Four Culver City restaurants were featured in the 2011 edition of Jonathan Gold's list of "99 Essential Restaurants" in Los Angeles: A-Frame, Akasha, Mayura, and Waterloo & City. Quite a respectable showing! You can read the whole list on the LA Weekly's website here. 

Calling A-Frame's fare "street food elevated by classical technique," Gold adds,

In one sense, there are fewer Korean-influenced preparations at A-Frame than there tend to be at Roy Choi's other restaurants, Chego and Kogi, but the crabcakes, scented with lemongrass, are served with a stack of ggaenip leaves to wrap them in, and the grilled lamb chops, although they come in a green sauce not too different from a Border Grill salsa, undoubtedly were rubbed with Korean chile paste before they hit the fire.

Although conceding that Akasha is a "crunchy Westside fever dream of a restaurant," Gold admits,

...when people talk about Akasha, it tends to be for its supernally crunchy onion rings, or its antioxidant-rich cocktails, or its Nimah Ranch pork chop with cheddar grits, which, you know — not bad. Although you are practically handed a certificate of authenticity with your Rutiz Farms beet salad, or your Coleman Farms radishes, if you'd rather have a burger, grilled albacore with shisito peppers, Cuban roast chicken with black beans or a plate of short ribs instead of a pizza with Weiser Farms eggplant, Richmond makes sure that you are happy, too.

Gold waxes rhapsodic about Mayura:

...even if you are familiar with Southern Indian cooking, a lot of the food here may be new to you: saucer-shaped rice-flour pancakes called appam; a complexly spiced fish curry with undernotes of tamarind and garlic; and ven pongal, a peppery concoction of rice lashed with cumin, cashews and ungodly amounts of melted butter. If Mayura happens to be offering its special Kerala-style biryani, order it without question. The fluffiness of the rice and the sharpness of the spicing are superb.

And Gold appreciates that Waterloo & City, chef, Brendan Collins is "deeply in love with meat":

...especially the charcuterie he makes himself — loaves of sweetbreads bound in gelatin with pig's trotters; rabbit with pistachios; the occasional terrine of eel and foie gras — it's a virtuosic display, even if you don't go on to the burgers made with 30-day-aged meat or the crisp pig shank confit, sizzled in its own fat.

A-Frame is located at 12565 W. Washington Blvd.

Akasha is located at 9543 Culver Blvd.

Mayura is located at 10406 Venice Blvd.

And Waterloo & City is located at 12517 Washington Blvd.