Los Angeles

Los Angeles hosts outside eleven months a year, shops at the best farmers markets in America and eats earlier than anywhere else on this list. Fire, vegetables and driving distances define the trade.

Los Angeles is the most natural outdoor dining city in this guide. The garden is the dining room for most of the year, the produce is world class and available on a Wednesday morning, and the cooking culture has settled into fire, vegetables and a light hand. A host here can build a menu around a grill, a citrus tree and a farmers market list and beat anything flown in.

The money sits between Europe and New York. A four course plated dinner for eighteen in a garden with chef, sous chef and three servers runs 5,000 to 7,500 euros with food and rentals, and a private chef is 700 to 1,100 euros a day. Rentals and staging are a larger share than elsewhere because outdoor dinners need everything brought in: tables, lighting, heaters, a prep tent, often a generator.

Two local realities shape the planning. Fire rules can cancel an open flame menu on a red flag day, so a gas or charcoal alternative belongs in the contract, not in the conversation on the afternoon. And dinner is early: guests arrive at seven, eat at eight and are gone by eleven, which compresses a tasting menu into a shape that works better as five generous courses than as nine small ones.