Recommendation Maps!

Everywhere I recommend to eat, hike, and sight-see, so you can, too.

May 09, 2026

A while ago an old friend reached out and asked me where he could find my food recommendations online, and I didn’t have a quick answer.

You can technically find lists here in old Pen, Ultimate! articles, but individual addresses and links on a long blog page aren’t exactly the most helpful format. My friend eventually figured it out, but the question bothered me. If I recommend a place, be it restaurant or scenic parking lot (several included), I want people to go ~~so they can~~ ~~validate~~ my ~~taste~~. That’s like, the whole point.

So here’s a bunch of maps all in one place. Every pin is somewhere I’ve been and personally recommend (in the past I’ve also recommended based on research). There’s a little blurb included about each.

I thought about doing one big map, and maybe I will sometime, but for now I’ve narrowed these down by what I hope are useful categories. I use Google Maps because I’m Green (Android), and beyond that as a family business co-operator I nurse an evergreen (eh?) vendetta against Apple Maps. (The amount of business we’ve lost to Apple Maps telling people we’re closed because any random user can tell Apple Maps we’re closed, at any time, would be funny if it were funny.)

Anyway, here’s where I go to eat and relax and escape and have fun. You can save these maps and plug them right in and hit the road, right away. Please do! Let me know how you like it when you go; and if you have a place for me to try, send it my way!

(If it’s red, click it.)

Amazingly, the green flags are all places I still haven’t been. Y’all gonna be feasting on recs for YEARS.

Curated Maps

Favorites

My favorite places? That’s it.

Weekend Adventures

A collection of little, food-related escapes near LA. Almost entirely along the coast. Get your food at (A), go eat it at (B), go for a little walk/hike at (C) and a coffee at (D)—and that’s a good day. That kinda thing.

San Diego Road Trip

Pit stops on the road to San Diego. Fewer places actually in San Diego, tbh.

Santa Barbara Road Trip

Pit stops on the road to and in Santa Barbara. More places actually in Santa Barbara, tbh.

Joshua Tree

High Desert favorites. A lot of these feel like must-stops—but there are now too many to stop at on my typical 2-night trips. A few recommended JT National Park spots thrown in for good measure.