10 Places to Eat in LA to Fuel Up for the Dodgers Parade
(My Favorite Places to Wake Up With Near the Route)
Parade day in L.A. is not brunch. Parade day is cardio and church in head-to-toe Dodger blue. Downtown turns into this ocean of people in jerseys and homemade “MVP 4EVER” signs, everyone smashed together from City Hall across downtown, screaming at open-top buses full of men who make $700 million and yet we still talk about them like, “be nice to him, he is doing his best.”
Last time, they said about two million people came out downtown for the parade and then ~40,000 more people went up to Dodger Stadium for the rally like, “yeah I can definitely call out of work for civic reasons, thanks,” which is honestly my favorite part of democracy.
If you are going to be outside at 10:40 a.m. shrieking “LET’S GO DODGERS” at a municipal building, you cannot just sip a Celsius and manifest. You need salt. You need carbs. You need food that has emotional insurance built in.
You also need it within striking distance of where the actual parade runs — Temple → Grand → 7th → Figueroa — and then up to Dodger Stadium. So: downtown, Chinatown, Echo Park, Boyle Heights, Westlake. Parade radius.
These are the ten places I trust with my life (stomach). Breakfast burritos engineered like safety gear. Historic French dips. Taiwanese breakfast. Pastrami architecture. This is how you build a base layer of dignity before local news pans to you and your whole family group chat sees you acting feral on TV.
1. Wake & Late
Downtown (6th & Main)
Wake & Late is for people who wake up and immediately say “I need a burrito the size of a newborn or I will pass away.” The Downtown L.A. shop at 105 E 6th opens at 7am daily, and stays in breakfast-burrito mode until 2pm, because they understand morning is a long concept.
The O.G. burrito: bacon, tater tots, cage-free eggs, cheese — basically a weighted blanket you can eat one-handed while you yell at a bus full of heroes you would defend in court, even if they believe wedges are superior to tots.
Parade mode: This is pre-game ballast. Eat half on the sidewalk before the parade. Put the other half in your tote “for later,” which is adorable because “later” is you, 30 minutes from now, shaking and weeping because you swear you just locked eyes with Freddie Freeman.
2. Doubting Thomas
Historic Filipinotown / Westlake edge (5–10 min from DTLA)
Doubting Thomas is: “what if your most competent friend ran a corner café and decided breakfast is essential with pork.” It’s pastry, serious coffee, and hot food that does not play. The shop runs early (7am on weekdays, 7:30am weekends) at 2510 W Temple St, which puts you dangerously close to downtown without actually being in the mess yet.
Greatest hits, and I am not exaggerating:
Breakfast burrito with braised pork shoulder, potatoes, white cheddar, smoked chile, tomatillo salsa.
Pastrami breakfast burrito with hash browns, Swiss, Russian dressing, and cabbage like, yes it’s fermented, yes we’re doing gut health.
Biscuits and gravy with a sunny egg sitting right on top like center stage at the Grammys.
Also, the seeded/sprouted/grainy toast here? It’s basically a kettlebell. Thick house bread, loaded, needs a fork/knife, and makes you feel like a responsible adult for five full minutes.
Parade mode: This is “I need emotional intimacy with my breakfast” energy. Perfect meet-up point for the friend who texts “5 min away” while still in a towel.
3. Little Fish
Echo Park / Sunset Blvd
Little Fish is like: “What if breakfast was seafood because protein matters and also we’re hot.” Breakfast runs 8am–11am, then lunch 11am–4pm, Wednesday through Sunday, at their Echo Park space on Sunset.
They’re known for a fried fish sandwich that eats like someone tempura-fried a perfect beach day and handed it to you with iced coffee. It’s crunchy, salty, juicy, and a tiny bit outrageous, in a good way.
Parade mode: Omega-3s but make it dramatic. You’re telling yourself “this is recovery food” while eating fried fish at 9:30am, and honestly? Yes. Sports nutrition.
4. Perilla L.A.
Victor Heights / Chinatown / Echo Park slope
(the little hill above downtown where you suddenly feel alive again)
Perilla is a tiny Korean banchan shop from chef Jihee Kim that’s basically a love letter to side dishes as main character. We’re talking seasoned vegetables, rolled omelets, marinated fish, pickles that slap you right across the face in a loving way.
The power move is the dosirak: a Korean lunchbox with rice, a protein (soy-marinated fish or chicken is common), and an arrangement of banchan that looks like a color study and eats like “hi I’m stable again.” Hours post up late morning through the afternoon most days (11-ish start, closed Tuesdays), which is perfect grab and go, walk downhill into the parade a smug because you know you’re fed.
Parade mode: Perilla is stealth fuel. Travels well. Not messy. Gives “I am eating vegetables like a functional adult” while you are, in fact, foaming at the mouth for the Dodgers.
5. Shiku
Grand Central Market, Downtown
Shiku is Korean comfort from Grand Central Market, built on dosirak-style lunchboxes, rice bowls, and banchan done the way your friend’s mom did it, not the way some PR team thinks Gen Z wants “Korean-inspired.”
They literally define “shiku / 식구” as “the people you share food with,” your people, your family. It’s rice, marinated meats or tofu, kimchi, pickled vegetables, tiny sides that punch far above their size.
Hours here live in that daytime window (late morning into early evening), and they’re physically in the middle of downtown, which means you can disappear for eight minutes, buy yourself basic survival, and dive straight back into the screaming river of blue.
Parade mode: Innings five through nine. You already burned through your first burrito, you’re crashing, you need rice and pickles to stay vertical. This is that.
6. Philippe’s The Original
Chinatown / by Union Station
Philippe’s is 1908 old. Like, older-than-your-grandpa old. They claim they invented the French dip sandwich: sliced roast meat (beef, pork, lamb — choose your fighter) on a roll that gets dunked in jus until you’re like “oh wow I didn’t know I believed in anything anymore.”
It sits on N. Alameda Street on the edge of Chinatown, a couple blocks from Union Station, and it’s one of the oldest continuously operating restaurants in L.A. still doing this exact thing.
Parade mode: Sunglasses on. Jersey still on. Voice gone. You’re celebrating like literally generations of Dodger fans before you. You hit that spicy mustard like it owes you money and you taste history plus sodium and you’re like, “yes, I am an Angeleno, write that down.”
7. Langer’s Delicatessen
Westlake / MacArthur Park
Langer’s is pastrami monarchy. The #19 is the celebrity: hand-sliced hot pastrami, Swiss, coleslaw, Russian dressing, stacked on double-baked rye that has no business being that soft and that structured at the same time. People call it the best pastrami sandwich in Los Angeles, sometimes the best in the country, and they’re not shy about it.
Langer’s sits across from MacArthur Park, a short jump from downtown. You walk in cooked from yelling, you walk out revived like you just got subbed back into the lineup.
Parade mode: Protein + salt + pickle. It’s basically Gatorade if Gatorade had a Jewish grandmother and standards.
8. Pine & Crane DTLA
South Park / Downtown
Pine & Crane DTLA is the Taiwanese comfort stop you secretly need. The DTLA location in South Park does breakfast daily from 8am–11am — think scallion pancakes, soft eggs, warm soy-ish flavors — then keeps rolling straight through lunch and dinner until 10pm with dumplings, noodles, rice dishes, cold appetizers, tea, beer, wine, cocktails, the whole day.
It’s Vivian Ku’s take on Taiwanese café food: casual, bright, filling, not fussy. You can grab breakfast, immediately step into the crowd, and never leave downtown.
Parade mode: “I am here for twelve hours and I respect stamina.” Hydrate, eat, chant, repeat.
9. Pizzeria Bianco
ROW DTLA / Arts District-adjacent
Pizzeria Bianco is Chris Bianco’s wood-fired pizza altar at ROW DTLA (1320 E 7th St), with that blistered crust and silky mozzarella that makes you text three people “no like you don’t GET it.” It opens at 11am most days, which is exactly parade-wrap o’clock.
The room looks like an old industrial space fell in love with a tomato. There’s parking. There’s air conditioning. There’s olive oil that tastes like you owe somebody an apology.
Parade mode: Debrief zone. This is where the group sits, shakes, and does the “I swear I made eye contact with Shohei Ohtani and we had a moment” lie. You nod. You eat. You forgive them.
10. Otomisan
Boyle Heights
Otomisan is the oldest continuously operating Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles, cooking homestyle plates in Boyle Heights since 1956. That is not a typo. Nineteen. Fifty. Six.
The menu is pure comfort: teriyaki, tempura, miso soup, rice, small plates that taste like care, not branding. It’s tiny, it’s warm, it’s lunch hours (11:30a–2p, then dinner again 4:30p–7:30p, Monday–Saturday), and stepping inside feels like time travel in a good way, not a “what if we brought back prohibition” way.
Parade mode: Post-rally decompression. You crossed the bridge into Boyle Heights, legs jelly, throat shredded. You sit down, eat rice and miso, and remember you are a person and not just a noise machine in a Mookie Betts jersey.
game plan
Let’s be organized, bestie. This is a championship city. We have structure.
Option 1: “doors open, let’s go feral”
Wake & Late at 7am for the burrito → walk straight into downtown and glue yourself to a barricade like it’s a personality trait.
Option 2: “coffee first or I WILL cry”
Doubting Thomas for pastry + pastrami burrito + actual brewed coffee → Little Fish for iced coffee and salty fried fish breakfast at 8am → head in from Echo Park.
Option 3: “culture AND baseball, because yes I contain multitudes”
Perilla banchan box in one hand, Shiku dosirak in the other, and you’re in the crowd double-fisting Korean lunchboxes like a beautiful menace.
Option 4: “we won, I’m sobbing, feed me like a movie montage”
Parade → Philippe’s French dip with mustard → Langer’s #19 pastrami (revive your soul) → Pizzeria Bianco pizza at ROW DTLA → text the group chat “I love you guys so much” and fall asleep at 4:15pm like you just threw a complete game.
Los Angeles loves a spectacle. We shut down downtown, we paint the whole city Dodger blue, we scream like teenagers at City Hall, and then we feed ourselves like a real city: Taiwanese breakfast, Korean banchan, pastrami legends, 117-year-old French dip counters, Boyle Heights Japanese comfort, Echo Park fried fish that tastes like sunshine.
Eat like that. Yell like that. And while my allegiance will always be with the Phillies I want my Dodgers to stay fed, baby.
