AMERICA'S FINEST RESTAURANT TOWNS MONEY ranks the 15 greatest eating-out cities and guides you to their top tables. The best of the best: Los Angeles.
By JOSEPH S. COYLE Reporter associate: Deborah Lohse

(MONEY Magazine) – Not long ago the U.S. food map was a variation on the celebrated New Yorker magazine cover: a huge, deliciously detailed Manhattan filled the foreground, set off by a hinterland of boring plains. The Hudson River was the Continental Divide, and most restaurants unlucky enough to be west of it were obviously hash houses or, at best, surf-and-turf parlors. If you looked hard, you could detect a faint glimmer of culinary life in New Orleans (dinner at Antoine's) and San Francisco (dinner at Ernie's). The rest was void. How times have changed. America's gastronomic landscape started to shift in the '70s, with Julia Child, goat cheese and the yuppie onslaught that together raised the collective consciousness to palate level. Now good to great restaurants are sprouting everywhere like shiitake mushrooms after a summer rain. To give some order to this ferment for readers who travel on business or pleasure, MONEY set out to rank the top restaurant towns in America. Our most striking discovery: New York has been displaced by Los Angeles as the culinary capital of the U.S. But that isn't the only surprise: -- There are now four world-class eating cities in the U.S. where every night of the week restaurants are serving dinners equal to those of the best in Paris -- Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Chicago. The big news, aside from L.A.'s pre-eminence, is the mighty leap of Chicago into this elite league. -- New Orleans, once second only to New York as a food town, has been surpassed by cities that were gustatory backwaters not long ago, such as Boston and Washington, D.C. -- While not yet in the first rank, there are undiscovered regional stars, such as Philadelphia and Phoenix. MONEY's ranking of the 15 best cities can be seen at a glance in the table on pages 126 and 127. Selection and order are based on a combination of $ criteria: quality and variety of food available; local standards of service; and price. To be included, a city had to demonstrate a range of excellence. Thus for each city in our ranking, we have identified the most notable restaurants in two categories: 1) top-of-the-line restaurants, which are the most ambitious in terms of food and are also usually the most expensive. These are the kinds of places you would seek out for important business occasions, wedding anniversaries, birthdays -- or just ethereal eating experiences; and 2) specialty restaurants, such as seafood houses and the ethnic standouts that spice the food scene in every serious eating city. The latter tend to be more casual places suitable for informal meals. MONEY's judgments on this clearly subjective topic were rigorously arrived at. First, with the assistance of Nancy Harmon Jenkins, a respected food writer-editor and a six-year veteran of the New York Times, we recruited professional food critics in 23 cities to evaluate their respective towns. To get a national perspective, we interviewed leading food professionals ranging from critics to chefs and outstanding amateur eaters with up-to-date knowledge of the U.S. restaurant scene. Then we made our evaluations. Here is a closer look at our ranking:

NO. 1: LOS ANGELES. EAST-WEST IS BEST As the U.S. grows more multinational, a dazzling stir of European culinary discipline, exotic Asian lightness, Latin brio and terrific local ingredients is taking root as the new American cuisine. And right now the place to indulge yourself with this exciting restaurant food is Los Angeles. Why L.A.? Four reasons: its soaring wealth as the financial capital of the West; its closeness to the most bountiful source of superfresh fruits and vegetables; its reasonable prices, thanks to retail rents that are often about half those in New York; and its position as a new golden gateway for immigration. Furthermore, not all the immigrants have been from the South and West. La-La Land's zany vitality and Mediterranean climate have attracted brilliant chefs from frigid northern Europe looking for an anything-goes atmosphere in which to experiment with their craft. One of the first to arrive was Wolfgang Puck, the most celebrated chef in America today. Compact and earthy, Austrian-born and French-trained, Puck, 40, burst through the smog eight years ago with Spago, the first of his four restaurants, where he introduced ''designer pizzas'' topped with shrimp and leek, and daring East-West combinations like sauteed fois gras with sweet-and- sour plum sauce. Today Spago remains an important L.A. food shrine, as well as a place to see and be seen. But Puck has outdone himself. His second effort, Chinois on Main in Santa Monica, is the best current eating spot in all of L.A., and perhaps in all of America. At Spago you may wait till 10 o'clock for your 9 p.m. table in Siberia (the back room) -- or, if you're lucky, in what the Los Angeles Zagat Restaurant Survey, one of 19 city guides published by Zagat Survey, terms the ''staggeringly noisy'' front room. Chinois on Main, by contrast, offers ''more consistent food, definitely more distinctive food and less crowding,'' in the view of MONEY's Los Angeles critic Charles Perry, a restaurant columnist for the Los Angeles Times. The major influence at Chinois on Main is Chinese, but a strong European influence is at work. You might start with grilled mandarin beef with spicy Chinese potato salad, then move on to Shanghai lobster risotto with ginger and a julienne of green onions. Desserts are unabashedly Occidental state of the tart -- rich chocolate cake, parfait of the day -- and accompanied by an espresso that could pass muster on the Via Veneto. (A three-course dinner before tax, tip and wine averages around $90 for two.) The other current local star is Michel Richard, whose Citrus is viewed by some foodies as even better than Puck's places. Richard, 42, born and trained in France, also dares to be different but in a mostly French context. Try the sea scallops pierced through with tender young asparagus on a bed of creamy whipped potatoes spiked with black olives and surrounded by an intense lobster sauce. Then, perhaps, roast smoked rabbit with wheat polenta and a truffle sauce. Desserts from this master pastry chef are not to be missed, like the creme brulee napoleon with butterscotch sauce and vanilla ice cream. (Three courses: about $86 for two) When you're ready to descend to the merely fine and affordable, you encounter a true kaleidoscope of ethnic influences. Samples: -- The Border Grill, with its Yucatecan specialties such as fabulous green corn tamales and bounteous exotic salads. The original one on Melrose Avenue, a kooky extravaganza of small retailers, is a perfect lunch oasis. The Santa Monica branch is a better choice for dinner. (Three courses for two: $60) -- The Fragrant Vegetable, a Chinese vegetarian haunt where you can delve into such inscrutables as Buddha's cushions, thin sheets of tofu surrounded by black moss, and sweet white fungus-and-coconut soup. (Three courses for two: $40) -- The Grill on the Alley in Beverly Hills, with a woody, men's-club setting, crusty steaks, A-plus cobb salad and the creamiest, most comforting rice pudding in the West. (Three courses for two: $76)

NO. 2: NEW YORK. SEA OF CHOICE, SKY OF PRICE Sheer, unrivaled force of numbers is what keeps New York at the top of so many experts' lists of restaurant towns. What knocks it down to second place in MONEY's ranking is summed up by Joshua Wesson, co-editor of the bimonthly Wine & Food Companion: ''New York's very culinary strength is also its biggest weakness -- while there's a tremendous amount of diversity in dining to be found among its 22,000 or so eating places, much of it isn't worth discovering.'' Even in Manhattan, the borough that the visitor means when he says New York, the vast majority of restaurants serve unexciting fare. One explanation for all this rampant mediocrity: high Manhattan rents force all but the best restaurants to skimp on the quality of their food. Laments William Rice, Food & Wine's former editor who now writes for the Chicago Tribune: ''Real estate in New York is so expensive that the city has faded somewhat as the incredible panorama of restaurants of different cultures. You just can't afford to open a little restaurant in Manhattan anymore.'' The city's restaurateurs who don't pass along their high costs in the form of lowered quality may instead decide to add them to the tab. Even though the 1987 stock market crash has brought on a price-cutting frenzy at many trendy bistros, the average price for a fine meal in New York is nearly half again as expensive as in Los Angeles: $61 vs. $43. (See the table opposite.) So why bother? ''There's still no other city that offers as many shots at culinary epiphanies as New York,'' says Wesson. ''The trick is to find the places that are treats without suffering along the way.'' Fewer than two dozen restaurants currently form the hot center of excitement in New York -- not for their decor or views or famous faces at table but because the most talented and innovative chefs are cooking there. Among the elite: -- Alison on Dominick. Chef: Thomas Valenti; style: southwestern French; signature dish: braised lamb shank with pureed white beans on a bed of wilted chicory ($80 for two, without tax or tip). -- Bouley. Chef: David Bouley; style: French; signature dish: roasted halibut with toasted sesame ($140). -- Le Bernardin. Chefs: Gilbert Le Coze and Eberhard Mueller; style: French seafood; signature dish: roast monkfish on Savoy cabbage ($136). -- Union Square Cafe. Chef: Michael Romano; style: American/Italian; signature dish: warm seafood salad with white beans ($80). You say that some of the above prices seem exorbitant, even for an epiphany? Just wait until tax (8 1/4%), tip and a bottle of wine are added: dinner for two at, say, Le Bernardin -- where the wine list is undeniably overpriced -- can easily approach $300. (If you go, a bottle of the '86 St. Aubin at $40 may do nicely.) At Union Square Cafe, on the less expensive end of the hot- chef list, your complete bill for two needn't run above $140 or so, and you'll find two lagniappes: excellent wines by the glass and a friendly welcome in a city where many celebrated restaurants display an attitude toward unknown diners calculated to freeze the Panama Canal. As for the best specialty restaurants, unlike most cities, in New York this category is no guarantee of bargain prices. Arqua, an open, airy restaurant on the arty fringe of Wall Street, exacts about $68 for three courses for two of its excellent northern Italian fare. Sparks, a traditional, masculine steakhouse (where at dinner, the air can turn blue with cigar smoke), boasts one of the most impressive wine lists in the country, with 300 entries and reasonable pricing (three courses: $88). When your budget begins to scream and you no longer need to impress anyone, head for the noisy and dowdy Phoenix Garden in Chinatown, which serves the best Cantonese food in the city. You can bring your own wine and get away for less than $50 for two.

NO. 3: SAN FRANCISCO. PASSION FOR PERFECTION Were it not for its smallness -- at 749,000, its population is a fourth of L.A.'s and a tenth of New York's -- San Francisco would probably equal or even surpass both its rivals for top restaurant city. ''It's got a European sensibility and takes inspiration from the land around it,'' enthuses the Chicago Tribune's Rice. ''In New York the pressure to excel comes from a sophisticated, well-to-do clientele; in San Francisco it comes from this extraordinary food and wine community that cares passionately.'' Los Angeles Times food editor and restaurant critic Ruth Reichl gives the perspective from $ down the coast: in L.A. restaurants, they tell you which stars came in to eat; in San Francisco, they tell you the name of the farmer who grew the potatoes. If a trip to the Bay Area coincides with a really important occasion, personal or business, then you may want to mark it at the best table in town: at Masa's, a richly quiet, dark-wood-paneled room tucked away in a small hotel on Bush Street. You may decide that the new wave French food there is just about the best you've ever had. Jeannette Ferrary, MONEY's San Francisco critic, chooses one appetizer as a sample of the style: black sea bass sauteed under a mosaic of crisped, tiny rounds of sliver-thin potatoes and served with baby cucumbers with their flowers attached and a red-wine beurre blanc. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen dotes on ''the best creme brulee ever bruleed''at Masa's. Some irrepressible brulee fans drop by late for this masterful example of a familiar dessert ($8.50) accompanied by a Chateau d'Yquem, offered by the glass ($35). A memorable repast at Masa's, price-fixed at $65 a person, could easily cost two people $300 counting tax, tip and bottle of wine. Few other San Francisco restaurants are in this lofty price league (or offer such luxe quality, for that matter). At Roti, a handsome new spot featuring meats spit-roasted in a giant fireplace in the dining room, three courses for two would come to $54. At China Moon Cafe, an imaginative menu can take you through Chinese, Thai and Italian influences before you wind up with a homemade French nut tart ($56 for two).

NO. 4: CHICAGO. EXTRAVAGANTLY ETHNIC Variety is Chicago's spice: according to Zagat, it has 61 types of cuisine vs. New York's 65, with less than half the population. Among the city's 9,600 restaurants is the familiar, solid center serving middle-European fare -- German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian -- that no other American city can duplicate. But in recent years, ring upon ring of other ethnic cuisines have surrounded this core, lightening, brightening and complicating the Chicago scene. The new entries include some of the most impressive Mexican restaurants this side of the Rio Grande and the best new wave American east of the Rockies, plus swirls of Cajun-Creole and Asian. ''Where else can you find so many excellent examples of so many of the world's cuisines?'' asks Dennis Ray Wheaton, chief dining critic for Chicago magazine. Chicago's top special-occasion destination: the Everest Room. From 40 stories above LaSalle Street, this aerie defies not gravity but a basic rule of restaurants: that good views and good food don't go together. Chef Jean Joho's Alsatian roots show up in his remarkably light touch with earthy vegetables like potatoes and cabbage, often accompanying delicate seafood sausage or wild salmon. The 200-item wine list includes 40 Alsatian whites ($92 for two). The city's amazing culinary diversity is best reflected in its specialty restaurants. Among them: -- Terczak's, where rich chowders and fish soups, hearty pot roasts and other American classics turn out far better than those back in 19th-century farmhouses. ($50 for two) -- Mareva's, which evokes lost aristocratic Poland, with tuxedoed waiters, plush banquettes, huge brass chandeliers, beveled mirrors, beautiful silver and crystal. Try the amazingly delicate lobster pierogi, followed by a lusty loin of braised venison. ($70 for two) -- Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, a double-sided establishment (the Grill is more casual and less expensive), that is ''arguably the best Mexican restaurant in the United States,'' says Wheaton. 'Wood-grilled meats, vegetables, and beans and rice come in guises a world removed from the cliched Mexican food most of us are familiar with'' ($40 for two). Jane Stern, who with her husband Michael writes about food and popular culture for the New Yorker, puts Chicago at the top of her eating-out list (as does he). ''I love the bigger-than-life expansiveness of Chicago restaurants,'' she rhapsodizes. ''There's always plenty of elbow room, the portions are large, the seats are big; you even get big glasses of water. And of course, the waitresses are loud.''

NOS. 5 TO 15: THE REIGNING REGIONALS Washington, D.C. (No. 5) has been working on its food reputation ever since pol-gastronomes like Pierre Salinger emerged on the scene during the Kennedy Administration. That advent produced some French and Italian restaurants with four-star reach. Some exacting eaters -- Los Angeles Times media critic and GQ dining-out columnist David Shaw for one -- consider Jean-Louis the best French restaurant in the country. In addition, according to Washington Post food critic Phyllis Richman, ''Washington is the city that first gets the culinary fallout from the world's trouble spots.'' That explains its lush concentration of good and very good Thai, Vietnamese, Ethiopian, Salvadoran and Afghan restaurants. Seattle (No. 6) has moved farther faster than any restaurant city aside from Los Angeles. It may well be the most exciting place to eat fish and shellfish in the entire U.S. Observes Schuyler Ingle, MONEY's critic there: ''The diner from New York or Los Angeles will find himself laughing behind his napkin for the magnificent food he has just eaten at such absurdly low prices.'' The Hunt Club, all dark wood and lithographs of hunting scenes, offers the brilliantly eclectic menu of Barbara Figueroa, one of the West's most talked-about young chefs ($66 for two). Boston (No. 7) is Seattle's East Coast competitor for top seafood town. Its culinary fame is at the high end, however, with a scarcity of mid-range restaurants that are worth any sort of detour. Jasper's enjoys a harborside location and perhaps Boston's best-known chef, the eclectic Jasper White ($72 for two). New Orleans (No. 8), that unique mecca of Creole and Cajun specialties, still has its champions, but the facts are cruel: it is no longer a wealthy city capable of supporting many fine restaurants without relying on the kindness of strangers. Some of its oldest names -- Antoine's and Brennan's, most notably -- have lowered their standards and cater to tourists by the busload. Complains Gene Bourg, New Orleans Times-Picayune restaurant critic: ''People who have lived here all their lives are now subjected to waiters from California taking the liberty to explain what a gumbo is.'' Still, Conde Nast Traveler food critic Mimi Sheraton gives New Orleans high marks principally for its regional and seafood specialties. Galatoire's is one turn- of-the-century New Orleans bistro that has not sold out ($50 for two). Among the lower-ranking cities -- Philadelphia (No. 9), Dallas (10), Miami (11), Minneapolis (12), Houston (13), Atlanta (14) and Santa Fe (15) -- some of the most knowledgeable critics we consulted mark Philadelphia as the sleeper. It boasts a vast midsection of inexpensive Italian and Oriental spots, plus some of the most celebrated haute cuisine in the country. In fact, Zagat designates Philadelphia's Le Bec-Fin as the No. 1 rated restaurant for food in its entire 19-city survey. Finally, there are six cities that are not yet culinarily accomplished enough to be ranked among the best but are getting there: Cleveland, Denver, Phoenix, Portland, Ore., San Diego and Tucson. Now may be the time to dig into these third-tier towns, while they are still relatively undiscovered. A final tip: try Phoenix first. It's the strongest of the six, and a topflight meal there -- say, at Vincent Guerithault on Camelback (602-224-0225) -- will cost a fourth less than what you'd spend at the best in supernal L.A.

BOX: HERE'S WHERE NEW YORK IS THE TOPS . . .

Listed here is the average price of dinner for one - three courses, one drink and tip -- at the 20 most popular restaurants in each of 17 cities, as reported by Zagat Survey.

New York City $61 Los Angeles 43 Philadelphia 41 Chicago 40 Boston 39 Washington, D.C. 39 San Francisco 36 Atlanta 32 Orange County, Calif. 32 St. Louis 31 Dallas 30 Baltimore 30 New Orleans 30 Seattle 28 Phoenix 25 Houston 25 Kansas City 21

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: Compiled by Deborah Lohse CAPTION: WHERE THE TOP MEALS ARE Here is a guide to America's 15 finest restaurant cities, ranked in descending order. Restaurants are recommended by MONEY's food critic in each city. The top places are appropriate for big-oc casion dining; the less formal specialty spots and best-kept secrets tend to feature ethnic and regional cuisines. Per- person dinner prices are for three courses, not including tax or tip. The letters after the phone numbers indi cate types of food served; see the foot notes for a key to the codes.