“All cities are B cities compared to New York,” chef Mario Batali said.

Yet Mr. Batali opened a restaurant in Los Angeles after finding success with Babbo and other Italian restaurants in New York. He opened Mozza, an outpost of his casual downtown spot Otto, in November in Los Angeles. He said the main reason he opened Mozza was to collaborate with his friend and business partner, Los Angeles chef Nancy Silverton.

Mr. Batali is not the only chef to be lured to Los Angeles in recent years. Chefs Tom Coliccio, Laurent Tourondel, and Gordon Ramsay have all said they plan to open L.A. outposts this year. Meanwhile, chef Masa Takayama relocated his restaurant Ginza Sushi-ko from Beverly Hills to Columbus Circle, renaming it Masa.

The differences between the cities are in the details. Jeffrey Chodorow has an Asia de Cuba in both cites. Though both earn $12 million a year, check averages are higher in Los Angeles. The L.A. restaurant is only busy on the weekend, while New York is bustling six days a week. In New York, Masa serves more sushi and fewer cooked preparations than in Los Angeles. Mr. Takayama said New Yorkers eat faster and don’t socialize with their neighbors at the counter.

Car culture and geography have a great impact on Los Angeles dining. “I’d heard about it, but who knew?” Mr. Batali said. At Mozza, wine sales are about 30% less than at Otto, which Mr. Batali attributes to the fact that 80% of his California customers drive to the restaurant. Cheap valet parking is mandatory. “I remember the uproar when Spago raised valet to $6,” Mr. Chodorow said. “In New York City that’s like a tip!”

Los Angeles is so sprawling that a restaurant is less likely to draw diners from outside its immediate neighborhood. “In New York, TriBeCa residents can get excited about a mid-level opening in Park Slope, but in L.A. this happens much less frequently,” the founding editor of the widely read restaurant blogs Eater and EaterLA, Ben Leventhal, said. “Especially since driving is so unavoidable, the focus there is on your neighborhood.”

Easy travel and the increase in bicoastal careers have created a national customer base for the restaurant business. Mr. Batali said 30% of the clientele at Mozza also regularly eat at Otto. Mr. Takayama still has weekly regulars at Masa who live in Los Angeles, and Mr. Chodorow said he often sees the same people on both coasts.

Sometimes the same formula works in both cities. Michael McCarty has been running a restaurant on each coast since 1988, when he opened Michael’s in Midtown. The original Michael’s opened in Santa Monica in 1979. He typically spends 10 days on the West Coast and four days here. “They’re like fraternal twins,” Mr. McCarty said of his restaurants. “They look, sound, and feel the same, but have separate personalities.”

The top food ranking in the latest Zagat restaurant survey of Los Angeles is held by Matsuhisa, Nobu Matsuhisa’s first restaurant. Here, it’s the French seafood palace Le Bernardin. Mr. Matsuhisa has held one of the top two spots for the past 10 years in L.A., while high-end European restaurants are rare there. “There are no French restaurants left in L.A.,” columnist and contributing editor at Gourmet magazine, Colman Andrews, said. “It just doesn’t interest people.”

In the December issue of Gourmet, Mr. Andrews wrote about the closing of the last great French restaurant in Los Angeles, L’Orangerie, comparing it with the reopening of Le Cirque in New York. After 28 years in Los Angeles, the proprietors of L’Orangerie, Gérard and Virginie Ferry, decided to sell the restaurant, acknowledging that fine and formal were no longer what people wanted. It was purchased by Mr. Matsuhisa and Robert De Niro and will reopen in drastically different form this spring.

Los Angelenos want comfort more than formality. “Even though it’s changing, in New York there’s still a dress code,” Mr. Andrews said. In Los Angeles, “there are people who spend more on a pair of jeans than a suit. It’s not a question of money.”

In an interesting twist, L’Orangerie chef Christophe Bellanca is the newest staff member at Le Cirque. He said the difference between the two restaurants is that everything about Le Cirque is bigger: It has five times the number of seats, more critics to please, and a clientele with a more sophisticated palate. And for a French chef, the possibility of Michelin stars is hard to resist. The French guidebook has yet to rate restaurants in L.A.

“New York has special meaning to people,” Mr. Andrews said. “It’s still the big city.” Success here begets success elsewhere. In New York, Mr. Takayama was able to create a second restaurant, Bar Masa, which he said he may expand its operation to London and Las Vegas, which his success in California would not necessarily have led to. It seems the restaurant industry in New York is bigger and better — for now. “They are the two most important cities in the country. New York faces Europe, and Los Angeles faces Asia,” the founder and publisher of the Zagat Survey, Tim Zagat, said. “With Asia’s growing power, from China and the region, L.A. will eventually become the number one city in 20 to 25 years.”