Post & Beam's Southern Menu | Baldwin Hills, Los Angeles

Restaurants south of the 10 and east of Culver City don't get a lot of love.

This isn't for a lack of great eating. The best barbecue in Los Angeles lies within those boundaries, and there are Southern and Mexican places that are beyond notable.

Post & Beam, located at the foot of affluent Baldwin Hills, marks a change for the broader swath of South L.A.: It's the first restaurant helmed by a celebrity chef, Govind Armstrong, to open in the area.

Armstrong was born nearby, in Inglewood, and with this move south, he seems to have the food politics of the surrounding neighborhoods in mind. This is the land of the food desert, after all, which makes the amount of Post & Beam's space devoted to a garden symbolically significant. That plot's small harvest is augmented by produce purchased from the South Central Farmers' Cooperative and selections from the nearby Crenshaw Famers' Market.

Post & Beam's menu is tinged with Southern accents, and in our experience, the thicker the drawl, the better the dish. Larger dishes like cast-iron chicken ($21), a beautifully crisped half-bird, come with your choice of two side dishes.

We'll be doubling up on long-cooked greens with ham hock ($5) on our next visit.

Post & Beam, 3767 Santa Rosalia Dr., Baldwin Hills; 323-299-5599 or postandbeamla.com