In the Mood For is a chef-edited dining publication for Los Angeles. It recommends a restaurant only after an editor has eaten there, paid for the meal, and scored it against a published standard.
The promise
Recommendation status cannot be purchased, crowdsourced into existence, or granted without an editorial visit. We recommend only restaurants that an editor has inspected, scored above 80, and explicitly approved.
Everything else on this site is a record, not a recommendation. We keep a directory of Los Angeles restaurants so you can look one up, see what we know, and see plainly that we have not yet been. A record says what is true about a restaurant. A recommendation says we think you should go. We never let the first quietly become the second.
How the score works
A restaurant is scored out of 100, in four parts:
- Food — 70 points. Most of the score, because it is most of the reason to go.
- Service — 10 points.
- Room — 10 points. Sound, light, comfort, and whether the space does what it is trying to do.
- Portion and value — 10 points. What you got for what you paid, judged against what the restaurant is charging, not against every restaurant in the city.
Above 80 makes a restaurant eligible. An editor still has to approve it. Anything at or below 80 stays a directory record and is never presented as a recommendation. A score of 90 or higher, and any flagship designation, requires two separate qualifying visits — one very good night is not evidence of a very good restaurant.
We pay, and we go unannounced
Qualification visits are unannounced and conducted under ordinary guest conditions. Editors pay the restaurant directly. No press dinners, no comped tastings, no kitchen tours, no preferred seating, no introductions. The restaurant is not told the meal is an inspection.
At launch the Founding Editor self-funds these visits. If a restaurant recognises the editor, or comps a material part of the experience, that is disclosed internally and an editor decides whether a fresh paid visit is required before anything is published. Editors do not post publicly about a restaurant while an inspection may still be live.
What diners contribute
A public Community Score appears only after ten people have rated a restaurant with a verified receipt. Ratings without a receipt stay private to the person who left them and never affect a public number, so nobody can vote a room up or down without having been in it.
A comped meal, a discount offered in exchange for coverage, or promotional reimbursement makes a rating ineligible for the public score. An ordinary public discount does not, but it is recorded when it is material.
Community participation is voluntary and self-directed. Nobody is assigned coverage, given a quota, or handed a deadline. Contributing does not make anyone an editor, an inspector, or an approver, and hospitality credentials are displayed separately from visit verification — working in restaurants tells you something about a person’s palate, but it does not verify that they were in the room that night.
Photography
Every photograph on a restaurant page is either ours or licensed by the person who took it. We do not scrape images, we do not re-host other publishers’ photography, and we do not generate pictures of food that nobody cooked. When we want a photograph we found elsewhere, we ask the photographer and record the answer.
That is slower than the alternative, and it is why you will see honest empty frames on some pages saying which photograph is missing. An empty frame is a true statement. A borrowed one is not.
Who decides
Chef Jasper Lynn is Founding Editor and, at launch, the sole approver of recommendation status. Regional Editors, section editors and paid inspectors are defined roles in our governance policy, but each requires a compensated, counsel-reviewed arrangement before anyone is assigned work. We would rather cover one city properly than five cities on unpaid labour.
When we are wrong
Restaurants change. Chefs leave, menus turn over, rooms get louder. Every recommendation carries the date it was earned and the evidence window it rests on, and nothing here is deleted to tidy up the record — a revision is published alongside what it replaced.
If something on this site is wrong, tell us and we will correct it in public. Our published corrections and our commercial disclosures are both permanent pages, not a footer link that quietly stops being updated.
Editorial judgment is never for sale. No restaurant can pay to be recommended, pay to be scored, pay to appear in a list, or pay to have a record changed.