This small shack has only three outdoor tables (all of which are bolted to the ground), but they serve some of the best al pastor tacos in the area.

Open 24 hours a day, Los Tacos specializes in huge portions of cheap Mexican food: burritos, tacos, enchiladas, tamales, etc.

Loud and bustling, this isn’t the restaurant for a romantic date, but the food makes up for the lack of ambiance.

Open 24 hours a day, this greasy spoon take-out joint serves pan-ethnic assortment of Mexican and America food: burgers, burritos, tacos, etc.

There's not much to recommend about this drive-through that serves greasy burritos, tacos, pastrami and the like. But Lucy's is open 24 hours a day.

Lucy's Drive Thru offers greasy eats at any time of day or night.

Magnolia is a chic bar and eatery that serves as a great meeting spot for brunch, early evening cocktails or a pre-ArcLight dinner.

Legendary milkshakes with over 30 flavor combinations. Open 24 hours, customers come for the chili cheese fries and stay for the avocado bacon cheeseburgers.

Mel’s Drive-In has been the most dependable diner for night crawlers and early risers since before it was Mel’s, when it was the inimitable Ben Frank’s Coffee Shop.

Located in the historic Max Factor building near the corner of Hollywood & Highland, Mel's shares the building with the Hollywood History Museum.

This shiny replicant of a 1950s diner strives for the idealized feel of "American Graffiti." Built in the "Googie" architecture style that melded outer space and the car culture of mid-Century America, this building was originally home to Kerry's Coffee Shop.

The first Mel's Drive-in in Orange Country is housed in the Parasol building, a triumph of Googie architecture that was built in 1967.

Better known as Mike's Hockey Burgers because of their signature dish, a hamburger topped with a trisected Polish sausage, vaguely resembling a puck and hockey stick.

This lively restaurant has extended its happy hour (4 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.) to make it one of the longest on the Strip. Enjoy $15 carafes of sangria blanca and a new list of fruity summer drinks.

Tightly ensconced in the Southwest corner of Vermont and Olympic, Nak Won Korean is the spot barhopping locals, college kids and video gaming geeks descend upon (or stumble into, tore up from the bars upstairs) for after hours booze-soaking kimchee fried rice, spicy bulgogi and rice cake soup with dumpling.

This sit-down restaurant is open 24 hours a day and serves a wide assortment of Mexican food: tacos, burritos, enchiladas, chilles rellenos, etc. Fans of the place like the crispy tacos.

The Original Pantry has been the burger joint for downtown carnivores since 1924. The Pantry’s slightly shabby décor seems frozen in time, a worn slice of the 20th Century that is both comforting and visually exciting. Old wooden booths and fluorescent lights define the dining room. The servers, with expressive, lined faces and white coats, look like they’ve been working at the Pantry since 1964. Some of them have. Slide onto a grill-side stool and watch the chef flip cooked-to-order hunks of meat and expertly fry up hash browns. You can order cole slaw in pint, quart or gallon sizes. A gallon serving of coffee is available for serious caffeine fiends. And breakfast, made with expertly crisped bacon, is served 24 hours a day at the Pantry.

LA County's oldest continually operating restaurant is legendary for its huge menu that focuses on breakfast, which is conveniently served 24 hours a day. Waffles, pancakes, French toast, eggs, bacon and an assortment of terrific omelets keep locals coming back for more. Opened in 1887 as the Saugus Eating House, it has served everyone from president Benjamin Harrison to chief of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, William Mulholland, to Clark Gable and Gary Cooper.

Open since 1946, the original world famous Tommy Burger at Beverly and Rampart now serves more than 15,000 hungry folk each week. You'll smell like Tommy Burger all day, and even the next day, but it's worth it. Hot dogs, tamales and fries are served, too, but why get anything but the chili burger? It's a proven fact that Tommy's chili cheese fries taste best at 2 a.m., which is perfect since this location is open 24 hours a day.

Where else, outside of Las Vegas, can you get prime rib done just so, with a baked potato and a Manhattan at 4 in the morning? And in an old-fashioned railroad dining car no less.

Santa Monica's Pacific Dining Car trades flash for the familiar with its lavish house-aged steaks and traditional sides.

Western Ave. just North of Wilshire Blvd. boasts a handful of popular pho restaurants that have brought Vietnamese noodle soup into the heart of Koreatown.

Considered by many to be the most authentic pho restaurant in Koreatown, Pho 4000 is known for well cooked noodles and fresh garnishes.

Open 24 hours, Pho Western is here to satisfy your seep needs around the clock. Spicy, peppery meatballs and excellent meats in a tasty, high-quality broth make Pho Western a local favorite, especially late at night.

The Anaya brothers, who own Silver Lake's legendary Caribbean eatery Cha Cha Cha, have opened this shockingly pink taco restaurant with the hope of providing a middle ground between fancy Mexican eateries and down-home street vendors.

One thing in L.A. is certain: There will always be a line at Pink's: actors, tourists, old timers and hipsters. Since 1939.

Since 1964, this 24-hour, family-run restaurant has served American classics like club sandwiches, roasted turkey and their famous rice pudding as well as seafood pasta, fish and chips, vegetable quesadillas and breakfast options like French toast and Belgian waffles.

Established as the rock 'n' roll restaurant, the Rainbow Bar & Grill has become the official feeding ground for every rock star, wannabe and siliconed groupie in town. With its prime location near Sunset Strip music venues, it's the place were rockers can dine with their own. The place serves dinner until 2 a.m. every night -- or is that morning? The Rainbow earned a somewhat decadent reputation for a rowdy clientele in the Strip's heyday of '70s and '80s arena rock and metal bands. Artists such as Led Zeppelin and Guns 'N Roses were known to pull up in limos and take over entire booths while fans fought to sit near them, mouths agape. You name it, it's been done at the Rainbow. Oh yeah, the pizza's pretty good too.

Considered one of the hippest hotels in downtown L.A., the Standard extends its ultra-cool cache to its restaurant, which features shiny, white modernisy decor and bright yellow booths. The place serves up good American comfort food at prices that are surprisingly reasonable. If it's not too cold, try the outdoor patio.

Considered one of the hippest hotels on the Sunset Strip, the Standard extends its ultra-cool cache to its restaurant. The place serves up American comfort food at fairly reasonable prices.

This is some of the best, most authentic food in Thai Town if not all of Los Angeles, and as a bonus they stay open until 3:30 a.m.

Late-night choices in Los Angeles usually come down to Mexican or Thai, and if you've ever chosen the latter, you've probably run across Sanamluang Cafe, which makes remarkably good food for such a small, inexpensive strip mall restaurant.

Open 24 hours a day, this Orange County classic features just about everything on its menu: pizza, burgers, Italian food, Mexican food, salads, sandwiches and more. Known for its huge portions and family atmosphere.

Part all-night diner, part kitschy beach breakfast hideaway, the Shore House has a meal for your every craving.

Also known as the NoHo Diner, Sitton's doesn't have much to recommend it, but it is open 24 hours a day, and that keeps desperate late night diners coming back for burgers, shakes, breakfasts, sandwiches, salads and burritos.

The perfect pit stop after a late night of carousing in Hollywood, Skooby's conveniently stays open until 3 a.m. on Friday & Saturday nights.

Whether the food is an accessory to the hookah or the other way around is debatable, but locals love the combination of Persian cuisine, sweet hookah smoke, lively music and an outdoor patio -- especially on hot summer evenings when the patio is packed well into the wee hours of the morning.

Always reliable for a bowl of noodles or late-night snack, Suehiro stays open until 1 a.m. most of the week and until 3 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

Your hunger is sure to be satisfied by the wide selections of entrees -- everything from pasta dishes, steak and sandwiches to standard all-American greasy spoon indulgences like chili fries and burgers. Satisfy that sweet tooth with one of the mile-high desserts or a rocket shake if you want to stay awake. The converted motel coffeehouse serves well into the wee hours of the night (4 a.m.) to a steady crowd of ultra-trendy, colorful rock 'n' rollers and film-industry types. Be prepared for a high noise level, from the whir of the blender and clank of dishes to the people at the table mere inches from yours. There's always a wait for a seat during peak hours, but hey, it just gives you more time to people-watch.

One of the best places to find Eastside-style on the Westside, it’s a calmer (that is, until after the bars close) cousin to the West Hollywood institution, where there are fewer tattoos on the waitresses and dimmer mood lighting.

This 24-hour taco restaurant on Olympic just West of Atlantic in East L.A. dishes up authentic, home-cooked Mexican food. Their carne asada is especially noteworthy.

Rock 'n roll attitude meets decent Thai food at this restaurant that's decorated wall-to-wall with rock memorabilia. Their menu includes a couple of especially delicious vegetarian options: a special kind of brown rice that makes most incarnations of the stuff look like pale imitators and firm, crinkle-cut tofu chunks lightly stir fried with fresh vegetables. Also notable, the outstanding murals and graffiti in the restrooms.

This restaurant in the heart of East Hollywood's Thai town serves an impressive array of authentically cooked Thai dishes from hot and sour coconut milk soup to fiery curries to all manner of noodle dishes.

This little trucker cafe at the corner of Olympic and Alameda, an industrial stretch that's just south of the heart of downtown, offers cheap Mexican and American diner fare 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Things are slow to change at Twain’s, as evidenced by the diner’s ancient cash register (no wonder the restaurant only accepts cash) and original brown-on-brown ’70s decor.

Neighborhood pub the Village Idiot dishes out upscale pub fare (the burger is quite good) and a formidable selection of beers, ales and wine.

If you're the kind of meat lover who thinks that BYOB means bring your own bacon, then The Waffle's signature dish, an Applewood smoked bacon waffle with hefty chunks of bacon embedded in the waffle AND sprinkled on top, transforms your hybrid fantasies into reality. If you prefer a less savory breakfast starch, they offer nearly a dozen waffle varieties including the traditional malted Belgian, blueberry lemon, carrot cake and sticky bun (Oh, that such a combination of breakfast sweets should exist!). The lunch and dinner menus are filled with upgraded, generation-spanning comfort food such as mac & cheese (made with cheddar, fontina & gruyere), chicken pot pies, gravy fries and more. But it's the breakfast dishes where The Waffle aims to stand out.

Why choose one Asian cuisine to eat when you could sample them all? Wokcano brings together Korean style barbecued short ribs, sushi and sashimi, Thai noodles, Chinese rice dishes and more in a broad menu of Americanized Asian dishes.

Downtown has another late-night dining spot. Open daily until 2 a.m., this outpost of pan-Asian eatery Wokcano offers the usual menu fusion of Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Korean dishes.

Open until 1:30 a.m. on weekends, Wokcano offers a wide assortment of tasty, Americanized Asian dishes across a broad spectrum of cultures: Korean style barbecued short ribs, sushi and sashimi, Thai noodles, Chinese rice dishes and more.

It seems fitting that mid-range Asian fusion restaurant Wokcano should supplant upscale Asian fusion restaurant Akwa. With its palate-pleasing blend of Korean-style barbecued short ribs, Thai noodles, Japanese sushi and sashimi, and Chinese rice dishes, Wokcano offers plenty of variety.