Skip the Entrée: Confessions of an Appetizer-First Diner in Los Angeles

Let me confess something upfront: I ordered an entrée at dinner exactly once last month, and I regretted it every time.

It started innocently. A friend and I split three starters at a wine bar in Highland Park, ran out of table space, and skipped the mains entirely. We left happier than we had at any fancy dinner in months. So I made it an experiment — five restaurants, appetizers only, entrées forbidden. What I found wasn't a workaround. It was a better way to eat in this city.

The Theory: LA Cooks Best in Small Format

Here's my thesis: Los Angeles is not a protein-and-sides town. It's a market town, a street-food town, a produce town. Our culinary DNA — farmers market stalls, taco trucks, dim sum carts, the legacy of Wolfgang Puck's original small-plates revolution at Spago — rewards kitchens that can do many small things brilliantly, not one big thing adequately.

Entrées demand consistency. Starters demand creativity. And in a city where chefs change menus weekly based on what the Santa Monica farmers market looks like, creativity is the whole game.

Stop One: The Crudo Counter That Ruins Entrées for You

My first stop was a tiny Westside seafood counter where the menu is essentially a list of raw fish and tinned things, with a couple of grilled options as an afterthought. The razor-clam crudo with green apple and serrano was the best thing I ate all month — bright, cold, faintly sweet.

The chef, a veteran of a well-known sushi bar in Sawtelle, told me the entrée section exists "for people who haven't figured it out yet." That's the energy I'm talking about.

Stop Two: Banchan Energy in Koreatown

Koreatown has understood the appetizer-first life forever — they just call it banchan. At a grill spot where the side dishes arrive unbidden and refill without asking, the whole concept of a "main course" starts to feel like a bureaucratic invention.

I ordered three starters: scallion panc with a shattering crust, steamed egg soufflé that arrived still bubbling, and marinated crab that required no help whatsoever. The galbi I ordered out of guilt sat untouched for twenty minutes. When I finally got to it, it was fine. The starters were transcendent.

Stop Three: The Wine Bar Where Starters Are the Whole Show

An Echo Park wine bar I love runs a menu of maybe nine items, all starters, no apologies. Whipped feta with hot honey. Blistered shishitos. A little gem salad with buttermilk ranch that would make a Midwestern grandmother weep with recognition.

The chef-owner, who staged in Spain before opening, told me she designed the menu for "the way people actually eat at a bar — one thing, then another, then decide." No three-course architecture. Just a conversation between plates.

Stop Four: Dim Sum Logic in the San Gabriel Valley

The San Gabriel Valley has been running the appetizer-only playbook for decades — it's called dim sum, and it's the most fun you can have at a table in this county. Rolling carts, ticking boxes, a dozen small dishes arriving in waves while tea keeps coming.

My favorites on a recent Saturday: har gow with skin so thin you could read a menu through it, and pan-fried turnip cake with crisp edges and a molten middle. Nobody at that restaurant is thinking about an entrée. Nobody.

Stop Five: The Bistro That Saved Its Best for the Top of the Menu

My last stop was a French-leaning bistro in Mid-City where, I'll be honest, the steak frites are good. But the top of the menu — where the oysters, the pâté, the frisée with lardons, and the gougères live — is where the kitchen shows off. The pâté en croûte, done in-house, is a small miracle of lamination and patience.

I asked the chef why the starters outshine the mains. He laughed: "The mains pay the rent. The starters are why I cook."

The Case for Eating This Way

By the end of the month, I'd noticed real benefits beyond taste. Ordering three or four starters spread the kitchen's strengths across the table. It cost about the same as an entrée each. It eliminated entrée envy — nobody at the table was stuck with the wrong main. And it turned dinner into a longer, chattier experience, because small plates invite lingering.

There's a fairness angle too: starters are where kitchens take risks. That's where you find the young cook's idea, the weird pickle, the sauce the chef fiddles with at midnight. Entrées are committee decisions. Starters are love letters.

How to Eat Appetizer-First Without Being Awkward

A few field-tested tips. First, tell your server the plan — they'll pace the meal and won't hover waiting to take a main order. Second, order in rounds, not all at once; you'll avoid the dreaded table-crowd problem. Third, sit at the bar whenever possible — bars are the natural habitat of the starter-only diner, and bartenders make excellent co-conspirators. Fourth, tip on total value received, not plate count. Servers working a four-plate table are working.

The Verdict

Los Angeles fine dining doesn't need a tower of protein to be serious. The city's real luxury is abundance — of markets, of cultures, of cooks with ideas too small and too many to fit on one entrée plate. The appetizer section isn't the warm-up act. In LA, it's the headliner.

Skip the main. Order the whole top of the menu. Thank me later.