Los Angeles Restaurants Are Giving Back
How you can help. Plus, tributes to the restaurants lost in the fires, and scores of job losses at the Tin Building following an employment authorization check
The cost of helping others. The cost of staying open.
As of a week ago, I had a fancy restaurant review scheduled for today. I’ll save that for another time. Instead, I’m wrapping up a new food guide that I’ll send out in a few days.
It’s been hard to think about anything aside from the Los Angeles wildfires. About the lives lost. The neighborhoods reduced to ashes. The evacuees seeking shelter. The firefighters, professional and incarcerated, risking everything to keep residents safe.
The air, filled with smoke.
The devastation is heartbreaking. But so many are working to help. Some are tireless first responders. Some lead major relief organizations, like José Andrés and his World Central Kitchen. Yet others run small restaurants. They just want to help neighbors and strangers with hot food and internet access.
Restaurant workers always step up, even when it’s neither convenient nor safe to do so. We witnessed this during the pandemic. And we’re seeing it again now.
The team at “Here’s Looking at You,” Lien Ta’s popular Koreatown spot, writes on Instagram that these type of responses don’t come without a cost:
“We have to acknowledge that our restaurant industry, no matter how vulnerable, will always be the first industry to get up and give give give to those in need — full stop. You’ve seen the list of remarkable restaurants offering free meals to first responders. And I’m telling you now — they can’t afford to do it.”
Indeed, restaurants don’t operate with tech-company cash reserves. The Mediterranean-leaning Kismet, which is helping provide meals to those in need, posted a note on Instagram that highlights the precarious position of restaurants during natural disasters:
“…For the sake of keeping our doors open and our team employed, we want to express that closing the business for even a couple of days, while necessary to protect our team, is extremely difficult when so many restaurants, our included, are struggling to survive.”
And then there’s Bé Ù, a Vietnamese street food spot in Silver Lake. Owner Uyên Lê told the New York Times that while she wanted to stay open all day last Wednesday and give out food to medical workers and evacuees, the air quality took a turn for the worse. “You start to get a little bit of a headache, and I don’t like the idea of the team being in that prolonged environment,” she told the paper, in a story reported by Tejal Rao and Meg McCarron.
In an ideal world, restaurants would be able to stay closed when these types of events strike, whether through more responsive insurance, or through a combination of public and private aid — like the imperfect patchwork we saw during COVID.
And in an ideal world, our society would ensure that all workers had the resources to shelter at home for a few days without jeopardizing their next rent check.
Alas, until that world exists, restaurants and their staffers remain ready and willing to feed people.
Following are links to venues that are pitching in, alongside thoughts on how to help with the ongoing recovery effort — as the fires continue to burn.
Restaurants giving back to the community
Some coverage from around Los Angeles. Check back on these lists for updates.
Eater LA: Los Angeles Restaurants Offering Free Meals and Relief During the 2025 Fires. Includes notes on free wi-fi for evacuees, and restaurants donating percentages of their profits to those impacted.
LA Times: 47 L.A. County restaurants offering food and relief to fire evacuees and first responders. Includes info on restaurants offering charging stations and free meals, as well as delivery to fire stations. In one case, at Nicole Rucker’s Fat + Flour: “customers are encouraged to pay what they can for food and drink, with no one turned away for lack of funds.”
LA Taco: 13 Taquerías Offering Free Tacos to First Responders
How to help!
For advice on where to donate, the Los Angeles Times has put together a guide that includes the Westside Food Bank, World Central Kitchen, CORE (a group that supplies emergency go-bags, masks, and protective equipment), and YMCA locations accepting food.
Writer Esmé Wang has also published a brief resource guide, with advice on where to donate; it includes information about Mask Bloc LA, a mutual aid organization that distributes free masks (h/t to Soleil Ho’s Insta for leading me to this post).
If you scan your favorite restaurants on Instagram, you’ll find more information about more targeted relief.
For individual fundraisers, Go Fund Me has a hub page for those raising funds. And here’s a widely circulating spreadsheet with links to fundraisers for displaced Black families.
Restaurants shuttered by the fires
The closure of Reel Inn has not gone unnoticed. The seafood spot at the entrance to Topanga Canyon was open for 36-years. The New York Times described how owner Teddy Leonard watched a video of her fish shack going up in flames as the Pallisades fire raged.
The restaurant’s website has info on raising funds for affected staffers, with the hope that they might remain on board “if and when” the institution reopens.
“As poor college students, Reel Inn was a way for us to experience Malibu without having to shell out for somewhere like Geoffrey’s, Matthew Kang, of Eater LA writes, adding that: “Even though the area was filled with upscale places, the Reel Inn reminded us of Malibu’s approachability.” That column also covers the closure of Cholada Thai down the block, as well as the shuttering of the 40-year-old Moonshadows. Both are raising funds.
Do click through to that Eater piece, which includes thoughtful remembrances of restaurants in Altadena, a middle class neighborhood and home to many Black families. Mona Holmes, who grew up in the area, wrote many of those short eulogies. She wrote about Little Red Hen Coffee Shop, a Black-owned business that had been open since 1955; it served catfish, cheesy grits, and other soul food staples. She also wrote about Amara Kitchen (vegan burritos!), Fox’s Altadena (pancakes!), and Side Pie, where pizza sometimes came topped with queso Oaxaca.
Laurie Ochoa, general manager of The Los Angeles Times food section, also had a few things to say about Altadena.
“For those of us who have lived for years in north Pasadena and Altadena,” Ochoa wrote, the Eaton fire came at a “vulnerable moment for a food community that was in the midst of renewal.” Click through for a note about Ochoa’s late husband, Pulitzer prize-winning critic Jonathan Gold.
More info on fundraisers for individual restaurants can often be found on their websites.
Meanwhile, back on the East coast…
Gothamist: Scores of workers at NYC's Tin Building lose their jobs after an employment authorization check
At least 100 staffers at the Tin Building by Jean-Georges Vongerichten were out of work following an identity and employment check, according to a report that Gothamist published on Friday.The $200 million food hall’s job losses primarily impacted Latino kitchen workers and custodial staffers, the publication reported, citing interviews with employees.
The Tin Building’s new management, which owns a stake in Vongerichten’s restaurant group, recently switched to E-Verify, Gothamist reported.
What is E-Verify? A Department of Homeland Security system that confirms the eligibility of someone to work in the U.S. By comparison, California severely limits when and how employers can use E-Verify for potential or existing employees. The full story also includes reports that the Tin Building has lost the parent company $83 million so far.
Staffers who bring the appropriate paperwork within 10 days will be able to come back to work, according to the story. Still, it’s hard not to see the whole scenario as part of a familiar playbook: When well-funded restaurants with rich investors encounter problems — financial, political, or otherwise — it is the most vulnerable employees who pay the price. Expect to see more of this.
On recipes….
Check out Alicia Kennedy’s thoughts on the “Recipe as Object.” The writer contemplates the everywhereness of mushroom au poivre and the role of recipes in our algorithm economy. “Which recipes become the bag you carry for thirty years and which become the Target dupe of an Alaïa mesh ballet flat, discarded after one season?” Kennedy grapples with a lot, including the writings of Leslie Brenner, Tim Mazurek, and Molly O’Neill, and you should click through to those separate pieces or books if you’re not familiar with them!
How about some dessert awards?
The Sweethearts by Mia Wiston and Charlotte Druckman have published their inaugural year-end awards, and they include lots of fun, punchy thoughts on the state of sweets.
Apparently, I shouldn’t have skipped dessert during my recent meal at Smithereens (whoops). And we should all go to ALF Bakery for old-school croissants and Tall Poppy for new-school croissants. There’s also a special Dominique Ansel award, lol, “for the unnecessary ‘innovation’ for the sheer sake of stunt, like that Cookie Shot, which is counterintuitive and anti-functional…”
By the way: Druckman and I will agree to disagree on the ice cream sandwich at Penny! But first, let me try it again :)
What do we think of the Oxalis revamp?
Just before the New Year, Melissa Clark of the New York Times reviewed Cafe Mado, chef Nico Russell’s easygoing revamp of his set-menu spot, Oxalis. Verdict? “It’s as if the whole place has been thoughtfully redesigned for Wednesdays,” Clark writes. “The heart of an adventurous tasting-menu restaurant beats within a relaxed comfort-food retreat.”
Also….
Check out Matthew Schneier of New York Mag with some thoughts on Crane Club, a Tao Group takeover of the old Del Posto space — with chef Melissa Rodriguez and Jeff Katz still at the helm. I had a few words to say about this place as well!
Ex-Eater critic Robert Sietsema, who’s now running his own Substack, has a take on Quatorze, a French bistro on the Upper East Side.
Marian Bull writes about dying tea towels in Mess Hall! She’ll be donating a good portion of her Substack income to fire relief and mutual aid.
Finally, be sure to keep the still-new “Best Food Blog” on your radar! Their post today is free. You’ll find some thoughts on miso salt, chicken wings, eating tteok mandu guk on New Year’s day, and Los Angeles fire resources.
Alright, see you in a few days with something tasty!
Cheers,
Ryan!!!
p.s. I just caught this fine Meghan McCarron missive before sending out my newsletter. You should read it. The title: In One of L.A.’s Richest ZIP Codes, Food Service Workers Also Lost Their Homes.