If you’ve ever saved a TikTok of a candlelit LA restaurant and sent it to the group chat with “we’re going here,” there’s a decent chance it came from Alma. The Los Angeles native posts as @almainlosangeles, and her bio sums it up in five words: “recs from an LA native.” Since June 2023 she has filmed close to 300 videos of restaurants, rooftops, happy hours, pop-ups and getaways, and they’ve added up to 31,100 followers and 2.1 million likes.
At a glance
- Name: Alma
- From: Los Angeles (a native)
- Creates: LA restaurant, bar, event and day-trip recommendations
- TikTok: about 31,100 followers, 2.1 million likes
- Biggest video: The Little Door, about 2.2 million views
- Handle: @almainlosangeles (TikTok and Instagram)
Who is Alma in Los Angeles?
Alma is an LA-born creator whose whole account is a running list of places worth your night out. Her profile emojis read like an itinerary (wine, city skyline, dog, coffee, a hike, tacos and a Mexican flag), and the videos follow suit: a romantic dinner in one post, a $20 Pilates class in San Luis Obispo in the next, then a Latina-owned coffee shop in East LA.
Her format is simple and useful. Each video shows the space, the food and the vibe, and the caption carries the details: the address, the hours, the happy-hour window, what to order and who it’s good for (a date, a birthday, the family, the dog).
What are Alma’s most popular videos?
Her breakout came in the summer of 2023, when she was posting almost every other day. Her video on The Little Door, which she called “one of the most romantic restaurants in Los Angeles at day and night,” reached about 2.2 million views and 170,000 likes. Within a month she had three more videos past a million views:
- Mrs Fish in Downtown LA (about 1.5 million views): modern Japanese food, an under-$10 happy hour and live music, followed by drinks at The Perch rooftop.
- Two Bit Circus (about 1.1 million): the arcade-and-games spot she found full of families, friend groups and dates.
- Casa Fina in Boyle Heights (about 1 million): margaritas and family dinner “in the heart of Boyle Heights,” with a tip to walk the neighborhood afterward.
Why her Eastside recs matter
Scroll far enough and a pattern shows up: Alma goes out of her way to send people to small, family-owned businesses, especially Latina- and Latino-owned ones on the Eastside. Her Cafe Girasol video in Boyle Heights drew about 255,000 views and 51,000 likes. She has also posted Un Solo Sol, a plant-based spot in Boyle Heights, Anhelo Coffee and La Azteca Tortilleria in East LA, Loves Flowers, a Latina-owned family flower business, and Malaya Coffee, a Filipino-owned shop in Silver Lake.
Some of those videos tell the story behind the counter. Her post on Tepito Coffee in Pasadena (208,000 views) explained that the shop runs an internship program with Homeboy Industries, Father Greg Boyle’s program that offers jobs to formerly incarcerated and gang-involved men and women. She credited Alejandra Molina’s Los Angeles Times story for the background. This month she featured The Culture Side, a new Echo Park market started by an LA-born couple with Chicana, African American and Guatemalan roots.
Her newest video, posted October 30, is about Casa 0101, the Boyle Heights theater Josefina López founded when, as Alma put it, “she struggled to find anyone in LA willing to produce” her plays. “What an incredible story of perseverance, creating opportunities for others, and giving back to the community,” she wrote.
Reader poll
Which Alma rec would you try first?
What are Alma’s best LA deals and date ideas?
She is good at finding value. Her favorite deal this year was Pasta Night at Marco Polo in Silver Lake: focaccia, salad, pasta and dessert for $30 every Wednesday, plus half-off wine bottles. “One of the best dinner deals I’ve seen in LA,” she wrote, and 113,000 people watched. Earlier hits include $8 happy-hour margaritas on a patio, a rooftop roller rink, movie nights on the Godfrey Hotel roof in Hollywood and a country-music arcade bar in Koreatown.
This fall she has been in cozy mode, with pumpkin lattes at M Desserts, a gloomy-day stop at Cafe Los Feliz, the farm-to-table Forage in Silver Lake and Casa Ipanema’s fire performers inside the Biltmore downtown.
Where does Alma go outside the city?
Her day trips stay within a few hours’ drive, and many of them are dog-friendly. She has done Santa Barbara at least three ways (a coffee-and-market day trip, the dog-friendly Milo hotel and Orgullo Wine downtown), the free tastings around Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley, a birthday at Oak Mountain Winery in Temecula and a San Luis Obispo weekend with a sidecar wine tour. Her Huttopia Paradise Springs glamping video, “super underrated” and an hour and a half from LA, has about 867,000 views.
Closer to home, she calls the Fern Dell trail in Griffith Park “my favorite nature trail in los angeles,” a shady, dog-friendly walk up toward Griffith Observatory with a cafe at the bottom.
Where to find Alma
- TikTok: @almainlosangeles
- Instagram: @almainlosangeles
- All links: linktr.ee/almainlosangeles
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Sources
- Alma’s TikTok profile and video captions, June 2023 through October 30, 2026; follower, like and view counts as of October 31, 2026.
- Her official Linktree.
Image credits: all three photos are from Wikimedia Commons and are illustrative, not Alma’s own: Fern Dell by Amatullah Guyot (CC BY 2.0), Mariachi Plaza by InSapphoWeTrust (CC BY-SA 2.0), Casa 0101 by Trevytoe (CC BY-SA 4.0). Videos are embedded through TikTok’s official player.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Alma in Los Angeles?
Alma is the LA native behind @almainlosangeles on TikTok, where she posts “recs from an LA native”: restaurants, bars, happy hours, events, cafes and day trips around Los Angeles and California. She has about 31,100 followers and 2.1 million likes.
What is Alma in Los Angeles’s most popular video?
Her August 2023 video on The Little Door, the French-Mediterranean restaurant on West 3rd Street, has about 2.2 million views. Her videos on Mrs Fish in Downtown LA (1.5 million), Two Bit Circus (1.1 million) and Casa Fina in Boyle Heights (1 million) follow it.
When did Alma start posting LA recommendations?
Her earliest recommendation videos on the account date to June 2023. She posted more than 100 of them that year and has kept going since.
Does Alma feature small and Latina-owned businesses?
Yes. A big part of her feed is family-owned and Latina- or Latino-owned spots, many on the Eastside: Cafe Girasol and Un Solo Sol in Boyle Heights, Anhelo Coffee and La Azteca Tortilleria in East LA, Tepito Coffee in Pasadena and The Culture Side in Echo Park.
What is Alma in Los Angeles’s Instagram?
Her Instagram is @almainlosangeles, the same handle as her TikTok. All of her links are on her Linktree.
Where does Alma go on day trips from LA?
Santa Barbara (including the dog-friendly Milo hotel and Orgullo Wine), Solvang and the Santa Ynez Valley, San Luis Obispo, Temecula wine country, Sierra Madre and Huttopia Paradise Springs, a dog-friendly glamping site about 90 minutes from LA.
Sarrah Sanchez is a home, arts, and crafts-minded creative who brings a maker’s eye to her writing. With several years in the online writing space, she covers entertainment and lifestyle for The LA Note, and she’s set on taking her craft as far as it will go.
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