury Hotels

Los Angeles will add 2,100 new hotel rooms in 2021 and there is a home away from home for every type of traveler. Downtown, the Kelly Wearstler designed Good hotel (1100 South Broadway, rooms from $349) has become a destination for locals and foreigners alike with its art-deco-meets-modern globetrotter aesthetic. Pendry West Hollywood (8430 Sunset Boulevard, rooms from $525) brings a dose of maximalism to the Sunset Strip, with luxurious rooms designed by Martin Brudnizki, a rooftop restaurant headed by Wolfgang Puck, and a vibrant pool scene.

The Maybourne Beverly Hills (225 North Canon Drive, rooms from $1,095) brings a little bit of Britain far west of the pond; the high tearoom, managed by sister hotel Claridges, will debut later this year. For YOLO supporters with money to burn, the Beverly Hills Hotel (9641 Sunset Boulevard, rooms from $735), which turns 110 this year, offers its signature McCarthy salad for $1,912 — in addition to lettuce, it comes with gold flakes, lobster, caviar, a bottle of Dom Pérignon, and a bloated sense of superiority that comes with ordering a salad that costs more than the average monthly mortgage.

Losses and Incarnations

While Hollywood’s iconic Cinerama Theater closed in 2021, it’s Reportedly scheduled to reopen this year under new management. Some beloved restaurants have suffered a similar fate: Ray Garcia, the executive chef of Broken Spanish, which closed in 2020, can now be found at asteride, a new restaurant in the Walt Disney Concert Hall. Bon Temps, an acclaimed French restaurant in the downtown arts district, will be closed in 2020 but has made an incarnation in executive chef Lincoln Carson’s new Hollywood eatery, My friendsopen this spring.

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