Best restaurants to celebrate a special occasion in Los Angeles

In October my best friend and I were having dinner at a clubby West Hollywood restaurant where the food was meh and the evening needed salvaging. I knew how. “Let’s head to Here’s Looking at You for a cocktail and a burger,” I said. HLAY, as the regulars call it, offers a late happy hour menu at its bar from 8:30 to 10 p.m., during which the kitchen cranks out thick, dry-aged cheeseburgers embellished with peppery mayo and the sweet sting of fried onions. Settling in, we learned of a second, recently added option — steak frites featuring a sirloin cap (also known as a baseball cut) smeared with pink fermented radish butter alongside curly fries. Both were stellar. Bar director Danny Rubenstein had dreamed up a wild cocktail based on corn whiskey and avocado-washed mezcal that he named Jolene, which I trust is in honor of Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter.”

HLAY meets us where we are: in need of a mood shift, out for a casual celebration, up for some ambitious cooking with hip-hop as the background. Owner Lien Ta ensures that the tone of the dining room, with its abstractly Midcentury Modern vibe, stays welcoming and convivial. Founding chef Jonathan Whitener took all the cuisines that live in our heads as food-loving Angelenos and managed to graft them onto one concise menu. Frog’s legs splattered with salsa negra. A crazy, unerring chopped broccoli salad that includes pickled ginger and all sorts of seeds and nuts to mix together. Tomatoes sprinkled with frizzled lap xuong and splashed with bagna cauda. Whitener died unexpectedly and heartbreakingly in February. But when the room is full, and diners are swiping signature shishitos through creamy tonnato just as the burgers start rolling out, the restaurant feels like it will always be part of our lives. Which I hope it will be.