With locations in DTLA, Northridge, Westwood, and Riverside, Tulsi is a fast-casual restaurant dedicated to providing Indian fare to Southern Californians, and it’s showing regional Indian dishes in a way that few places in LA are able to. The combo is a winner, as it allows diners to try Northern Indian and Southern Indian at once. Their Gujarati dishes are some of the best the city has to offer, and a side of loaded makhani fries flavored with tikka masala gravy add extra flavor.

Owners Premil Jayasinghe and his wife Koshalie have been running Baja Subs since 2016. While the original owners served mostly Mexican food, the Jayasinghes have slowly expanded Baja’s Sri Lankan menu over the last four years, offering some of the most remarkable Sri Lankan food in Los Angeles. Popular dishes include the koturoti with lamb curry, egg hoppers, and chicken biryani.

With locations in Pasadena, Santa Clarita, and Thousand Oaks, Namaste Spiceland is a one-stop shop for groceries and dining. It’s a place to stock up on rice, lentils, and frozen staples, and stay for dinner. Crowd-favorites include their South Indian dishes, especially the dosas, or the Bombay street food. The trick is to order the mouth-puckering chaat first to avoid grocery shopping on an empty stomach, and to then grab pantry staples for the month.

Little Bangladesh sits nestled into a small area on the northern edge of Koreatown with a small but great collection of restaurants. Biriyani Kabob House serves some of the best lamb biryani in town, made with fluffy basmati rice and tender chunks of lamb. The menu also has classics like chicken tikka masala, karahi, kebabs, and channa masala.

Bangla Bazar & Restaurant is a market and restaurant that’s bursting at the seams. Even after a recent renovation, this Bangladeshi market is full of South Asian products with a menu designed to impress.

With another location in New York, Baar Baar made its LA debut in May 2023, bringing chef Sujan Sarkar’s contemporary Indian dishes to Southern California. Just blocks away from L.A. Live, Sarkar and his team are adding something really special to the LA Indian dining scene, with dishes that showcase a wide regional range across India and Bollywood-inspired drinks that riff on several classics. A menu highlight is the mushroom pepper fry made with sunchokes, smoked almonds, and ramps. The chutney set, avocado pachadi, and homemade crisps are other standouts.

This unassuming spot near USC is best known for its Indian Mexican food and for good reason. A chicken tikka quesadilla or a paneer tikka masala burrito showcases how perfectly both cuisines blend together. There are also Indian classics, including various curries, biryanis, and flatbreads.

Arth Bar and Kitchen, which opened in July 2021, serves a contemporary but thorough take on Indian cuisine. Expect dishes that pull from multiple regions across India and move beyond traditional techniques and ingredients to provide an experience that is imaginative yet comforting to those more familiar with the cuisine. The menu features Old Monk drunken wings made with India’s rum of choice, along with lobster moilee, a coconut milk-based dish from the state of Kerala that is traditionally made with prawns or shrimp and is harder to find elsewhere in Southern California. Especially worth trying are the more inventive treats, like the malai broccoli and jackfruit nuggets. Old Monk also shows up on the drinks menu in the form of a Manhattan or a Desi sour, which also includes peach liqueur, lemon juice, egg whites, and eucalyptus bitters.

One of LA’s most beloved Indian restaurants, Mayura specializes in Kerala-style cuisine with dosas, uthappam, and fish curry. The thalis offer small servings of a larger variety of dishes, with options for vegetarians and meat-eaters alike.

When deciding what to order at Abhiruchi Grill, the choice is actually pretty simple: Get one of the 10 biryanis. There’s something for all with offerings like gobi Manchurian, a deep-fried cauliflower dish, and navratan korma, a medley of vegetables and nuts in a creamy gravy. 

In business for over 30 years, this halal Indian-Pakistani restaurant is one of the South Bay’s most respected. Chef Mohammed Mumtaz makes traditional dishes like lamb korma and goat karahi stir-fried with onions and tomatoes, but also experiments with new recipes daily.

A short 10-minute drive from LAX, Al Noor is the spot to refuel after a day of traveling. This Lawndale gem offers great takes on all the favorites, as well as rarer dishes like the Pakistani nehrani, a braised beef shank topped with fresh ginger and chillies and served with wheat flour paratha.  

There’s plenty of Indian food across the South Bay, but this unassuming strip mall find in Lawndale, with just a smattering of seats and a setup mostly accommodating take out, could be the best Indian food in the area. Preorder online for the smoothest service, where the kitchen will prepare intensely spiced dal makhani, complex channa masala with plump garbanzo beans, and some of the most immediately delicious butter chicken in LA. The palak paneer is another winner, with nicely sized paneer cubes settled into a thick paste of cooked spinach.

Finding Kamal Palace is a bit of an obstacle course. Go down the stairs and toward the rear structure to find this friendly, family-operated restaurant that’s right next to the water. The vegetable malai has ample coconut, and an extra order of naan helps to sop up the remaining butter chicken sauce.