Last year’s top new restaurants in the South Bay
For over a decade, one of my first tasks of the year has been to make a list of the best new restaurants in the South Bay. It’s never an easy job. The overall quality of the dining experience in the Beach Cities has been improving, and it’s harder each year for newcomers to match the standards of their established competitors, much less excel in comparison. The size of my list has varied, depending on the number of establishments that opened and the virtues of the places under consideration. This year I got to seven before deciding I had included all that unequivocally qualified. I hesitated over a few places that showed promise but were too inconsistent in food or service. In the end I decided against them – to make the cut a restaurant had to offer a reliably good experience. As always, there are judgment calls about just what makes an establishment new – merely changing the menu or ownership is not enough. Some established places made major changes but kept the same identity, and that was enough to disqualify them. One name is missing from this list – House of Pita would have certainly made the cut had they remained open, but they closed in late November amid reports of illness…
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