Mercado La Paloma

101 Best restaurants of Los Angeles

@latimes

"#36 At lunchtime, every office worker within a five-mile radius seems to be gathered inside the Mercado La Paloma complex near USC. The most coveted seat inside the busy food court is the chef’s counter at Holbox, the broadly Yucatán-style marisqueria from Gilberto Cetina Jr. The menu teems with fresh, exquisitely prepared seafood: yellowtail-uni ceviche; griddled scallop tacos with chile morita; smoked fish tostadas with an arbol-peanut soy sauce. The mariscos cocktails are excellent; the mixta is a sweet-sour goblet of octopus, wild Mexican shrimp and oysters in a citrus-spiked sauce. Across the room, the Cetina family’s Chichen Itza restaurant continues to make soulful renditions of Yucatecan classics. There is a lovely cochinita pibil; the mesquite-grilled pork shoulder called poc chuc; and bowls of citrusy sopa de lima. Try the papadzules, corn tortillas stuffed with slices of hard-boiled egg, blanketed in a creamy sauce of roasted pumpkin seeds and epazote. The hardest decision you’ll make all day is when you walk into Mercado La Paloma and you must decide whether to eat at Holbox or Chichen Itza, but rest easy: There is no way you’ll go wrong. No alcohol. Lot parking. Credit cards accepted.Read the Los Angeles Times review »"