Josef Centeno’s Orsa & Winston is The Times’ Restaurant of the Year

What does it mean to be an exceptional Los Angeles restaurant? Centeno constantly parses ingredient pairings to find the connections between the two cuisines — abalone grilled over binchotan charcoal with a Cal-Ital duo of kumquat and garlic leaf, duck with cherry blossom mostarda, a tart of ume and preserved apricot with yuzu curd — but he never contorts food into bizarre conflations in service of the restaurant’s premise. Centeno built a takeout window into the restaurant’s façade: For comfort, he serves cheeseburger sandos on milk bread; for nourishment, there is a grain bowl of brown and black rice with jammy shoyu egg, yuzo-oregano dressing and whatever vegetables the weekly markets provide. Centeno continues to create tasting menus that muster the world while framing L.A.’s sense of place: Last week he served Dungeness crab brightened with yuzu kosho cream, peach salad with sheep’s milk ricotta, and grilled Wagyu flatiron steak jolted with a relish of umeboshi and shiso. A limited number of tickets are now on sale for a special dinner and virtual Food Bowl event with Restaurant of the Year winner Orsa & Winston.