Culver City Eatery Earns Stars In 2019 Michelin Guide

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA — There's good news and bad news for LA restaurants with the unveiling Monday of the 2019 Michelin Guide, the French tire company's highly anticipated star-coded dining guide.

On the bright side, six more local restaurants were added to the two-star category of the 2019 Michelin Guide California, which consists of 657 restaurants with 90 earning rankings from one to three stars. In all 24, Los Angeles area restaurants earned two stars for being delicious while affordable. However, every eatery in the city was snubbed in the coveted three-star category.

“I just want to say: We’re a team of 20, with 13 girls and seven men,” a tearful Niki Nakayama of her Palms kaiseki restaurant, n/naka, according to the Los Angeles Times. “California is a state of dreams, and our restaurant could only exist in California.”

The new two-star restaurants are n/naka in Palms, Providence in Hollywood, Somni at the SLS Beverly Hills hotel near the Los Angeles-Beverly Hills border, Sushi Ginza Onodera in West Hollywood and Vespertine in Culver City.

"California's trendsetting, laid-back and health-conscious culinary scene continues to boom, and as a result is an amazing showcase for the great local produce," said Gwendal Poullennec, international director of the Michelin Guides

The 2019 Michelin Guide California is available in English, Spanish and Chinese at https://guide.michelin.com and will be available in print from major U.S. booksellers on Thursday. The guide was unveiled Monday to a crowd of journalists and chefs in Orange County

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.