Topline:
Although some of Altadena’s restaurants have reopened since the Eaton Fire of January 2025, those whose structures were destroyed face a different set of challenges.
Hurdles: What stands in the way of rebuilding? Costs, logistics and new building requirements.
Why now: At the one-year anniversary of the Eaton Fire, many restaurants remain uncertain about how and even whether they will reopen.
Read on ... to hear from several Altadena restaurateurs.
Altadena one year after the Eaton Fire finds itself in the space between a memory of what existed before and the unknown of where the town will be once it’s rebuilt.
For restaurants that survived and those that didn’t, the unknown could last a while.
“We’re acknowledging that we’re part of something that is going to be much longer and an extended period of uncertainty,” said Randy Clement, co-owner of West Altadena Wine and Good Neighbor Bar with his wife and partner, April Langford.
With the town still years away from recovery, it’s that uncertainty, as Clement explains, that is particularly hard for the Altadena business community. Having lost its local customer base, businesses no longer can rely on the seasonal ebbs and flows. For businesses whose structures were destroyed in the fire, this uncertainty extends into decisions to rebuild.
Fox’s on Lake Avenue served diner-style dishes like buttermilk pancakes, a winning house veggie burger and homemade pies. It was the kind of place you went to feel at home. (In fact, the building had been converted from a house into a restaurant.) Co-owners Monique King and Paul Rosenbluh, who own Little Beast and Cindy’s in Eagle Rock, remain undecided about rebuilding.
“Resources are thin, and our property’s footprint is small,” King said, “so a costly rebuild for a tiny restaurant carries many considerations. We’re in a holding pattern until we decide what’s best.”
King and others said rebuilding is not necessarily straightforward. Businesses that operated in older structures may need to update layouts to comply with newer regulations. Construction and materials come with high expenses, as does permitting, and a host of other factors. Another question mark is whether a business was adequately insured before the fire.
While businesses agreed the top priority is resettling residents, there are limited financial resources to help commercial structures that were destroyed.
Up the street from Fox’s sat Café de Leche, a coffee shop owned by Anya and Matt Schodorf.
“As painful as the loss was, and still is, we never had any doubt about returning,” Anya Schodorf said.
“Of our multiple locations, this was the only building we owned. It was the majority of our income and a magical place,” Matt Schodorf said.
In November, to much community excitement, the couple shared design renderings of their prospective rebuild, as they ambitiously push toward returning.
“We’re eager to offer a space for the community to gather and heal together,” Anya Schodorf said.
Other businesses' futures are less certain.
On Mariposa Street, half of the small shopping strip known as Mariposa Junction was lost in the fire. The structure housed the beloved Altadena Hardware store and the daytime cafe Amara Kitchen.
Paola Guasp owns Amara, which has another location in Highland Park. The Altadena shop was popular among locals, with its bright welcoming space and tables outside for enjoying a sunny Altadena day.
“After the fire, we immediately transferred staff to our Highland Park location. We’ve been putting our energy there and growing our catering business,” Guasp said.
As for getting back to Altadena, it may be a long road.
“Our landlords are amazing and want to see the space thriving. We’re just so far away from rebuilding, so it’s hard to say what the future looks like,” Guasp said.
Over on Fair Oaks Avenue, Jamie Woolner, co-owner of Pizza of Venice, also lost his business. With a long list of creative pizzas and salads, Pizza of Venice, or “POV” as locals called it, was a classic neighborhood spot.
Woolner’s now-97-year-old grandfather built the structure in 1962, and Woolner owned and ran the business for 12 years.
“The restaurant was finally turning into the dream we’d always envisioned for it, and then the whole place burned down,” Woolner said.
Since the fire, Woolner has reflected on if and how the business could return, but rebuilding is a long and expensive project.
Guillaume Patard-Legendre and his wife and partner, Darcy Ballister, run Altadena’s much-adored Pain Beurre bread popup that draws on Patard-Legendre’s French background and baking expertise.
In February 2024, the couple moved from France to Altadena, where Ballister grew up. That July, Patard-Legendre started Pain Beurre from his in-laws’ ADU.
“The business was dedicated to Altadena,” said Patard-Legendre, who saw a local opportunity for French-style baked goods.
Pain Beurre quickly took off, growing a dedicated fan base. The Eaton Fire destroyed Ballister’s parents’ home, including the ADU where Patard-Legendre and Ballister lived and operated the business.
Without a traditional brick-and-mortar shop, Patard-Legendre was in a unique situation.
In March, World Central Kitchen extended an olive branch, helping him restart, including offering baking space at a local commissary kitchen.
“Their help was such a gift when we had nothing,” he said. “I felt like I was in the movie Pretty Woman at the restaurant supply store. World Central Kitchen has been so supportive. We couldn’t have restarted without them.”
A unanimous sentiment among businesses a year after the fire is an undying love for Altadena and reverence for the community’s resilience amid ongoing tragedy.
“The mass scale of loss is still unbelievable,” said Guasp, of Amara Kitchen.
“People lost their homes, along with 20, 30, 40 years of their lives. Some people lost their lives,” Fox’s King said.
Yet as King and fellow owners’ hopes and dreams for returning show, no one has lost sight of what brought everyone there to begin with. Altadena, King said, is “just a remarkably special place.”
Topline:
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from following through on plans to freeze billions of dollars in childcare and welfare funding to California and four other Democrat-led states. Friday’s ruling came less than a day after the states filed suit.
What’s next: The temporary order expires in 14 days. The court battle will continue to play out, with further decisions by the judge expected in the coming weeks, after more arguments from both sides.
The context: In halting childcare and welfare benefits to hundreds of thousands of low-income Californians, the Trump administration wrote that “recent federal prosecutions” are driving concerns about “systemic fraud.” But an LAist review found fraud in the targeted programs appears to be a tiny fraction of the total spending. Prosecutions that have been brought around child care benefits amount to a small fraction of 1% of the federal childcare funding California has received, according to a search of all case announcements in the state. When pressed for details about what specific prosecutions justify the freeze in California, administration officials have offered few specifics.
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A federal judge has ordered Los Angeles to pay more than $1.8 million in attorneys’ fees and costs to the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights and other organizations that sued the city over what it deemed an inadequate response to the homelessness crisis.
The details: In addition to $1.6 million in attorneys’ fees and $5,000 in costs to L.A. Alliance, the judge awarded about $200,000 in fees and $160 in costs to the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and Los Angeles Community Action Network.
Why now: The city is appealing the decision.
Why it matters: In his order, released Tuesday, the judge compared the recent award to the millions of taxpayer dollars city officials agreed to pay an outside law firm representing L.A.in the settlement.
Read on ... for more about this week's order.
A federal judge has ordered Los Angeles to pay more than $1.8 million in attorneys’ fees and costs to the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights and other organizations that sued the city over what it deemed an inadequate response to the homelessness crisis.
The city is appealing the decision.
L.A. Alliance is a group of business owners and residents who sued the city and county of Los Angeles in 2020 in an effort to push both governments to provide more shelter to unhoused people in the region.
The city of L.A. settled with the plaintiffs in 2022, and U.S. District Judge David O. Carter is overseeing the city’s progress in keeping up with the terms of that agreement. The judge found the city breached its agreement in multiple ways in a ruling last summer.
Specifically, the judge found that the city did not provide a plan for how it intends to create 12,915 shelter beds, as promised, by 2027. The court also found the city “flouted” its responsibilities by failing to provide accurate, comprehensive data when requested and did not provide evidence to support the numbers it was reporting, according to court documents.
In addition to $1.6 million in attorneys’ fees and $5,000 in costs to L.A. Alliance, Carter awarded about $200,000 in fees and $160 in costs to the Los Angeles Catholic Worker and Los Angeles Community Action Network.
The organizations are considered “intervenors” in the suit, representing people experiencing homelessness on Skid Row. Their attorneys include those from the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.
In his order, released Tuesday, Carter compared the recent award to the millions of taxpayer dollars city officials agreed to pay an outside law firm representing L.A. in the settlement.
Carter wrote in the order that the attorneys' fees and costs to L.A. Alliance and others “is reasonable, especially in light of the approximately $5.9 million that the City’s outside counsel is charging.”
LAist’s housing and homelessness coverage was cited several times in the order.
“It has fallen to plaintiff, intervenors, and journalists to point out the deficiencies in the city’s reporting,” Carter wrote, referring to data the city is required to report to the court as part of the settlement.
“Plaintiff and intervenors must be compensated for this,” he said.
Attorneys representing the city filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Thursday.
L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto’s office did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment by phone or email.
Shayla Myers, senior attorney with the Unhoused People's Justice Project at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, told LAist the intervenors participated in the case without compensation “because it's incredibly important given what is at stake in these proceedings that unhoused folks have a voice.”
Matthew Umhofer, an attorney for L.A. Alliance, told LAist he’s thrilled the court is imposing accountability on the city, including sanctions for violating the settlement agreement. But Umhofer said he’s saddened that L.A. Alliance is going to have to keep fighting to hold the city to its promises.
“The obvious city strategy here is hire a big, good law firm to fight on absolutely every front in hopes that the plaintiffs, the intervenors or the court will ultimately give up trying to hold the city accountable,” he said.
The parties are scheduled to appear in federal court in downtown L.A. on Monday, when a hearing will resume to determine whether the judge will hold the city of Los Angeles in contempt of court.
Carter has said in documents that he’s concerned “the city has demonstrated a continuous pattern of delay” in meeting its obligations with court orders under the settlement and that the “delay continues to this day.”
Topline:
Smorgasburg L.A. reopens this Sunday with 13 new food vendors joining the downtown market's annual grand reopening at the Row.
Why now: The January grand reopening with new vendors is a longstanding tradition that kicks off the year ahead. Vendors apply through Smorgasburg's website, and the team meets with every applicant to taste their food before acceptance. Competition remains fierce, with many more applicants than available spots. This year marks the market's 10th anniversary celebration in June.
Why it matters: The new vendor class demonstrates the resilience of L.A.'s independent food scene, following a challenging year for the restaurant industry, with concepts ranging from a Grammy-nominated producer's Persian-influenced pizza to Southern fried fish honoring Black migration history.
Every January, the open-air downtown food fair reopens after its winter break and announces new additions to its carefully selected group of regular vendors.
This year’s new vendor class demonstrates the resilience of L.A.'s independent food scene, ranging from a Grammy-nominated producer's Persian-influenced pizza to Southern fried fish celebrating Black American culinary traditions, to an LAist 2025 Tournament of Cheeseburger heavyweight contender.
The reopening also marks the start of Smorgasburg LA's 10th anniversary year, and will feature 41 returning vendors, who've helped build the regular event into a fun, family-friendly opportunity to try new, often cutting-edge food you may not be familiar with.
Doors open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at DTLA’s The Row, with free entry and free parking for the first two hours.
General manager Zach Brooks said this is his favorite time of year. "We add the new vendors at the beginning of the new year, everyone's excited."
Vendors apply through Smorgasburg's website, and the team meets with every applicant to taste their food before acceptance. Brooks said it's not a vetting process like "Shark Tank" but rather a matter of seeing if it's a good fit. Competition remains fierce, with many more applicants than available spots.
"I think it's just a testament to L.A. and the resilience of people who love this business and have a passion for it, and are going to continue to persevere and start their businesses and want to be out there selling food," Brooks said.
Here are a few highlights:
Long Beach-based Terrible Burger becomes Smorgasburg's new permanent burger vendor after standout appearances at LAist's Tournament of Cheeseburgers and the market's rotating Smorgasburger Stand. The smashburger pop-up, run by husband-and-wife team Nicole and Ryan Ramirez, specializes in burgers that draw from pop culture and global influences. They've made waves with a Korean barbecue burger topped with bulgogi barbecue sauce and a viral orange chicken sandwich, previously available only at their Tuesday night residency at Long Beach's Midnight Oil, making its L.A. debut Sunday.
"We have been big Smorgasburg fans for a really long time before we even started Terrible Burger. We would go to Smorgasburg on dates, just eat and hang out. And it was just always a little dream of, "oh, what if we ever sold food here?" Nicole Ramirez said.
Orange County-based Hot Grease, run by Asha Starks, is among four vendors graduating from residencies to permanent status. The Southern fried fish pop-up celebrates Black American history through food that honors Starks' family heritage.
"Folks often forget that there are Black folks in Orange County. My family came to Orange County during the second wave of the Great Migration, and they settled in Santa Ana... my food is very cultural. And the story, I feel like, is just as important to highlight," Starks said.
Hot Grease serves crispy buttermilk fried snapper with thick-cut fries and small-batch sauces like "Ill Dill" tartar. Honoring the fish fry's history as a site of mutual aid, Starks directs 3% of sales to the Potlikker Line, Hot Grease's reproductive justice mutual aid fund. For January, she's added fish and grits, black-eyed peas and collard greens.
Mamani Pizza, from the Grammy-nominated producer Farsi, part of the music production team Wallis Lane, started making Neapolitan-style pizzas at his West L.A. recording studio a year ago. What began as late-night pies for friends and artists became an underground hit. Most pizzas are traditional, but Farsi adds Persian touches like The Mamani, topped with ground wagyu koobideh, roasted Anaheim chilis, Persian herbs and pomegranate molasses.
Banana Mama - Asian-inspired pudding
Barranco's Yogurt - Oaxacan fruit yogurt
Franzl's Franks - Austrian sausages
Melnificent Wingz - Gourmet chicken wings
Piruchi - Peruvian street food
RuRu's Golden Tea - Karak chai
Stick Talk - vegan corn dogs
SouuLA - Taiwanese breakfast concept
Unreal Poke - Hawaiian poke
Zindrew Dumpling Shop - Spicy wontons
Topline:
All that rain didn’t just flood L.A. County streets, it chewed up our roads. You’re likely driving over more potholes than usual, so what do you do if your car gets damaged from one? You could get the government to pay for it.
How it works: You’ll want to take pictures of the pothole and your car. Then, submit a claim form. Personal property damage claims have a six-month filing period, and you’ll have to pay out-of-pocket first.
Manage your expectations: Keep in mind, this isn’t a quick way to cash. Claims can take months. You’ll also have to prove the agency was aware of the problem before your incident, such as by looking at street maintenance records for your area. Here are tips from the now-defunct site LAPotholes.com.
What’s next: Potholes continue to plague the city of L.A., and that’s probably not ending soon. In the next budget, StreetsLA (aka Bureau of Street Services) is proposing to prioritize funding for “large asphalt repair,” which means patching over sections rather than fully repaving streets, which some argue will lead to worse roads.
