In conjunction with this year's Best of L.A. issue, which hits the streets today, you voted on your favorite places in Los Angeles. Here are your picks.

Best Deli
Langer's
704 S. Alvarado, Westlake. 
(213) 483-8050

Best Fish Tacos
Calle Tacos
6508 Hollywood Blvd., Hlywd. 
(323) 465-9100

Best New-School Food Truck
The Grilled Cheese Truck
@grlldcheesetruk

Best Fried Chicken
Roscoe's House of Chicken & Waffles
Multiple L.A. locations.

And more, so turn the page...

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Anne Fishbein

Guisados taco

That sound you hear is this year's LA Weekly "Best of L.A. 2012" issues dropping into boxes and newstands and cafés and gyms and coffeeshops and massage parlors (that's a joke, sort of) around town this morning. And populating online, of course, with hundreds of people and places and lovely things to eat and drink. (Best Burger! Best Restaurant! Best Taco! Best Cocktails! Best Korean BBQ! Best Place to Eat Alone! Etc. etc. etc.) But maybe go get the actual paper, just to prove that you can still turn real pages, and because it will make a fine ad hoc tray for that plate of tacos.

T. Nguyen

Taco dorados de camaron at Mariscos Jalisco

It used to be, a dozen years ago or so, that there weren't that many spots in town where you could find a decent seafood taco, much less a great one. Fast forward to 2012, and fish and shrimp tacos have gone through something of an evolution. There are plenty of fish in the sea now; you can barely drive a block through Boyle Heights, say, without running into at least one lonchero decked out in bright blue to mark its specialty in seafood. The fish or shrimp tacos on the menu inevitably are dredged in a seasoned batter and fried, and a trio of such tacos will cost little more than a few crumpled bucks. It likely will be money well spent.

As it happens, seafood tacos also are one of the very few substantive foods you don't mind eating when the mercury rises above 90. That is, if you could muster the energy to eat at all. If you could do that, then turn the page for your survival guide during another week of heat: Our list of the 10 best seafood tacos in the city.

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Rachael Narins

Los Molcajetes Pupusas

Pupusas are cheap and cheerful, exceptionally hearty, stuffed and griddled disks of slaked cornmeal or rice flour that originated in El Salvador. They invariably cost less than $3 in even the most stylish restaurants, and are most likely available somewhere near you.

We learned three very important things when sampling them across L.A. The first is that there are five standard fillings to choose from: beans, cheese, minced pork (chicharrón, which is ground pork in this case, and not fried skin), loroco (a type of vine flower) and revuelta, which consists of beans, cheese and pork. And while the beans will for sure have lard, the masa itself won't, so this is a perfect vegetarian meal if you order correctly.

Second, and really most important, is that they do not come quickly, ever, so just put that out of your mind; this isn't fast food. The third lesson is that a pupusa is an incredibly formulaic thing. Variations on the theme are nuanced at best. Every spot will serve you a plate with your pupusas, some Tapatio hot sauce, a squeeze bottle of mild pureed salsa rojo and a help-yourself container of curtido, which is a slightly pickled cabbage slaw with carrots and oregano. For our list, we obviously took in to consideration taste and then the general atmosphere of the pupuseria, the assortment of fillings offered, and the accompaniments. Turn the page.

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Clarissa Wei

Bean curd stew, twisted cruller, wheat pancakes, and beef wrap at Yung Ho Restaurant

For the Chinese, breakfast is the most important part of the day. A steamed pork bun and a soy milk for take-out is pretty standard, but if you want to make it a sit-down affair, try salty soy milk with crispy chunks of twisted cruller (also known as you tiao 油条), a large turnip cake with the sides lightly crisped, and a flaky green onion pancake topped with an egg.

The composition of Chinese breakfast joints in Los Angeles can get complicated. You have your Hong Kong and dim sum restaurants, and then you have an entirely different genre of Chinese breakfast restaurants, often labeled Taiwanese or Northern Chinese.

For this particular genre, add in the context of Los Angeles and the distinction gets difficult. Places like Ye-May and Yung Ho Restaurant market themselves as Taiwanese breakfast joints, but are managed by a Chinese staff. Or take Garage Restaurant in Monterey Park: It's a Tianjin-style (Northern Chinese) place, but has a fair number of "tai shi" (台式), or Taiwanese, items on the menu.

But at all these eateries, whether strictly Taiwanese or partially Chinese, the dishes are the same: twisted cruller, green onion pancake, soy milk, various buns, egg pancake, turnip cake, and rice rolls. There aren't that many, but we rounded up the 10 best Taiwanese breakfast places in Los Angeles. Get to these places early -- they're notorious for running out of items by noon.

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Aaron Stein-Chester

Mamey paleta at Los Alpes

A paleta is, ostensibly, an ice pop. One made in-store and by hand, using recipes guarded like family jewels, in flavors carried over from Mexican favorites: ciruela pasa (prune), grosella (currant), guanabana (soursop), guayaba (guava), jamaica (hibiscus), nuez (walnut), pepino con chile (cucumbers with chile) and tamarindo (tamarind). Yes, a paleta is an ice pop, in the same way that a square is a rectangle, which is to say it's frozen and has a stick. But "ice pop," so often comprised of frozen water and various flavored corn-syrups, doesn't quite capture the essence of paleta, its sense of color and tradition and its distinct flavor -- like that of summer in Los Angeles. Turn the page for 10 of our favorites.

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A. Trachta

The glazed doughnut from Du Pars.

They say sex is like a doughnut: Even at its worst, is it ever really bad? Well, once you consume, in rapid succession, as many doughnuts as we have in the last few weeks, you start to believe it can be.

Of course there's never a reason to eat a doughnut. No amount of self-delusion will allow you to believe that fruit filling is a dose of vitamins for the day. No, eating a doughnut is an act of pure pleasure-seeking, so if you're going to have one, every bite should merit throwing a wrench in your otherwise clean-living diet. Dry, bland pastry need not apply.

So as an act of public service, we scoured the city for the best doughnuts around, all worth the sugar crash you'll inevitably experience later. We focused our search on actual doughnut shops, as opposed to restaurants that serve them on the menu -- with the exception of one, because if you're going to order a doughnut from a waitress, it seems fitting to do so at a 24-hour diner. Turn the page for our list of the Top 10 doughnuts in L.A.

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Rachael Narins

Philippe the Original's apple pie

Pie can become a fixation. For some, it's more than just something to eat, it's an experience. For us, it was a challenge. We polled and questioned, consulted the experts, prodded and called and narrowed our list to a daunting 25 local pies to sample. For our own sanity, this was limited to standard sweet pies that you can get in single portions -- either a slice or as a mini-pie -- and they had to come from a restaurant or storefront. Pies that are locally made and delivered whole were not included.

What makes a good pie? First, the crust, a tricky bit of culinary wizardry: It should be a rich golden color, not tough and should have a lovely flavor. Our ideal crust is rolled out thinly but evenly, and still sturdy enough to hold its shape. It should not be partly dissolved or tough as cardboard. The filling should be sweet, not cloying and never runny, gummy, rubbery or industrially gelled. Those are the hallmarks of bad pie. Nothing like that is on this list.

Of course the best pie in Los Angeles is always going to be the one you baked yourself, ideally just out of the oven. But if that isn't on your agenda, here are our picks for the 10 Best Pies in L.A.

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Anne Fishbein

Phở

It's a little unfair how Vietnamese beef soup is dispersed in L.A.: Too many outlets in the San Gabriel Valley, and too few anywhere west of the 10/710 interchange. Indeed, South El Monte's Garvey Avenue is to phở as Sawtelle Boulevard is to ramen: You probably can make a best-of list based just on this boulevard of phở alone.

The best phở have similar characteristics: Slippery but firm rice noodles. A hot, beefy broth laced with cloves, cinnamon and charred ginger. Fine meat that stands up to the broth. A wild forest of herbs and bean sprouts, served on the side. Surely at some point the law of entropy will prevail and L.A. will see more phở joints that focus less on bad puns and pale broths and more on simple, strong bowls of phở. Until -- or even if -- it gains a foothold in L.A. proper, these 10 places for phở will do.

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Via wikimedia commons

The cocktail revolution is well documented. In bars and restaurants across the country, the American cocktail has returned. But the serious booze professionals I know argue that if the cocktail is truly to take root again as part of our national identity, it must make the leap from the barstool to the couch.

The at-home cocktail used to be the psychological distinction we drew between the work day and the evening. Cocktail hour said definitively that work was over, that this is our time now. Reclaiming this tradition, the nerds argue, is paramount if we want to see our current cocktail obsession stand the test of time, to be more than just another passing fad. People, it is your cultural duty to make cocktails at home.

With that in mind, we set out to find the best places in Los Angeles to further our at-home cocktail ambitions. As such, we gave preference to places with the best liquor selections, rather than looking for good wine or beer selections, although great liquor PLUS great wine and beer definitely won our favor. Turn the page for L.A.'s top 10 liquor stores.

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