LOS ANGELES, CA — Seven San Fernando Valley restaurants have been named among the area's best in the Los Angeles Times' 2026 list of the 101 best restaurants in Los Angeles.
The newspaper's two restaurant critics spent months dining at hundreds of restaurants across Los Angeles and Orange counties before narrowing their selections to 101. This year's list includes 31 new additions, along with several returning favorites, according to the Times.
Below find the seven Valley restaurants included in the Times' list, along with descriptions from the newspaper:
Woodland Hills
"Taínos L.A. owner Odessa Rodriguez and her uncle Edwin Torres wanted to create a cocoon of nostalgia for L.A.'s Puerto Rican community with their Woodland Hills restaurant. A longtime chef in both his hometown of Ponce and in San Juan, Torres' cooking is distilled through the lens of his specific route to California."
Northridge
"The dish I longed for all summer wasn't a bowl of cold noodles, tomato salad or corn-filled pasta. It was the crisp anchovy and apple salad from Ratri Sonbalee's two-decades-old Northridge restaurant. She tosses matchsticks of tart green apple with chile, lime, cilantro, shallots and heaps of crunchy fried anchovies that pop with umami bursts in each bite. It's one of nearly two dozen southern and northern Thai specialties on a menu that boasts more than 100 dishes."
Van Nuys
"Speaking from the pre-streaming era, sometimes a greatest-hits collection can be a masterpiece of sequencing and narrative, rather than a retread of played-out anthems or a randomly compiled playlist. That's how it feels to dine at Saqartvelo, run by women who all grew up in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. If you're new to Georgian cuisine, this Van Nuys cafe is an ideal immersion experience. If you're familiar with Georgia's stews, dips, dumplings and justly famous breads, you'll find heart and intention behind the repertoire."
Sherman Oaks
"It would be romantic to think of Anajak as a heritage site: Justin Pichetrungsi continues to both honor and reimagine the Sherman Oaks restaurant, now in its 45th year, founded by his parents, Ricky and Rattikorn. Justin uses Ricky's recipes, merging his Thai upbringing and Cantonese heritage, as an outline, resketching sauces for Dungeness crabs and Peruvian scallops and barbecued pork collars to his own definitions. But really, Anajak is more of an embassy."
Arleta
"Visits to this Arleta barbacoa stand typically take place in the early morning hours, when the light is still soft and the customers still bleary-eyed. As you near the front of the line, you're handed a warm corn tortilla wrapped around a small pile of barbacoa dripping with its own fat and juices. It's a tantalizing preview of what's to come."
Glendale
"Los Angeles has never seen an Armenian restaurant like Yerord Mas before. Setting up in a former Glendale doughnut shop, Arthur Grigoryan traces his family's diaspora journey through a tight menu: pistachio-laced hummus inspired by an ancient Egyptian cookbook; meticulous variations on vegetarian and beef kyuftahs; a crisp, generous fattoush made with pastel-colored farmers market produce."
Glendale
"There is no better place for kebabs than this tiny storefront in Glendale, run by the Martirosyan family for more than three decades. Matriarch Alvard cooks up batches of deeply smoky and jammy eggplant caviar, while her husband, Ovakim, and their son Armen are masterful at the grill, with beef lule kebabs so luscious, the meat barely holds its shape over mounds of basmati rice."
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