Avalon Hotel
Los Angeles, United States[view map]
Local restaurants
Boa Steakhouse (+1 310 899 4466) at the Grafton Hotel on Santa Monica Boulevard is a contemporary steakhouse with a buzzy ambiance. The flagship restaurant of celebrity chef Walter Puck, LA's king of Asian fusion food, Spago (+1 310 385 0880) on North Cañon Drive has an open kitchen and is renowned for its blend of US, European and Asian cuisine and excellent service. The eight-course tasting menus are definitely worth the extra dollars. Incidentally, Puck's first apprenticeship was at L'Oustau de Baumanière. Cut (+1 310 276 8500) at the Beverly Wilshire hotel on Wilshire Boulevard is another of Wolfgang Puck's many projects, and is a stylish modern take on the classic American steakhouse.Local cafes
The Urth Caffé, 267 South Beverly Drive (+1 301 205 9311), serves organic and vegan goodies, as well as tea and coffee in huge Bodum presses.
For a full list of eating and drinking recommendations in Los Angeles, check out our Los Angeles eating & drinking guide
Worth getting out of bed for
Remember when sabre-toothed tigers and giant ground sloths roamed LA? Thought not. Head to The Page Museum at the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits (www.tarpits.org) in Hancock Park; more than 3,000,000 ice-age fossils have been found here and the natural history museum is fascinating.
The nearby Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 5905 Wilshire Boulevard (+1 323 857 6000; www.lacma.org) holds some 100,000 European, American, Islamic and Korean artworks, from costumes and 15th-century altar figures to German Expressionist masterpieces. Magritte, Rembrandt, Hokusai and Hockney are just some of the highlights.
For a full list of recommended activities in Los Angeles, check out our Los Angeles destination guide
