Alex Canter’s Top 100 Restaurants for 2021

Eating Through Los Angeles: Alex Canter’s Top 100 Restaurants for 2021

Los Angeles restaurant culture is a part of my DNA: I was born a few blocks from Canter’s Deli, the family-owned and operated restaurant my great-grandfather founded in 1931. I started waiting tables there when I was 12 years old, jumping right into the family business just like my father and grandfather did before me. For as long as I can remember, restaurants haven’t just been my life—they’ve been my passion.

I’ve always enjoyed discovering amazing food experiences, and sharing recommendations with others. That thrill of discovery is what led me to create this list of my 100 favorite restaurants in L.A.

I want more people to appreciate how wildly diverse the Los Angeles food scene is. It’s so much more than tacos (though we do have the best tacos anywhere in the U.S.). It’s Korean, Cuban, Japanese, Peruvian, Italian, Indian and Thai. In a single city, you’ll find crispy shrimp rice noodles, bone-marrow gnocchi, pork xiao long bao, and a mole negro that will blow your mind.

This list is really a celebration of all the different cultures that make L.A. so special. It’s a token of my appreciation—and, I hope, a means of supporting an industry that badly needs our help.

The pandemic has absolutely devastated the restaurant world, and particularly, mom & pops. Literally overnight, establishments were forced to pivot in unsustainable ways and had to figure out how to function at extremely limited capacities (if they could be open at all). More than 110,000 eating establishments nationwide have closed their doors in the last year alone. Millions of restaurant workers have lost their jobs. At Canter’s, we were forced to let people go who had worked with our family for more than 40 years. It has been a brutal 12 months, and we still can’t fathom the long-term effects COVID-19 will have on the industry.

Despite all that, I’m hopeful. Countless restaurants in L.A. have found creative solutions amidst unimaginable challenges: They’ve reworked their menus, leaned in to delivery being the new normal, embraced virtual restaurants, and figured out how to make al fresco dining in parking lots seem cool.

As our city starts to re-open, I hope this list inspires you to support local businesses and get excited about dining out again.

Alex is a restaurant industry innovator, in-demand speaker, and passionate advocate for restaurant operators and workers. He is the 4th-generation of Canter’s Deli in Los Angeles, where he and his team invented Ordermark/Nextbite, a company that develops restaurant technology and delivery-only brands that help thousands of restaurants succeed with off-premise ordering. Ordermark recently announced the close of its $120M funding round led by SoftBank. Alex is a recipient of the Forbes 30 Under 30 and Fast Casual Executive’s Top 25.