Egret

At Angry Egret Dinette, Wes Avila is making ambitious food with freewheeling charm and unfussy service.

And desserts can be inconsistent too, with a recent pan de elote soaked like tres leches cake, but remaining a bit too dense and dry to do right by the form. I have yet to order a fried squash blossom sandwich that wasn’t holding onto an unpleasant and excessive amount of oil, a disappointment since it’s one of the few vegetarian options. Part of Angry Egret’s appeal is what I think of as a distinctly Los Angeles sensibility: fine-dining-quality ingredients, handled with care, but served without any of the associated pretensions. By Christmas, Mr. Avila is using that old wok to steam sweet, tender tamales stuffed with duck confit in mole, and we are breaking into the third act. Johnny Lee recently moved his wonderful Cantonese diner Pearl River Deli into a large dining room, where you fill up your own water cups from the kind of big orange cooler you might see on the edge of a soccer field. If Mr. Avila’s cooking life were turned into a movie, we’d now find ourselves at the end of the second act.