10 Essential Restaurants in Eastside & NELA (Boyle Heights to Highland Park)

Where Parisian kouign-amann, Sichuan fire, Japanese-American legacy, and Texas brisket all belong on the same map.

Eastside Los Angeles and the neighborhoods winding into Northeast LA don’t operate like culinary playgrounds. They cook with purpose. They feed locals first. And more often than not, the city’s best meals come from corners where the signage is modest, the line is long, and the food arrives with no filter and no explanation.

This list isn’t for dining rooms with $600 stemware or secret-menu cocktails. It’s for restaurants that matter. That define where we are and where we’re going. From Monterey Park to Glassell Park, these are 10 restaurants that reflect the diversity, edge, and excellence of Eastside & NELA dining right now.

1. Colette (Pasadena – Innovative Cantonese Cuisine with Modern Flair)
Once a brunch spot, Colette has transformed into a destination for inventive Cantonese dining under the guidance of Chef Peter Lai, formerly of Embassy Kitchen. The menu artfully blends traditional flavors with contemporary techniques, offering dishes like crispy stuffed chicken with shrimp paste, curry beef brisket, and well-done beef vermicelli . Dim sum is served all day, featuring items such as jumbo shrimp har gow and lotus leaf-wrapped sticky rice topped with torched mozzarella. Colette's elegant yet approachable atmosphere makes it a standout in Pasadena's dining scene.

2. Huge Tree Pastry (Monterey Park – Taiwanese Breakfast Temple)
At Huge Tree, breakfast starts early and loud: soy milk steaming, you tiao frying, aunties shouting orders. This is classic Taiwanese comfort, no frills, no edits. You’re here for the rice rolls stuffed with pickled mustard greens, the flaky scallion pancakes, the pork floss buns. It’s a whole sensory memory, even if you didn’t grow up with it.

3. Chengdu Taste (Alhambra – Spicy, Sichuan Royalty)
There are pretenders. Then there’s Chengdu Taste. This place made the Sichuan peppercorn a household name in LA, thanks to toothpick lamb, explosive mapo tofu, and that pain-pleasure dan dan noodle loop. It’s heat with architecture, layers of spice, tingle, and savory that build without mercy.

4. Yang’s Kitchen (Alhambra – Seasonal Chinese Comfort, Modern Minimalism)
If Chengdu Taste is about maximalism, Yang’s is its clean-lined sibling. Here, Taiwanese pork chops arrive golden and shattering, next to rice precision-packed with pickles and herbs. Even the egg salad sandwich is an act of quiet genius. This is Chinese comfort food stripped of excess, dressed in farmer’s market produce.

5. Joy (Highland Park – Taiwanese Plates, Pure Fun)
The lines at Joy aren’t just for the Instagram. It’s for the three-cup chicken with ginger heat, the sweet potato fries with plum dust, the shaved ice that might change your summer. Joy is poppy and smart, playful and precise. A Taiwanese greatest-hits tape that still finds room to surprise.

6. Barra Santos (Cypress Park – Iberian Snacks, Natural Wine)
A bar that serves tinned fish and makes you feel like you’re in Lisbon without the airfare. That’s Barra Santos. The menu is small but calibrated: grilled sardines, creamy cod dip, a silky tortilla española. Add a bottle of natty wine and a tiled patio, and you have a night that feels both international and impossibly local.

7. Queens (Lincoln Heights – Raw Bar & Filipino Bites)
Queens is what happens when a raw bar, a Filipino pop-up, and a great wine bar have a dinner party. The kinilaw is bracing and bright, the oysters ice-cold, the adobo-laced small plates warm and precise. It’s a layered experience, where seafood and sauce mingle over candlelight and conversation.

8. Moo’s Craft Barbecue (Lincoln Heights – Smoked Meat, Eastside Legend)
You smell it before you see it: hickory smoke, jalapeño cheddar sausage, brisket bark that borders on supernatural. Moo’s brings Central Texas to Lincoln Heights and makes it sing in a new key. This isn’t copycat BBQ. It’s Eastside through and through: bold, soulful, and feeding a neighborhood first.

9. Otomisan (Boyle Heights – Japanese-American Legacy Diner)
The menu hasn’t changed in years. That’s the point. Teriyaki bowls, tempura, udon, Otomisan serves the kind of Japanese-American diner food that defined a generation, still made with the same tenderness and care. You come here for more than just food. You come for memory.

10. Dunsmoor (Glassell Park – Open Flame Americana, Worth the Hype)
Rustic and ambitious, Dunsmoor is what happens when historical Americana gets the fine-dining edit. There are fire-kissed carrots with labneh, dry-aged duck with crispy skin, brown butter cornbread with cultural staying power. It’s polished, yes, but never too pretty to eat. It’s the kind of place that if left off a list, you should begin to question the person who wrote it.

Eat Eastside. Eat With Purpose.
These 10 spots don’t just feed the neighborhood. They define it. Come hungry, leave better. And bring napkins, you’ll need them.