Top Selling Dishes at Los Angeles Restaurants (Part 2)

Chef Los Angeles

Photo of Hourie Sahakian courtesy of Stacey Sun


I previously learned about Top Selling Dishes at 8 Los Angeles Restaurants. On June 10, at Taste of the Nation Los Angeles, I stuck with the theme and asked seven participating chefs, What’s your top selling dish, and why do you think that’s the case? Read their responses.

Greg Daniels (Haven Gastropub)

The top selling dish is the Haven Burger, and it’s been consistently about 9 – 10% of our overall sales for both restaurants. I think it’s the most accessible thing on the menu for people to go for, and it’s great. People come back for it. That’s the one thing I tell my staff to push people to try. I don’t push them on higher priced menu items. When they come in the first time, “Get ‘em to eat the burger.” That gets people back, and then they can venture out and try other parts of the menu later. Our staple is our Haven Burger with the fries that we do in-house.

Tony DiSalvo (Whist)

The top selling dish at Whist is a Korean inspired dish, chile-fried chicken. It’s like a sweet chile glaze, a little bean paste, chile, rice syrup, caramelized garlic. We make house-made kimchi with all spring vegetables from the market, like a little salad on top, and we use kimchi liquid with some other ingredients to make a little bit of a vinaigrette…People are all into fried chicken. It’s kind of a can’t miss. It’s pretty simple. It’s crispy chicken, and who doesn’t love that?

Mark Gold (Eva)

The top selling dish at the restaurant is the egg with toasted cauliflower. I think people don’t expect something different, and then when they get the egg, people love it. The servers get behind it and say, “You have to try the egg.”

Perfecto Rocher (Lazy Ox Canteen)

We have a lot of selling dishes. We have the huevo. We have salpicon. We sell a lot of broccoli. We sell a lot of the burger. We don’t have a best seller, because you see the numbers, every week is almost the same numbers in every dish. We don’t have like, “We sell this more,” because whatever isn’t selling, I take it away.

Hourie Sahakian (Short Cake)

Hazelnut croissants are very popular. I think it’s because the staff and I love them so much, and I talk about them so much that our guests are really encouraged to try them, and once they try them, they’ve gained popularity on their own.

Jimmy Shaw (Loteria Grill)

It does vary by location, but there are three that are always on the top. Our green enchiladas – either in cheese or in chicken – maybe because I order them a couple times a week myself. That, our shredded beef taco and our chicken in mole poblano. Those are the three that are off the charts, and then recently we added a grilled skirt steak – arrachera – and that in Hollywood has become our #1…The green tomatillo sauce is one that’s just as friendly to the Mexican menu as a good marinara sauce would be to an Italian menu. So it’s a way for people to – those who are familiar to it, it’s a way to return to the familiar – and those who are unfamiliar with it, it’s a wonderful gateway into what is a lot of other Mexican food. So I think it’s an easy dish to either crave if you know it or accept if you don’t.

Joshua Smith (Blue Cow Kitchen)

The short rib French dip, which is a mesh between French onion soup and short rib French dip sandwich… Because it’s beef, and the Hill [Bunker Hill] requires that. It’s clever, and people like it a lot. It’s a good mash-up.

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Joshua Lurie

Joshua Lurie founded FoodGPS in 2005. Read about him here.

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