The Brief

During the summer of 1999, when I was just 15, I moved with my family to Spain. I had never visited Europe before and I had only traveled outside the United States for trips to Mexico.

What took place over the year I spent living in the country’s capital of Madrid and traveling that country was life-altering. Not only did it leave an ever-lasting impression on how I viewed the world and culture, but my understanding of food and cooking also evolved drastically in ways I think I’m still grasping.

One of the first places that we visited in our new home after taking an overnight train from Paris (another first for me) was the legendary restaurant Casa Labra, which first opened its doors in 1860 (some 20 years before my hometown of Whittier would be incorporated) and was the site of the Spanish Socialist Party formation in 1879. My sleep-deprived teenage self wasn’t concerned with the history around me and instead sought sustenance and comfort in potato croquettes.

The small tubular-shaped fried fritters with slightly sweet-tasting outside batter and warm starchy inside arrived two to a plate.

Consumed with a Coke, it remains one of my life's simpler yet most satisfying dining experiences.

Coming full circle

I've noticed that simplicity in a new crop of restaurants and pop-ups that have begun to spring up around Los Angeles, experimenting with the same Spanish and Portuguese flavors that were a rite of passage for me.

The majority of the chefs whom I spoke to for this article were all around my age, all in our 40s, so I couldn’t help but wonder if we had all reached a similar conjecture in our life cycle, where we’d spent our 20-30s trying the most exotic foods we could get our hands out and are now coming full circle, seeking simple and well-executed dishes.

Some might view this as plain, almost even dull. But as I’ve had time to sit with the idea over the past 25+ years, it’s struck me as nearly anything but.

The Serrano Experience (pop up)

When Jorge Serrano, owner of the Spanish food pop-up concept The Serrano Experience, moved to Florida at the age of 8 from his native Spain, its food was already in his blood.

Serrano grew up in Madrid. His father is from Galicia, just above the Portuguese border to the north, and his mother is from Granada, in the South. Both parents raised Serrano with a strong passion for food early on, often dining out and cooking at home as a family.

Serrano went to culinary school for a year but quickly realized the classroom wasn’t for him, but the food was. He started working at Nobu Malibu, tirelessly learning the ropes, eventually moving back to Europe to work at different Nobu properties, then later working for Spanish Chef Dani Garcia in the city Marbella in the south of Spain and David Muñoz at Street XO.

Yet despite all that culinary world-building Serrano had under his belt, he hadn’t had an opportunity to cook his version of Spanish food professionally. He decided to dive in after moving to Los Angeles to be closer to his two sons in Santa Barbara.

I spoke with Serrano at one of his recent pop-ups, this one at the Santa Monica wine bar Esters. The lively mood of the place was buzzing with diners, which matched Serrano’s panache when it came to his dishes. “It all started with a leg of ham,” Serrano said that night, delving into the story of his start in L.A. That leg of ham, pata negra, is the highest grade of Spanish cured ham. (The name refers to the animal's hoof.)

Serrano can often be found standing behind the bar during one of his pop-ups, with his long carving knife expertly slicing up perfectly symmetric squares of the cured meat, much to the delight of the hungry crowds who were there that night. Watching him move the blade back and forth while the sounds of the solo Spanish guitarist playing from the sidewalk, it was almost as if Serrano was conducting his symphony.

Gambas al ajillo, The Serrano Experience

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Courtesy of The Serrano Experience

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After several runs of popping up at Alma’s, a cider bar in East Hollywood, where he only served exquisite cuts of that leg of ham and nothing else, owner Lee Briante, who loved this cured meats concept so much, asked Serrano what else he could cook up for the hungry crowd that was showing up each night.

Next followed were dishes such as tortilla de patata, croquetas, gambas al ajillo, a dish made with head-on prawns bathed in a sauce made of garlic and olive oil. The menu is curated to what Serrano feels like that week, what’s fresh at the market, and his location. “We grew into more dishes, paellas, and pulpos; depending on different pop-up locations, we can do different dishes. So now I just keep playing around every week. I try to do a new dish,” Serrano explains. Diners usually order two to three items and enjoy them with a glass of wine.

That menu that evening at Ester’s featured this new a variety of tapas consisting of his Cadiz crudo, made with bluefin tuna belly, Japanese rice wine vinegar, nori, crispy shallots, and an arbequina extra virgin olive oil from Spain which makes for an onslaught of clean and exquisite flavors and textures as the fattiness of tunas pairs with the saltiness of the nori.

Another standout dish was Serrano’s pulpo Galleo, a Galician-style dish made with tender octopus over a bed of softly crushed potatoes sprinkled with smoked pimento that melts in your mouth.

Diners can finish their meal with a slice of burnt Basque cheesecake. Serrano’s version makes excellent strides to distinguish itself, upping the custard factor of the cake’s incredibly soft and creamy texture. His secret? Serrano takes things a step further, adding fio de ovos, threads of egg yolks boiled in sugar syrup, making them soft, almost noodle-like, an exquisite accompaniment to the richness of the cheesecake.

It looks burnt. But that's the magic of the Basque Cheesecake from The Serrano Experience: The inside is ethereal.

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Courtesy of The Serrano Experience

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For Serrano, the similarities between Spain and California in climate translate well for food and wine from an approachable and affordable perspective. “I'm very excited to do this kind of food. "I've worked at Michelin-rated restaurants my whole life as a chef, and I respect it, but I just want easy food from a cooking perspective that people enjoy and can afford," he said.

"It's like a happy medium for everyone. The future of food is going more casual, more rustic kinds of plates.”

Baserriko Peppers (pop up)

Gill Gonzalez of Baserriko Peppers, a Spanish Basque pop-up, started cooking Basque food because he couldn’t find it in Los Angeles. The Basque country is an autonomous region of Spain and France, known for influences from both cultures. Gonzalez had grown Basque peppers in his backyard in Walnut Park, near South Gate. His varietals included choricero (often used as the main spice component found in Basque-style chorizo) to piparas, the small yellow peppers usually found in tapas across Spain.

From his cultivation of these rare and exotic peppers, Gonzalez began cooking as a respite from his work as an engineer.

Bocadillo de Txuleton, tistorra caserra, y melted garrotxa — steak, sausage and melted goat cheese, heading for a plate.

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Courtesy of Baserriko Peppers

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The pepper is central to Gonzalez's pop-up concept, which is interesting given that he’s cooking a cuisine not generally known for containing a lot of heat. Hence, the name of his operation, Beserriko Peppers.

The Basque dishes that Gonzalez serves at his pop-up — pintxos and tapas, tortillas, and paella are excellent primer for folks with limited Spanish food exposure. However, the dish he's most proud of is his chistora, a cured sausage that he says isn’t found anywhere else in Los Angeles. It is known for its meaty and juicy flavor with just a hit of sweet, a dish often fried and served cut up into pieces as pintxo or in a bocadillo, a small sandwich made with Spanish bread and best enjoyed with a beer or cider. Gonzalez describes his dishes as “nothing elaborate, nothing too fancy. Just simple stuff you can enjoy around the table".

The paella at Otoño, now on the menu after so many requests for it.

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Courtesy of Otoño

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Otoño (Highland Park)

Chef Teresa Montano, the owner of Otoño, which opened in 2018 in Highland Park, fell in love with Spanish cooking after working for the Border Grill group, at Ciudad in downtown Los Angeles, known for its pan-Latin cuisine. Montano worked as a line cook a few nights a week, serving Spanish dishes such as paella and tapas.

For Montano, this marked a tipping point of sorts. “I just got turned on by those flavors, and I started traveling to Spain, and that was it,” she said.

Montano recalls gravitating to paella early on. Growing up in New Mexico, Montano’s mother made her version of Spanish rice, with tomato, garlic, onion, and other assorted spices. Immediately she saw the parallels between the dish she grew up eating at home and the yellow saffron rice featured in paella.

After being bit by the Spanish food bug, Montano remained transfixed by the straightforward cooking in her travels to Spain. “As I explored more, especially in Barcelona, it was the simple seafood, like razor clams, the fried croquetas, and things like that just kept piquing my interest,” Montano said.

Montano says the straightforward style of Spanish cooking forces you to emphasize the quality of the product: “If you just have three ingredients on the plate, they better be the best ingredients you can find.”

Let the flavors shine

She recalls attending a food talk featuring the late Los Angeles food critic Jonathan Gold, and asked him why there wasn’t more Spanish food in Los Angeles. She remembers Gold saying that was because Spanish food was plain. “I was like, 'What are you talking about?' I didn't want to argue with him, but that was his answer. And it could come off as plain, but I think just having those great ingredients and letting them shine is beautiful.”

Montano made it her mission to unlock the Spanish flavors she had experienced during her travels. Before opening Otoño, she had opened another restaurant in Pasadena called Ración. The menu at Ración had more of a fine-dining emphasis, with many seafood-inspired dishes that took influence from Spain's Basque and Catalan regions.

Paella, please!

Montano recalls that while she and her staff were trying to execute a higher-concept menu, customers often asked for paella. After her time at Ración ended in the summer of 2016, she traveled back to Spain to Valencia, the birthplace of paella in the south of Spain. What she discovered when it came to the dish was that a paella, in its natural environment, was more of a rustic dish, that field workers would eat with whatever they had on hand.

Armed with that knowledge cultivated in Spain, Montano wants her menu to remain approachable regarding the price point and execution of each dish. “I want to offer more raciones—more of the larger plates. And so our menu is going to trim down and become tighter on the tapas end.”

Serving dishes at good value remains an important principle for Montano, but it also serves comforting food. She describes the current menu at Otono as “about that sharing, and it's the conviviality.”

While in Valencia, she visited the neighborhood known as El Carmen. It’s an area known for its older architecture, with cathedrals built 500 years ago along cobblestone streets juxtaposed with large street art style murals.

“It's so stunning that they live parallel, and that was what I wanted to do here with the food,” she said. “It's classic and modern, and they're together on the same menu or sometimes on the same plate.

Bar Moruno in Silver Lake

Chris Feldmeier, the owner and chef of Bar Moruno in Silver Lake, wanted to fill a void for a cooking style he loved. That specific style of cuisine was a southern Spain style of cooking that he refers to as “Andalusian style cooking.” It’s food originating from an area most famously known for being conquered by the Moors in 700 A.D. It’s a style of cooking that takes heavily from Middle Eastern influences using spices — lots of turmeric, lots of coriander, cumin but using a lot of European techniques in cooking those things.”

The Tinned Fish plate at Bar Moruno

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Ann Fishbein

/

Courtesy of Bar Murano

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Using the Andalusian concept as his North Star, Feldmeier knew he didn’t want his menu to consist solely of tapas. “We consciously wanted to expose more of what Spain has to offer than the usual, I don't know, a run-of-the-mill Spanish restaurant.”

At Bar Moruno, chef Feldmeier wants to expose his diners to new things. Tin fish is a central focus on the menu at Bar Moruno, which is found all over Spain and Portugal. (Pro tip: if traveling to either of these places, it makes excellent souvenirs to bring home.) Usually consisting of fish like sardines, mackerel, oysters, and mussels, all preserved in olive oil or different sauces.

When describing the menu, Feldmeier explains, “I advise people to come in, and I design the menu first and foremost so you can eat any way you'd like. It's supposed to show the flexibility of Spain and the entire region's food. And make it approachable for everybody in a different way.”

Barra Santos (Cypress Park)

When Mike Santos and Melissa Lopez first came up with the idea to open a Portuguese restaurant, they knew they didn’t want it to feel like L.A. Entering the small restaurant space in Cypress Park, with its blue and white tile bar and carved brick, with the small group of diners casually drinking glasses of wine and nibbling on Alorena olives that has been marinated with coriander and orange, it does manage to make you feel like you’ve been whisked away to another place.

The salt cod fritters at Barra Santos.

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Courtesy of Barra Santos

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Santos and his head chef, Melissa Lopez, wanted the food to showcase specific simple flavors representative of Portuguese cooking, an underrepresented cuisine in Los Angeles.

Seafood is a significant focus of the menu at Barra Santos, featuring standouts such as salt cod fritters that are ultra-savory and meaty.

Eating with a fork or just your hand after squeezing a bit of lemon juice over them is almost a meditative experience, allowing you to dial directly into the flavors. With each bite, all the other noise of your day seems to fall away.

“Specifically to Portuguese food, it's very low-key flavor. It's very flavorful, but you must source great ingredients and try not to do much with them. The bacalao (cod), we soak them for three days. We make caramelized onions. It takes three to four hours to get them nice and sweet. And that's it. I think it speaks for itself in the dish,” Lopez says.

When speaking to Santos, who was born in Portugal, about the reasoning behind the simple cooking style in Portuguese cooking, “It came out of necessity and using what you had. You couldn't access many gourmet products, so you just kept things simple.”

Santos' comments remind me of how many of us were cooking and eating based on what we had because of the pandemic.

Such staples, good bread, and olive oil felt essential in our kitchen; therefore, it makes sense why we, as diners, are increasingly seeking similar dining experiences when going out.

Federal immigration agents detained at least two people late Friday outside Adventist White Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights, where protesters had gathered after reports of immigration enforcement activity, according to rapid response groups. Protesters remained at the hospital into the early hours of Saturday, where immigration agents maintained a large presence.

It appears the incident began after people witnessed someone being detained and taken into the hospital, according to Raquel Roman, executive director of Proyecto Pastoral and member of the Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network.   That spurred a crowd of protesters to rally against ICE agents, who then detained two protesters who are U.S. citizens, Roman said.

ICE activity was also reported near Mariachi Plaza at 5:50 a.m. Saturday, according to witnesses, and outside the East LA Sheriff’s Station, where agents have been seen detaining people in the L.A. County-designated ICE-Free zone. 

Arrests captured on social video

Video posted on social media appears to show one person being detained outside the hospital. In the video, at least three officers in tactical vests are seen detaining someone at the intersection of Boyle and Pennsylvania Avenues around 11:30 p.m.

A group of about six more officers in tactical vests and masks can be seen walking around the area as another, whose vest says “Police ICE,” yells at the person recording to “back up” and “do not impede with the arrest.”

“You’re arresting U.S. citizens,” the person recording says. “18 USC 111, they’re interfering,” the officer replies, referring to Title 18, Section 111 of the U.S. Code: Assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees. 

In the video, a bystander who says the person being arrested is his brother can be seen speaking to the officer. 

“Your brother assaulted a federal agent. He’s being arrested for assaulting a federal agent; he’s coming with us,” the officer tells them. 

Boyle Heights Beat reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for more information about the incident but has not yet received a response.

LAPD response

The Los Angeles Police Department was first called to the scene at 11:59 p.m. to respond to a “large group causing a disturbance,” according to LAPD Officer Norma Eisenman. LAPD responded again at 2:24 a.m. as crowds continued to gather outside of the hospital. 

“Officers responded to maintain public safety and keep the peace. At no point did LAPD officers assist federal immigration authorities with enforcement activities or detain any individuals in connection with immigration enforcement,” Eisenman said. 

Video posted on social media by Izzy Ramirez shows a line of agents blocking the emergency loading dock around 2:30 a.m. as a crowd continues to shout at the agents and make noise.

“It was horrible for the local community. The ICE presence was a lot more than I’ve seen it visibly before,” said Roman. 

What the hospital said

Japhet De Oliveira, corporate communications executive at Adventist Health, shared the following statement:

“Federal agents brought a person in their custody to our emergency department, and we cared for that patient with dignity and privacy, as we do for every patient. When agents formed a line across our ambulance entrance, which we did not request nor authorize, we diverted ambulances to nearby hospitals for about two hours to ensure every patient received timely care. White Memorial does not participate in immigration enforcement. We know last night frightened our neighbors. No matter what happens outside our doors, everyone who comes inside is our patient, and our focus will only be on that patient, and it will not change.”

Doctors at Adventist White Memorial last year reported that ICE agents were violating the privacy rights of detained patients and prohibiting contact with patients’ family members. While the hospital released guidelines to protect patients and support staff,  doctors and advocates have said they fall short.

What's next

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who represents Boyle Heights, said she was “deeply troubled” by the reports overnight and demanded answers from hospital leadership. She said:

The Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network said it plans to lead a protest against ICE outside White Memorial at 2 p.m. Saturday.

This is a developing story and will be updated. 

The post ICE detains two U.S. citizens protesting outside White Memorial Hospital, rapid response groups say appeared first on LA Local.

A California appeals court has found that “ER” and “The Pitt” have enough similarity that a lawsuit brought by the widow and estate of “ER” creator Michael Crichton alleging “The Pitt” is an unauthorized reboot can move forward.

A three-judge panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled unanimously on Wednesday that the trial court judge was correct to reject a motion to throw out the case from “The Pitt” production company Warner Bros. Television, which also produced “ER.” But the judges dismissed Noah Wyle — the star of both shows and a producer on “The Pitt” — as a defendant along with two other producers who worked on both series.

The lawsuit is a clash between the makers of multiple Emmy-winning TV series that were each among the most important and acclaimed shows of their eras.

Crichton, the author of “Jurassic Park” and many other novels that became hit movies and TV shows, wrote the pilot script for “ER,” the NBC show about a Chicago emergency room that redefined the medical drama genre and drew tens of millions of weekly viewers in its run from 1994 to 2009.

The lawsuit brought by Sherri Crichton was filed two years ago, before a single episode of “The Pitt” had aired. The HBO Max series that shows a real-time day in the life of a Pittsburgh emergency department has since become perhaps the most lauded series in television, winning two Emmys for best drama for its first two seasons and two best actor Emmys for Wyle.

Along with more technical legal issues, the judges had to decide whether the shows had at least the minimal similarity that would give the lawsuit enough merit to move forward. Their decision applies only to this early legal challenge and they did not rule on whether the plaintiffs had proved the “The Pitt” is derivative of “ER.”

The court agreed with the plaintiff that “both shows provide commentaries on the healthcare system; they focus specifically on the emergency room and the difficult conditions under which the medical staff operates. Both shows take place, with little exception, in the emergency room, as opposed to other medical shows which track patients as they move out of the emergency room, or indeed never enter it.”

The opinion also said that both feature “very fast pacing, and reactions to multiple overlapping crises. The fast-paced dialogue is (to a layperson) frequently incomprehensible shorthand and jargon, lending an air of immediacy and accuracy.”

Warner Bros. Television said in a statement that “WBTV continues to maintain that ‘The Pitt’ is an entirely original series and that the claims against it are without merit. Nothing in the Court of Appeal’s decision establishes otherwise, and WBTV looks forward to defending its position as the case proceeds.”

The defendants argued in legal filings that the shows have “generic similarities” that would exist in “any dramatic story” that features “overworked doctors and staff.”

The panel also unanimously dismissed as defendants Wyle, John Wells, who created “The Pitt” and worked on “ER,” and R. Scott Gemmill, a “Pitt” executive producer who also worked on both shows. The judges found there was no evidence the three men knew the provisions of the Crichton contract that the lawsuit alleges they interfered with.

Sherri Crichton’s lawsuit alleges “The Pitt” is a rebranded version of an unauthorized “ER” reboot that she had rejected.

Her husband had secured a coveted “frozen rights” provision in his contract for the series, prohibiting Warner Bros. from proceeding with any sequels, remakes, spinoffs or other productions derived from “ER” without Crichton’s consent, or his estate’s consent after his death from cancer in 2008.

After the production company could not reach an agreement with Sherri Crichton over a proposed “ER” reboot, the TV studio proceeded to develop and produce a series based on the same premise without permission, the lawsuit alleges.

People may have been getting high off cannabis earlier than previously thought — at least 2,800 years ago, a new study suggests.

Archaeologists who led a dig at a monumental tomb in Siberia said they turned up evidence of the earliest known use of cannabis for psychoactive purposes.

The findings point to cannabis consumption at least 300 years earlier than previously known use in neighboring China.

Ancient drug use has long intrigued scholars. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote about inhabitants of Central Asia smoking cannabis around 440 B.C., and recent archaeologists have found the seeds in tombs across its highlands.

The team from Germany, Russia, Sweden and Switzerland said analysis of hair in the royal tomb where cannabis seeds turned up sheds new light on the plant’s role in ancient societies.

“It’s extremely rare that we have both preserved plant parts and human soft tissue with the active compounds in it in the same context,” said co-author Gino Caspari, an archaeologist at the University of Bern.

It’s not clear whether the cannabis was consumed through inhalation or ingestion, he said.

The dig took place starting in 2017 at a large burial mound at the Tunnug 1 site in the Uyuk Valley of southern Siberia, home to one of the earliest monumental tombs showing material culture of the Scythians — ancient nomads who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine.

The team, deployed “essentially out in the middle of nowhere,” lived in tents for months and faced a spring-to-autumn season that variously featured swamps, snowstorms, frosts and swarms of mosquitoes. Herds of horses ran freely across the grassy steppe.

Larger artifacts on the site include weapons in the burials, horse gear and animal-style motifs. But the team “struck gold” as it also found tiny black spots that turned out to be cannabis seeds along with preserved human hair, Caspari said.

“It’s only so often as an archaeologist that you do get to drug test a person that’s been dead for almost 3,000 years,” he said.

Radiocarbon dating on some of the more than 1,000 seeds helped establish the time of origin, and “they are not there by accident” but deposited within the tomb, suggesting that the plant material had significance in the community, he said.

Results were published Thursday in the journal Science.

Not all independent experts were convinced.

The hair analysis “is scientifically weak” and there’s not enough evidence to tell whether cannabis was used, wrote Volker Auwaerter, head of the forensic toxicology section at the University Medical Center in Freiburg, Germany, in an email.

“For a central part of the study, the article falls far short of what would have been possible,” Auwaerter said. “This matters because the hair data carry the abstract’s main claims (cannabis consumption and use for its psychoactive properties).”

Today, scholars don’t consider ancient accounts trustworthy without corroborating evidence. Because the cannabis plant has other uses — seeds are pressed for oil and fibers used for cloth — their presence alone doesn’t confirm drug use.

Auwaerter, who was not part of the study, said the data didn’t distinguish consumption from external exposure — in other words, the hair could have picked up traces of weed simply by being buried together with it. He said a lab test involving forensic toxicology expertise would have been advisable and easy to arrange.

But Elisa Guerra Doce of the University of Valladolid in Spain, who has written about use of consciousness-altering substances in European prehistory, said toxicological hair analysis was not new in archaeology and has been used to identify consumption of psychoactive substances. She was not involved in the study.

In an email, she credited the authors for showing, through their methodology, that “cannabis was not merely deposited as a funerary offering but was actually consumed by individuals associated with the burial rite.”

Micki Boden wanted a wedding cake that checked off a couple of big boxes — personalized and tasty. Instead of a traditional tiered cake, the San Fernando Valley native went with a favorite from her school days.

“My favorite cake of all time is the coffee cake that I ate through my entire K-12 education going to LAUSD public school,” Boden said.

Boden attended elementary school in Studio City and middle school in Sherman Oaks before graduating from a Reseda high school.

Boden and her husband, Matt Stollman, met in 2016 while working on the reality television show Big Brother and eventually started dating. The two got engaged in 2025.

With the groom’s family traveling from the East Coast for their wedding in October, the couple wanted to provide a uniquely L.A. experience.

Micki Boden and Matt Stollman cut into their LAUSD coffee cake wedding cake.

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Micki Boden

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“We wanted something that was gonna be fun, that was gonna be memorable for people,” Boden said.

They held their wedding at the Valley Relics Museum in Van Nuys, surrounded by San Fernando Valley memorabilia, and got a California favorite — an In-N-Out truck — to serve guests.

The search for a cake that fit 

But when it came to the wedding cake, the couple struggled to find something suitable. Neither Boden nor Stollman liked frosting, and traditional wedding cakes didn’t excite them.

“We explored the more traditional tiered cake setup, and it just wasn’t meshing well,” Boden said.

Boden kept returning to the coffee cake she ate throughout her years in public school. Los Angeles Unified School District had published its official recipe online, but she wasn’t confident she could bake it herself. So she reached out to the district to ask for help.

The Stollman's wedding cake, decorated by the chef at Mulholland Middle School in Lake Balboa, sits in a pastry box.

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Micki Boden

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How LAUSD made it happen 

Thomas Cohen, a public relations representative at the district, and Manish Singh, the director of food services, arranged for a chef at Mulholland Middle School in Lake Balboa to prepare the wedding cake. The chef also shaped part of the cake into a heart just for the couple.

Singh said the district doesn’t take cake orders from the public — but made this exception.

“We were doing it just to make one of our Angelenos, an ex-LAUSD student, make her special day even more special,” Singh said.

For the bride, it was the icing on her big day.

“I think it’s all just part of being an L.A. student,” she said. “The fact that we have these amazing memories from childhood, I think it’s just so meaningful for a lot of people.”