In the Aftermath of L.A.’s Catastrophic Wildfires, New Restaurants Offer a Glimmer of Hope on the Horizon
Places like Woon Pasadena and Baby Bistro signal fresh growth in a city mourning a great deal of loss
Photographs by Emily Wilson
On the afternoon of January 7th, several Malibu restaurants along the Pacific Coast Highway burned to the ground, engulfed by the ferocious Palisades Fire that ravaged an entire oceanside community. Among them were the beloved 36-year-old fish shack The Reel Inn and Cholada Thai, a beachy mainstay for pad thai noodles and tom yum soup. Early the next day, 50 miles northeast in the mountainous enclave of Altadena, another handful of restaurants fell to treacherous flames, this time, the Eaton Fire. By the morning of the 8th, O Happy Days Vegan Cafe, cherished since 1977, and the Little Red Hen Coffee Shop, run by third-generation owners dishing out French toast and shrimp and grits, had been reduced to ash and rubble.
In the two weeks since, the Los Angeles restaurants that have emerged unscathed from the deadly wildfires—both of which are still burning—are having a hard time making ends meet. After a strenuous half-decade marked by a global pandemic, the Hollywood writer’s strike, and challenging economic conditions, including inflation and increased labor costs, operating a restaurant business in L.A. has become borderline untenable. That was the situation before the wildfires ripped through two bookend communities, cloaking the city in the grey soot of grief and quieting the din of our dining rooms. Restaurateurs began to sound alarms last week as they worked overtime to feed first responders and evacuees: their reservation books were empty, and sales were down. They asked that we help fill their seats, and that we gather in support of small businesses instead of retreating. Otherwise, they warned, closures were imminent, and the future would be bleak. “Without government safety nets, in our society — in Los Angeles — we save restaurants by spending in them,” wrote Los Angeles Times food critic Bill Addison in his newsletter last Saturday.
Amidst the destruction and the uncertainty, some restaurants opened their doors for the first time. Three days before the wildfires broke out, Yellow Paper Burger served its first double cheeseburgers and apple hand pies on Eagle Rock’s main strip of Colorado Boulevard. Five days later, on January 9th, the Santa Monica pizza and cocktails joint Not No Bar transitioned from its soft opening phase to welcome guests on Main Street. Woon, the popular homestyle Chinese restaurant in Filipinotown, opened its long-awaited second location in Pasadena on New Year’s Eve, only to close a week later because of its dangerously close proximity to the Eaton Fire.
“There was a moment where I was driving like 80 miles an hour, running red lights because I thought the building was going to burn down and I was grabbing cash out of the safe and had my friends on standby with trucks to load out the furniture,” said Woon’s owner, Keegan Fong. “I was like, wow. Two years of work and everything we put into the space, all the build-out was about to burn down after a week. I was getting a little bit emotional and just kind of laughing at the same time.”
“When the fire was coming up to the 134 and we were sitting at home, it was so terrifying because we just opened our restaurant, and there's a potential that it could burn down this year, in this fire,” recalled the baker Katie Reid Burnett, who co-owns Yellow Paper Burger with her husband, Colin Fahrner. “That was another level on top of everything.” The couple initially kicked their burger operation into gear as a pandemic pop-up and have since flipped burgers all over Los Angeles, including at Rancho Bar and Side Pie, two Altadena businesses lost to the wildfires.
Luckily, both restaurants remained intact. But the days following the wildfire outbreaks were all but normal. After a successful opening weekend, Yellow Burger had to close the following Wednesday and Thursday because of fallen trees, evacuated staff, and smoky air. By Friday, they were back up and running, holding their line of customers while they finished cooking 50 burgers and 30 grilled cheeses for the relief organization Altadena Girls. “This is only the second week, but we’re not even thinking about opening anymore. It’s just like, ‘Okay, what do we need to do right now?’” said Fahrner. They were touched to get a call from Gil Craddock, the owner of Dang Burgers in Carpinteria, who had an exceedingly busy weekend because of many displaced Palisades residents staying in the area. He wanted to help out by paying for some of their meat delivery.
Woon Pasadena remained closed for ten days as they awaited word from the city on whether their water was safe to drink. Fong had to reroute the prep work for both locations of Woon, which he had migrated to Pasadena’s bigger kitchen, back to Filipinotown, where the kitchen was also preparing meals for firefighters and displaced Angelenos. When I spoke to him last Wednesday, he had just come from Pasadena, where four staff members were deep cleaning the entire restaurant, ridding the space of any fire-related sights and smells. Hours before, they had received the green light regarding the water and were preparing to reopen on Saturday.
Meanwhile, other restaurateurs have been overseeing the finishing touches on their buildouts and preparing to staff up for new restaurants that will open next month, such as Baby Bistro in Victor Heights, Eagle Rock’s Wallflour Pizza, and Beethoven Market in Mar Vista.
Like many of my friends and peers, I’ve been wrestling with complicated emotions around having chosen to settle in Los Angeles as the wildfires raged. Was it safe to live here? Is it wrong to raise a family in L.A. with full awareness of the climate risks? Could I see myself anywhere else? I was curious to talk to others who have recently invested in the city but in the form of a restaurant. I wanted to ask: What does it feel like to be taking your first steps as a restaurant when Los Angeles is burning? To have created a new place to eat, drink, and convene in a city where many of us are grappling with the potential dangers of living here long-term? To be grieving the loss of entire communities while simultaneously providing a fresh dose of hospitality? I also wanted to know, albeit reluctantly, if they were questioning their decision to plant roots in L.A. as they navigated the harrowing aftermath of the Palisades and the Eaton fires.
Conner Mitchell, the fisherman and restaurateur behind Dudley Market and Not No Bar, wasn’t feeling so great about the fate of his sophomore restaurant when I talked to him last Thursday. “I wish I could give all the money back to the investors because we ran out of money before we finished this project, and now we're opening it at the worst time ever,” he said. He worried that the wildfires, which had already caused a slow week in dining rooms across Los Angeles, not to mention price gouging within the housing market, would further decimate the Westside population beyond the demolition of the Palisades. “And if home is starting to pull on the heartstrings because L.A. is feeling like a bit of a war zone, it’s going to lead to an exodus, and the exodus has already been happening, mostly to do with how expensive it is to live in L.A.,” he said.
Mitchell was hurting on a personal level, too. “I'm never going to give up on L.A. I'm the last one left in my four-generation Los Angeleno family to be here, and I am going nowhere. I will fight the good fight. I will keep my roots here. But Dina and I have been talking since the COVID days about what's next. And a lot of that is because, sure, we love L.A. Do we love it enough to raise a kid here?” he said, referring to his fiancée and partner in both restaurants, Dina O’Connor. “We just lost half the best school systems. So many of the good schools were in Malibu, in the Palisades, in Altadena, in Pasadena.”
Fong also grew up in Los Angeles, specifically Pasadena, which makes the second location of Woon a homecoming. “I’ve considered leaving L.A. a lot of times, I’m going to admit, and the only thing tying me down is obviously family but also this place and what I’ve created,” he said. “I double downed on it to reassure myself this is where I want to be. I was like, ‘I’m gonna open a second spot. Let’s put our foot in the fucking soil. Let’s try to find a house in Altadena and maybe work towards buying one.’ It’s pretty discouraging now, but unfortunately, I doubled down. I suck at gambling.” Like Mitchell, he’s concerned about how the loss of clientele from neighboring Altadena will affect business in Pasadena.
At the same time, he feels energized by the community that Woon is newly a part of, even if his peers in Altadena are gone for now. The response they saw in Pasadena during opening week—I witnessed lines down the block myself on New Year’s Day—was proof enough that Woon is needed in that part of town, perhaps now more than ever. “I've been wanting to open back up because I know the community that still exists needs food,” Fong said.
Others were unwavering in their commitment to Los Angeles. Brandon and Carolina Conaway, the husband-and-wife team behind Eagle Rock’s soon-to-open Wallflour Pizza, were born and raised in Orange County. They remain steadfast in realizing their dream of owning a restaurant in L.A. “I don’t think we’ve even had a shadow of a doubt that we’ve ever wanted to live anywhere else. There are fires and earthquakes, but at the end of the day—” said Brandon before Carolina chimed in: “Southern California is our home, and there’s no other place that we’d rather be than here.” Like Yellow Paper Burger and Woon, which Fong opened alongside his mother just a year before the pandemic, the Conaways feel strengthened by the experience of having started their business (formerly known as Quarantine Pizza Co.) in an erratic, uncertain time, during lockdown. When they open their doors next month, a blue-and-yellow floral mural will set the vibe, and 14-inch sourdough pizzas, Sicilian square slices, mozzarella sticks, and seasonal sides will be on the menu.
Jeremy Adler, a co-owner of Cobi’s in Santa Monica and a third-generation Angeleno, hopes to unveil Beethoven Market in Mar Vista by the end of next month. Although he was just a kid, he remembers the anxiety he felt after the Northridge earthquake of 1994 on account of the aftershocks. “There will be a fire again, there will be another traumatic natural disaster of some kind, maybe not at this scale, but there will be… I'm not going anywhere,” he said. He’s lived in Mar Vista with his family for nine years and has been working on building a neighborhood restaurant for the last two. Now that he’s staffing up, he’s hoping to hire as many people who live in Mar Vista as possible. “The profit margins of a restaurant, even if you crush it, are 15-20 percent, which means that 80 cents out of every dollar goes out the door. If I can have 20 to 25 cents of the money go out the door to people that live within this neighborhood, that’s beautiful,” he said.
This is a uniquely challenging, melancholy time for the city of Los Angeles. Never have I heard the word devastating used so frequently than in the past two weeks. There is, however, a silver lining to the enormous loss: L.A., often derided for being disconnected, is undeniably united at this moment. Carolina Conaway put it best: “Maybe, who knows, this is the one thing that we needed to get to know who our neighbors are. People say that L.A. is a place where you don't really know your neighbors. Maybe this is a situation where you open your eyes, and you're like, ‘Actually, who is my neighbor?’” The weekend after the fires started, Ines Barlerin Glaser, a pizzamaker who consulted on the menu at Not No Bar, was struck by how guests were mingling with one another instead of keeping to themselves, as is usual in an age dominated by dating apps and social media. “I think there’s something really special that could grow right now from L.A. and bring back a really strong community,” she said.
All the restaurateurs I spoke with were inspired by how Angelenos are supporting one another and working together toward rebuilding. “Seeing this side of L.A. has been the most inspiring thing I've seen in my 37 years,” said Mitchell. “There are more people genuinely wanting to help than I've ever seen; the effort is actually there, and people are putting those who have lost everything in front of their own needs.” Andy Schwartz, the co-owner of the much-anticipated Baby Bistro, echoed his sentiment. “It’s really nice to see collective energy working towards something. I would say that's one of the things that feels elusive here,” he said. “That’s the part that I’m sappy about. I like seeing people going in the same direction.”
Baby Bistro is still somewhat of a construction site. But as we walked through the space last week, Grayson Revoir, the artist and designer overseeing much of the interior buildout, said they could open by the end of February. Revoir lost his Altadena home and studio to the Eaton Fire, yet he’s continuing to show up at Alpine Courtyard to saw banquets out of Douglas fir most days of the week. “Seeing him galvanized by having this project to direct his energy and thoughts into, but also to have something to show for himself, is meaningful,” said Schwartz. The conversations he’s had with Revoir and others who’ve lost their homes, he added, have helped quiet any doubts about opening a high-end restaurant as Los Angeles is only just beginning to recover. “They want the things that they love about this city to exist and do well, and for a lot of the people I know, they want me to open this restaurant, and for it to be great, and for them to come and enjoy it,” he said. “I’m motivated and inspired by it. At this time, where I’m asking, ‘How are you?’ They’re caring about our project and are excited about it.”
When Fahrner and Burnett were able to welcome customers back into their burger joint on January 10th, they were heartened to provide a place for people to have a good meal and be in good company. “The opportunity and privilege to even be able to get to the point of opening a restaurant, that’s something we’ve been thinking about even more than we were leading up to this,” said Fahrner. “The fact that friends of ours in Altadena don’t even have a building anymore, this is very real right now.” That same weekend, Not No Bar was a safe space for Travis Passerotti, the chef de cuisine of Marea in Beverly Hills, which opened last week. As he was gearing up to bring the renowned New York Italian restaurant to L.A., Passerotti and his wife lost their home to the Palisades Fire. “Seeing them here last Saturday dancing and smiling for even eight minutes or so, to witness that was so huge,” said Mitchell, a close friend of the chef.
The new blood that nascent restaurants bring to cities is a vital force in Los Angeles right now. Places like Woon Pasadena and Beethoven Market signal fresh growth in a city mourning a great deal of loss. They are bets on the future of Los Angeles, a city of angels that refuses to give up. Last week, like Mitchell, I thought that the tragedy of these wildfires might catalyze a great exodus from L.A. Now, I’m not so sure. People want to fight for Los Angeles, including me. “These are scars. Scars make scar tissue. They never fully go away, and they always leave a mark,” said Adler over the phone yesterday. “But, you know, I think the average [Angeleno] wants to get on with their lives.”
Amazing reporting <3
Glad most people seem to be in the “I’m staying” camp.