Caught between new tech money and a growing homelessness crisis, restaurants on one street in Venice, California, are trying to keep its identity alive
Jason Neroni lives on Rose Avenue, though his house is 10 minutes away. The chef and managing partner at The Rose Venice, a bustling 375-seat restaurant two blocks from the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles, spends more waking hours there than he does at home with his wife and two children: weekends, late nights, holidays, usually from 11 in the morning to 11 at night. When he isn’t at the restaurant, he is as close as a text or a call.
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Against All Odds, Crudo e Nudo Has Created a Sustainable Restaurant Business
Crudo e Nudo shouldn’t work. With only 32 outdoor seats and nobody to hand out menus, diners have to order at the pay station inside from a list of dishes posted on the wall. Its prices are pretty high for this stretch of Santa Monica’s Main Street, where burritos or onigiri run under $20 a meal. There are a few much more expensive restaurants on the block — Pasjoli, Chinois on Main, and Via Veneto — but they offer tablecloths, stemware, and full table service. Instead, Crudo e Nudo serves sustainable fish and seafood on compostable plates, and pours wine into canning jars. And yet, on August 2, it hit $1.2 million in gross sales for the first seven months of this year.
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This is how a California farmers’ market looks when there isn’t enough water for thirsty crops
My food trajectory is pretty simple. Chicago: tired, overcooked produce. Ann Arbor: tired, overcooked produce. Santa Monica, California, Technicolor year-round abundance that I am still not used to after most of my life here. Every Wednesday I’m at the farmers’ market when it opens, and every Wednesday I buy more produce than makes sense.
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As the pandemic ebbs, surviving restaurants face a new challenge: each other
Numbers don’t lie, but they do sometimes struggle with follow-up questions.
In the ramp-up to the federal government’s omnibus aid package, released Wednesday without any more restaurant aid, advocacy groups lobbed numbers to show how tenuous life continues to be for the sector, in a last-ditch attempt to secure more help. Shuttered restaurants, dire predictions of more closures to come, lost revenues, lost jobs; none of it was enough to sway Congress.
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Sustainable agriculture takes on new meaning for a family farm hoping to survive
Back then, the real action began an hour before the Santa Monica farmers’ market opened at 8 on Wednesday mornings. Wholesale customers got a one-hour head-start on civilians, so local chefs, the brain trust of Los Angeles’ burgeoning restaurant scene, started to wander in at 7. A few sent minions to pick up preorders, but many chefs showed up in person to kibitz with farmers whose knowledge often exceeded their own.
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How an indie restaurant got its start.
Chef Jonah Miller was 24 and in a hurry, so he quit his sous chef job and opened his own restaurant, Huertas, in New York City’s East Village. Generation Chef tells the story of how he did it—and what he got right, because Huertas is one of the independents that has survived the pandemic.
“Stabiner has done more than tell the riveting story of one young chef on the cusp of stardom; she’s plunged us right into the bubbling epicenter of a culinary moment like no other.” – Tom Colicchio
“A corner table from which to observe the journey of today’s entrepreneur. . . an invaluable resource and reference for anyone with a start-up dream.” – Danny Meyer, CEO, Union Square Hospitality Group
“A model of great reporting and great storytelling. . . I truly admire this book.” Michael Ruhlman, author of The Soul of a Chef
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Commentary
NEW: The 21st-Century Shakedown of Restaurants
Op-Ed: I live in Seattle, just west of Los Angeles.
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Op-Ed: What’s the worth of a Michelin star?
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Op-Ed: What can save restaurants? Try hospitality
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Op-Ed: My lonely boycott hasn’t hurt In-N-Out Burger, but our small decisions do add up
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Recent work
Hospitality is a two-way street
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How will the movies tell our stories if neighborhood restaurants are gone?
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Transcend the bran muffin: One woman’s manifesto for whole-grain baking
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Chef Jacques Pépin got through the pandemic with kitchen utensils, a video camera, and a great wardrobe
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With dreams of small business over empire, LA Trade Tech culinary students are built for this moment
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The Shutdown Notebook
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How to Tell if That Peach Is Ripe? Ask Southern California’s ‘Produce Hunter’
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What to Do When Laptops and Silence Take Over Your Cafe?
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Essays
Samanta Helou Hernandez
Photo essay: New rules push restaurants to the brink, with no end in sight
The pivots come so fast they’ve blurred into one extended, manic pirouette, as Los Angeles restaurants that just invested in outdoor amenities turn back to take-out and delivery, with no good sense of when outdoor will return. Indoor dining shut down in July in L.A., and it ends next week in New York City.
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Los Angeles Times
Trust us, you don’t want a reservation at L.A’s hottest new restaurant
I am as guilty of culinary speed-dating as anyone: When I come to L.A. these days, a friend scours the food sites, curates a shortlist of the best new restaurants, and off we go. Forget the antiquated notion of being a regular. Even a single return visit seems as passé as an iPhone with an earbud jack.
