Wondering where Los Angeles's in-the-know crowd is eating and drinking? It's easy to spot lines out the door, but some underlying trends are harder to see.
We took a data-driven look at the question, using Yelp and SafeGraph, a dataset of commercial points of interest and their visitor patterns, to discover which local businesses have been on the tips of diners' tongues this month.
To find out who made the list, we first looked at Los Angeles businesses on Yelp by category and counted how many reviews each received. Rather than compare them based on number of reviews alone, we calculated a percentage increase in reviews over the past month, and tracked businesses that consistently increased their volume of reviews to identify statistically significant outliers compared to past performance. Then we analyzed foot traffic data from SafeGraph to validate the trends.
Read on to see which spots are getting plenty of attention this spring.
Francesco’s Italian Cuisine
Open since February 2020, this Italian spot, which offers pizza, salads and more, is trending compared to other businesses categorized as "Italian" on Yelp.
Citywide, Italian spots saw a median 1.2% increase in new reviews over the past month. Francesco’s Italian Cuisine only recently appeared on Yelp, but while many new businesses struggle to gain reviews, it has seen strong initial popularity.
It's not the only trending outlier in the Italian category: Chi Spacca has seen a 0.4% increase in reviews, and Pizza Sociale and Fairworth have seen 34.9 and 34.9% increases, respectively.
Located at 15355 Sherman Way in Van Nuys, Francesco’s Italian Cuisine offers minestrone soup, linguine primavera, lasagna bolognese and margherita pizza. View the menu here.
Francesco’s Italian Cuisine is open from 11 a.m.–10 p.m. daily.
Bar Restaurant
Whether or not you've been hearing buzz about Silver Lake's Bar Restaurant, the bar and French spot is a hot topic according to Yelp review data.
While businesses categorized as "French" on Yelp saw a median 1.3% increase in new reviews over the past month, Bar Restaurant bagged a 40.7% increase in new reviews within that time frame, maintaining a sound 4.5-star rating. It significantly outperformed the previous month by gaining 1.8 times more reviews than expected based on its past performance.
Open at 4326 Sunset Blvd. since October 2019, Bar Restaurant serves mussels, haricots verts and lamb tartare.
Bar Restaurant is open from 6–11 p.m. daily.
Masala #2
Hollywood's Masala #2 is also making waves. Open since October 2019 at 7226 Sunset Blvd., the Indian, vegetarian and halal spot has seen a 44% bump in new reviews over the last month, compared to a median review increase of 1.2% for all businesses tagged "Vegetarian" on Yelp. Moreover, on a month-to-month basis Masala #2's review count increased by more than 220%.
Masala #2 features a vegetarian menu with dishes such as mixed vegetable curry, tofu masala, saag paneer and vegetable korma. Over the past month, it's maintained an excellent five-star rating among Yelpers.
Masala #2 is open from 3 p.m.–1 a.m. on Monday-Wednesday and 3 p.m.–3 a.m. on Thursday-Saturday. (It's closed on Sunday.)
CoCo King
Sawtelle's CoCo King is the city's buzziest Chinese spot by the numbers.
The Chinese spot, which offers desserts and more and has been open at 11668 W. Pico Blvd. since July 2019, increased its new review count by 32.6% over the past month, an outlier when compared to the median new review count of 1.4% for the Yelp category "Chinese." It outperformed the previous month by gaining 7.5 times more reviews than expected based on past performance.
CoCo King offers braised pork rice bowl, spicy crawfish rice bowl and Beijing-style chicken wrap, as well as drinks and desserts like taro latte and matcha pudding.
CoCo King is open from 11:30 a.m.–8:30 p.m. on Monday-Thursday and noon–8:30 p.m. on Sunday. (It's closed on Friday and Saturday.)
This story was created automatically using local business data, then reviewed and augmented by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
