The Brief

Insane hours, the toxic work environments, low pay and stringent standards — plenty of ink and film have been spent lately rehashing the stressors that come with working in the culinary industry.

Yet, for the most part, the culture has dictated that workers suffer silently, placing their well-being — and their mental health especially — on the backburner.

But after the back-to-back deaths of two prominent figures in the local L.A food scene, a couple of seasoned food pros have decided that this status-quo doesn’t cut it. They’re determined to get food-and-beverage workers into the therapy chair.

For Alyssa Noui, 38, a leading L.A. food stylist, and Kristel Arabian, 41, a food and beverage recruiter and former chef at a Michelin Star restaurant, the last straw came in February. First it was Jonathan Whitener, the celebrated chef and partner at Here’s Looking at You and All Day Baby restaurants. Whitener died at home from a drug overdose.

A couple of weeks later, Jered Standing, the popular butcher and founder of animal-conscious Standing’s Butchery, killed himself.

Noui and Arabian both had known Whitener and Standing. Their deaths, at 36 and 44, respectively, hit hard with “my elder millennial generation of people in the food space,” said Noui, a veteran of shows like Master Chef, Guy’s Grocery Games, etc.

Whitener was a “big loss to the food world,” she noted, adding how his menu items altered the foodscape. “Like, we're seeing things on that page, which were familiar but were never put together, like the chicken-fried rabbit,” a favorite from his days at another restaurant, Animal.

Meanwhile Standing’s Butchery was a once-a-week stop for Arabian, either to pick up something to cook for dinner or for a Sunday social burger. Noui called him a “dear friend.” By all accounts, Standing, a former vegetarian, was changing how chefs and insiders went about animal sourcing. He was readying a second location in Venice.

Noui said it was one of those friendships where 10 years later you laugh trying to place how you knew each other. Was it Lindy and Grundy or Salt's Cure?

“He checked all the boxes you’re supposed to, to be successful,” Noui said, adding “he was a good-looking dude with great people around him.”

“But if you're not right in your mind, you’re not right in your spirit—what do you really have?”

Channeling grief into gathering

When news broke about Standing’s death, weeks after Whitener’s, “It’s almost, you know, when someone tells a bad joke or something and the room gets quiet, and you're like, ‘Oh my God, who's going to say the next thing?’”

Arabian had met Noui through the Santa Monica farmers’ market network some years back. She remembers speaking to Noui about how their grieving community needed support.

She made a passive comment about 'everyone needing a hug', Arabian said. "'I'm like, yeah, how do we do that?"

The two organized an event which they’ve since dubbed the “F+B Community Check-In” and took over the back patio at Tabula Rasa, the Hollywood wine bar and industry hangout whose name translates to a “blank slate.”

Rather than just creating another customary eulogic Instagram post, “I channeled my grief into gathering,” Noui said. Tabula Rasa, which has a “dark, grown and sexy feeling,” is responsible for putting a lot of first-rate L.A. pop-ups on the map, including Burgers by Standing and Broad Street Oyster, according to Noui.

It was a nice place to bring out “our people” who spend most of their time in the back of those type of places, she said.

The next event was held at the quaint and cozy Now Serving, the Chinatown cookbook store run by Ken Concepcion, a former Wolfgang Puck chef at Cut. The store, which “gives cottage vibes with a sick library,” is also a haven for public discussions and meeting places for local makers and creatives.

Alyssa Noui and Kristel Arabian

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Sam Gezari

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LAist

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For that first event, Arabian created a flier in Canva and went through her contacts looking for sponsors willing to donate food. But they didn’t want it to be just a grieving party, so Noui and Arabian sought another angle.

They found the Southern Smoke Foundation, a Houston-based nonprofit offering free “Behind You” therapy sessions specifically for food and beverage workers. Currently operating their mental health program in ten states, the foundation's sessions are administered locally by grad students at California Lutheran University, seeking to fulfill their curriculum hours. The non-profit also offers emergency relief grants for industry workers. The only conditions are that they work a minimum of 30 hours a week — across multiple jobs, if necessary — and that they’ve worked in the industry for at least six months.

After Noui and Arabian went through the Southern Smoke Foundation offerings at the first meeting, a fishbowl was put out where attendees could share anonymously anything they felt compelled to bare, Arabian said. One person wrote, "I know that the food matters, but when will I start mattering?"

"It f—ing crushed me," Arabian recalled. Others used the opportunity to bounce around career concerns: questions related to pricing, tipping, and other ways they could come together to improve the industry or support one another.

Noui doesn’t need the Southern Smoke offerings herself. She has motion picture insurance as part of a local craftsperson union and has just a $5 copay for counseling. She couldn’t afford it otherwise, she said. Now the question is, “how do I hold the door open for more people to have access to it?”

Cutting through the stigma

Southern Smoke founder, the Houston-based, James Beard Award-winning chef Chris Shepherd, 51, says if you talk to any cook they’ll tell you the same thing: “I still hear the ticket machine in my head at night. You know, you can hear that, geeegeee, geeegeee sound. It doesn't stop.”

The foundation was originally conceived through a Houston festival intended to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis. Shepherd was trying to help a sommelier friend battling the disease. The participating chefs and organizers started speaking about opening up the mental health dimension before the 2018 festival, right after the suicide of superstar TV chef Anthony Bourdain.

Within a few days of the celebrity chef’s death, a friend of one of the festival chefs also had taken his own life. So, “with twenty-something of the best chefs in the country coming in,” Shepherd said, there was a special opportunity to have that conversation.

The profession will always be a high-pressure one, but that doesn’t mean we can’t mitigate harm where possible, he said. Beyond the obvious barriers of accessibility and affordability, there’s also the built-in cultural stigma around asking for help. Since the Southern Smoke therapy sessions are conducted via telehealth, “nobody needs to know,” he said.

Kait Leonard, 28, a freelance chef, producer and co-owner of BOH Creative, a marketing agency that works with restaurants and their staffs, decided to attend the second Check-In event at Now Serving, although she wasn’t sure if she was in the right headspace beforehand.

In 2023, a couple of months after cofounding her company, Leonard fell into a deep depression and admitted herself to the ER with suicidal ideation. She wasn’t sure if she was up for attending the meetup, but decided her presence could help someone else.

“Like 'I went to the ER for, you know, I really didn't want to be here. And that's okay'.” Ultimately, her hope most importantly was that these meetups would be a positive outlet and tool for her clients, to help create a healthier workplace. “I wish something like this existed when I was first starting to work in kitchens,” she said.

Brandon Gray, 38, chef and founder of Brandoni Pepperoni, the Los Angeles inspired pizza pop-up, has attended multiple Check-In events thus far. “A lot of trauma bonding,” took place at said events, he said, adding “everyone there has their own story, there’s a lot of overlap”.

“It’s about just figuring out how to be better,” he said. “Because it needs to be better—the people who have been cooking as long as I have, it's not fun anymore.”

Checking in about mental health

The “hospitality industry is excessive,” says Noui. But it’s important to remember that those who are drawn to it, either back-of-house or front, are those who naturally, or are conditioned to, put themselves second. It’s those inherent “masochistic qualities that everyone has,” the same ones we see “romanticized in shows like the Bear” that come “out of service — out of wanting to serve."

At Kitchen Culture Recruiting, the company she started, Arabian says she makes it a point to check in with potential hospitality candidates about their mental health, “but it’s not something you can hit chefs over the head with,” she said. “It takes trust,” from someone who’s been through it. But there are limits, she says. “I’m not a psychologist.”

Arabian remembers her first time working in the kitchen as a cook, after feeling pushed by her family to become a pharmacist. For the first time, it felt like she was doing what she was supposed to be doing. She’d go on to work back-of-house for approximately ten years reaching the level of executive chef. In her last chef role she was working as executive sous chef at a bakery and pizzeria. But after working in front of a wood-burning stove for as much as 110 hours a week, 14-16 hours a day, seven days a week, she developed a chronic illness and had to leave. The safety net just wasn’t there.

While any job can be anxiety-producing, “cooking is one job that has so much “machismo and bravado” around it that physically, “when you become ill, it is life-changing,” she said. Rather than seek out another chef job, she became a front-of-house and back-of-house recruiter. She remembers saying, “Until I find a really great job for myself, in the meanwhile, I'm going to make sure that chefs are taken care of.” Fourteen years later, she says, "I’m still trying.”

Noui has been workshopping her own community resource tool. She bought a phone number that she’s calling the “My Chef” line, 855-My-Chef-8, which she also had printed on pens. This hotline can be used for everything from finding someone to fill a job, like a chef, stylist, or dishwasher or for accountability checks.

Ultimately, Shepherd says it's important for people to know there is help. He's not a fan of all the emerging depictions of extreme kitchen conditions put out there today. “There's these new TV shows that glorify this [toxic workplace elements] when an industry is trying to get away from it…I think it’s wrong. Unless at the end of it you say, ‘hey, you know what? Therapy is available.’”

Topline:

Why it matters: King Taco helped establish the template for the modern L.A. taqueria — shifting the city's understanding of tacos from the hard-shell, Americanized version to soft tortillas filled with carne asada, carnitas and tacos al pastor. As the late food critic Jonathan Gold noted, King Taco "solidified what we all think of as the modern Los Angeles taco sensibility."

Why now: The nomination comes as part of the city's ongoing effort to recognize Latino cultural landmarks.

The backstory: Founder Raul Martinez launched King Taco from a converted ice cream truck in 1974, eventually opening the Cypress Park brick-and-mortar location that became the chain's flagship. The business grew to 24 locations across Southern California, becoming a model for immigrant entrepreneurship and establishing key Mexican dishes like tacos al pastor and carnitas as L.A. staples.

What's next: The Cultural Heritage Commission will determine whether King Taco's original location retains sufficient historic integrity and continues to convey its cultural significance. If approved, King Taco would become one of the few designated restaurant landmarks recognizing Latino culinary contributions.

President Donald Trump's harsh immigration tactics are taking a political hit as new polls show a majority of Americans feel federal agents have "gone too far" in enforcing immigration laws.

It's not just Democrats who are concerned, but also independent voters who are expected to play a major role in the upcoming midterm elections.

"The base loves it, but it's an issue for the independent voters who decide elections in this country," said Alex Conant, a veteran Republican strategist. "Independents want a strong border and they want to deport criminals, but they're really uneasy with having masked federal agents going around in neighborhoods, deporting anyone that they see — as the Democrats are portraying it."

After months of aggressive enforcement, Trump's signature issue that twice got him elected is now turning into a liability ahead of this year's midterm elections.

The outcry over what many saw as militant tactics hit a fever pitch after the second fatal shooting of a U.S. citizen by immigration officers in Minnesota.

A new NPR/Marist poll shows that six in 10 Americans disapprove of the job federal immigration agents are doing.

Even typically loyal Republican supporters have called on the Trump administration to make changes and rebuild trust with law enforcement.

"They, being the White House, need to recalibrate on what needs to be done to make sure that that respect is going to be re-instilled," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told conservative radio host Mark Davis.

Trump shook up the leadership of the Minneapolis operation, and directed his team to withdraw 700 federal officers.

"I learned that, maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch," Trump said in an interview with NBC's Tom Llamas. "But you still have to be tough. We're dealing with really hard criminals."

It's a bit unclear what a "softer touch" actually means.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt largely defended the administration's enforcement efforts Thursday and pointed to different polling — from a Harvard/Harris survey — that she said showed support for their "deportation agenda."

"Nearly eight in 10 Americans say criminal illegal aliens should be deported," she said. "A solid majority also support deporting all illegal aliens, regardless of additional crimes."

She also said the administration is now prioritizing criminals who are in the country illegally.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, who worked on immigration policy under two presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said there may be an "operational pause" as the administration retools its efforts, both from a policy standpoint and a public relations standpoint.

"Operationally, you're not really thinking about politics as you're putting together an operation, said Brown, now a member of the Council on National Security and Immigration. "But politics comes into everything, right?"

She points to the announcement that body cameras would be deployed to federal immigration officers in Minneapolis, noting that while video can uncover when officers are doing something wrong, body cameras can also vindicate officers when they have done the right thing.

"I do think that probably the administration is thinking, 'Well, if we had body cam footage of our own, we could put our own perspective on it,' " she said.

Trump has a big incentive to get a handle on this crisis — and to do so quickly.

Conant, who previously worked on Marco Rubio's 2016 presidential campaign, said Trump has left an opening for Democrats to sound more reasonable on immigration ahead of the midterms.

"If he loses the immigration issue as a political winner, it's a real political problem," Conant said, "not just for Trump, but Republicans more broadly."

Copyright 2026 NPR

As the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots get ready to push, tackle and elbow their way to victory in Super Bowl LX, the NFL has been showcasing the contactless version of the sport leading up to the big game Sunday in Santa Clara.

With 20 million players, flag football is one of the world’s fastest-growing sports and a growth area for the NFL and its international counterpart, the International Federation of American Football. It’s set to make its Olympic debut at the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles, and NFL players will be allowed to take part.

The NFL, which has invested heavily to expand flag football in the U.S. and abroad, planned no less than seven unique flag football-related events this week in the Bay Area, from the Pro Bowl Games to an under-13 international championship.

Beth Spicer, a middle-school student from Ireland, traveled to San Francisco to represent Ireland in that match Wednesday — the first time the co-ed tournament was held during a Super Bowl week, according to the NFL.

“I only learned how to throw a ball four months ago, and I just fell in love with it,” she said. “It’s not really like any other games. You’re getting tagged at the hips, so you have to move them. It’s unique, but it’s really good.”

Back home, the most popular sports include Gaelic football, hurling and soccer, according to the Ireland team’s head coach, Rob Cooper. He said the flag football program at his school got underway after the NFL reached out, offering free training and equipment.

“ We took it up, and the kids have loved every moment of it since then,” Cooper said. “I have no doubt that flag football, especially in Ireland, will continue to grow massively over the next couple of years.”

Flag football is a less gear-intensive version of traditional tackle football. Instead of physical confrontations, players must strip a length of fabric dangling from either side of a ball carrier’s waist to stop their forward progress.

The lack of contact means players aren’t required to wear helmets or pads, and in the version set to be played at the Olympics, the games are shorter, faster and have only five players per side, instead of 11.

The NFL started its first international flag football program in Mexico in 2000, according to Afia Law, who heads international flag football development for the league.

“ It’s all about creating access to the game for young adults and girls, regardless of the country you are in, regardless of your background, creating an opportunity for you to access the game,” Law said.

The NFL has ramped up efforts to support flag football in 15 countries, including Australia, Spain and Brazil, where the league is growing its reach with on-the-road NFL games next season.

Law said flag football’s Olympic debut will be “absolutely huge.”

“We’ve had people that are passionate about this game playing around the world for so long, and now we finally get to see them on the world stage playing in the game that they’re fantastic at,” Law said.

Kodie Fuller, an NFL and IFAF flag football ambassador from Australia, is excited that her sport is getting international recognition at the Olympics. She grew up playing traditional tackle football but transitioned to playing flag football three years ago.

“ As I got a little bit older, not taking hits every weekend definitely felt a lot nicer on my body,” Fuller said.

Now an Olympic hopeful herself, the 29-year-old said the Olympic debut will encourage more young athletes, especially young women, to get into the sport.

“We can sell the Olympic dream to all of them, because it is a very real possibility now,” she said.

Flag football is also making inroads in the U.S. In December, all 32 NFL clubs voted to invest a collective $32 million to develop and launch a professional flag football league.

Last spring, the Atlantic East Conference launched the first-ever NCAA women’s flag football season. Since the 2023-2024 school year, flag football has been a statewide-sanctioned sport for high school girls in California, although not for boys.

Watching the under-13 international flag football tournament at Moscone Center on Wednesday, Fuller said her “jaw was on the floor.”

“The talent that is coming through is out of this world,” she said.