Luka

Luka might be the greatest thing to come out of Cerritos since the Auto Square jingle. The restaurant’s mini-mall space on the Cerritos-Artesia border operates as Bakers & Baristas coffee shop during the day, then on weekend evenings, it shifts into Luka, a candlelit spot with a solid natural wine list and Mediterranean-ish food from a chef who cooked at Carbone. The menu doesn’t rewrite the bistro-y wine bar playbook, but it’s far from snoozy. Snap peas with hot mustard, charred pork collar with harissa, and the gooey, cheesy frisbee of fried taters they call the “potato situation,” all blew us away. You don’t often see “sexy dinner destination” and “suburban shopping plaza” in the same sentence, but that’s what makes zero-pretension Luka a breath of fresh air.