The Brief

When you take a bite of the lomo saltado burrito from Merka Saltao, a fast-casual Peruvian restaurant in Culver City, one of the first things you'll notice is the sauce.

The wok-fried chunks of steak, dressed in a soy-and-oyster sauce reduction spiked with vinegar, saturate the rice inside the tortilla, highlighting the sweet heat of ají amarillo mixed with the velvety texture of pinto beans.

It's a beautiful confluence of flavors. It is also, depending on who you ask, either a creative act of evolution or a betrayal of Peruvian culinary heritage.

Standing on business

The lomo saltado burrito at Merka Saltao wasn't exactly a calculated move. Lifelong friends Alonso Franco and Ignacio Barrios — who met in high school in Lima — came to Los Angeles to bring Peruvian food to the masses, first through a ghost kitchen concept they ran from 2021 to 2023. The burrito happened almost by accident: a member of their kitchen team brought in a tortilla one day, someone suggested wrapping the lomo saltado in it, they ate it, and within three days, it was on the menu.

Merka Saltao co-founders Ignacio Barrios, left, and Alonso Franco, right, inside their Culver City restaurant. The two lifelong friends from Lima opened the fast-casual brick-and-mortar location for their Peruvian concept in August 2025.

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Courtesy Merka Saltao

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The data from the ghost kitchen made the case for keeping it there. Franco and Barrios had launched with around 140 dishes — lomo saltado, ceviche, chicken dishes, the works. But the numbers kept pointing to the same thing: wherever lomo saltado appeared on the menu, in whatever form, burrito, bowl, salad, it was the winner.

(Ceviche, for all its cultural cachet, is raw fish with raw onion — a harder sell for a weekday lunch. Lomo saltado, Franco noted, is steak and fries — basically a hamburger.)

The backlash

The two friends made the leap to brick-and-mortar in August 2025, opening Merka Saltao in downtown Culver City. It's one of the more competitive dining corridors in L.A., the kind of block that can support a $16 wellness bowl and a craft beer bar in the same stretch, populated by Amazon employees on lunch breaks, families on weekend outings, and food-literate regulars who will absolutely have opinions about what goes in a burrito.

Those opinions arrived faster than Franco expected. Within the first week of opening, an influencer came in and posted about the restaurant — but instead of showing the full menu, the bowls, the chicha morada, the flexibility of the concept, they showed the burrito. Just the burrito.

Franco working the wok at Merka Saltao. The high-heat wok technique at the heart of lomo saltado traces its roots to Chinese immigrants in Peru

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Christopher Mortenson

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Courtesy Merka Saltao

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The comments turned quickly. "No! Peruvians don't eat burritos. ¿Qué car—o es eso?" — roughly, "what the hell is this?" — wrote one commenter. Another said "Burritos? We don't eat burritos in 🇵🇪”. Franco describes sitting at his computer reading the pile-on, feeling something between anger and devastation. "There was a moment where I probably even cried," he said, "thinking, I've made a mistake." But then he looked at the numbers. 30,000 had seen the post…. And half the comments were in his defense.

He took the conversation to Reddit, posting to r/FoodLosAngeles asking the community directly: am I wrong for this? The response was overwhelming — hundreds of comments, almost entirely in his favor, and a surge of new customers walking through the door shortly after.

Fusion by default

This is Los Angeles, where many of the dishes that define the Southern California diet were born precisely from cultures colliding. Roy Choi built an empire on Korean tacos. Al pastor traces its technique to Lebanese immigrants who brought the vertical spit. The California roll, invented by Japanese chefs in Los Angeles in the 1960s, introduced an entire country to sushi. None of these dishes destroyed the traditions they borrowed from. If anything, they expanded their audience. And the lomo saltado burrito isn't exactly a novel concept in Southern California to begin with — everyone from Pablitos Tacos in North Hollywood to Le Hut in Santa Ana, run by 2025 James Beard Award-nominated chef Daniel Castillo, has featured their own version. Even Disney's California Adventure got in on it, serving a lomo saltado burrito out of the Studio Catering Co. food truck as recently as last year.

The lomo saltado bowl and burrito at Merka Saltao in Culver City — two versions of the same dish that sparked an unlikely online debate about Peruvian culinary identity.

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Courtesy Merka Saltao

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Franco would also point out that lomo saltado itself — the dish the purists are so eager to protect — is a product of Chinese immigrants bringing the wok and soy sauce to Peru roughly 300 years ago. "Peruvian is by default fusion," he told me. "So we have all the right to wrap it up in a burrito." What the online critics were really doing, whether they knew it or not, was defending a dish that was itself once considered inauthentic — and doing so in the name of authenticity.

Where things stand

Since the backlash, Franco says business has been mostly steady — breaking even, which for a concept that requires high volume at a low price point, he considers a good sign. The controversy changed things in ways he didn't expect: people started coming in specifically because of the story, not just the food. He began putting himself front and center in the brand, regularly making videos on social media about what it's like to run the business, occasionally poking fun at himself and the whole debate. When we visited during the weekday lunch rush, there was a steady line of people waiting to order, many stopping to talk with Franco directly.

In a way, he's answered the authenticity question not with an argument but with a presence — showing up, telling the story, letting the food speak. "Honoring my food, if that requires pairing lomo saltado with a salad or wrapping it in a tortilla, I have no problem," he said. "I'm not being less authentic. We are evolving in Peru anytime. I have to be authentic on the individual flavor and then be flexible to reach more people to discover our flavors."

The burrito, it turns out, was never the point. It was just the door.

Southern California was built on radio.

"I can still hear the jingle KFWB News 98,” wrote  Taline in Los Feliz, during a recent conversation on LAist's daily news show, AirTalk, which airs on 89.3 FM. “I grew up hearing that in my dad's minivan on the way to and from school. It has a special place in my heart.”

Back in April, broadcast company Audacy announced KNX News — one of the last-remaining all-news FM stations — was leaving the FM dial where it had simulcast on 97.1 FM since 2021. The station, which is also one of the oldest in L.A., is not budging from 1070 AM where it has been on the air for more than 100 years. The move away from FM officially happened in May to make way for a new sports talk station, which Audacy officials called an area of growth for advertisers in today’s media landscape.

The move is one in a long line of changes for radio and a reminder that before podcasts, playlists and algorithms, many Southern Californians built their days around radio broadcasts.

Radio, a daily ritual

The construction of KNX

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Herman J. Schultheis

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Michael Jackson, a well-known KNX, personality

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Larry Mantle, now in his 41st year hosting AirTalk, remembers being a kid and dreaming of what it might be like to be behind the mic at one of these radio stations.

“ I grew up with KNX," he said. “My dream job as a kid was to be an anchor on KNX or KFWB, the two local all-news radio stations, 'cause there was nothing like hosting AirTalk that even existed at that point.”

Mantle opened up the phone lines on a recent show to hear from his fellow SoCal radio lovers about the shows they miss and the memories they have. Here's what they had to say:

A love for radio, then and now  

A pilot of KMPC's traffic alert helicopter pictured with his daughter and grandson.

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Los Angeles Public Library

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A 1963 picture of Valley State College (now Los Angeles Valley College) preparing to launch KVCM

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Larry Leach

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Los Angeles Public Library

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“When you'd walk down Hollywood Boulevard where the station was, you could hear it playing as you went down the street,” said  Olivia in Glendale about KLAC 570 with Al Jarvis.

 Larry in Yorba Linda shouted out KBCA Jazz for its 24-hour jazz, saying “When I first moved out here in '68 from Phoenix, which had like an hour a week, it was a real wonder.”

 Mark in Glassell Park emailed that he loves KCRW’s Henry Rollins, writing, “I used to bristle at his unique DJ persona, but over time, I came to love him and his crazy eclectic playlists. I find his knowledge in history and punk rock fascinating. He's a gem and a legend."

"I'd like to give a shout-out to all the DJs working at KXLU, the college station at Loyola Marymount University, said  Jeremy in Culver City in an email. “That station's been on the air for nearly 60 years. I believe it's one of the best examples of what's possible with radio."

"KFWB and KRLA back in the day when they were rock music stations —  Dr. Demento, one of my favorite on-air personalities, also had eclectic music taste," said  Carrie in Desert Edge.

“ Dr. Demento was must listening when I was a kid in junior high school at Le Conte Junior High in Hollywood,” Mantle added. “Every Sunday night on KMET, we would make sure we were listening to Dr. Demento and his funny records.”

The question remains…

An 11-year-old winning a car in a KMPC contest in 1963.

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Los Angeles Public Library

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Listener support is vital to any radio station, and it’s clear KNX has many lifelong fans. AirTalk listeners highlighted their support for household KNX names over the decades like Bill Keene, Melinda Lee, Mike Roy and Jackie Olden.

As KNX makes changes, many are watching closely and thinking about the future of radio.

Listeners like Tommy in La Quinta are left wondering if the radio dial will be the same…

“I’m a hardcore listener, but I don't know about casual listeners [and] if they'll tune to AM,” he said.

After months of hand-wringing, Los Angeles and LA28 have come to a tentative agreement on how Olympics organizers will reimburse the city for its expenses for the 2028 Summer Games.

According to the deal, the private Olympic organizing committee will pay upfront for the estimated cost of services that are not eligible for federal reimbursement, like trash pick-up and traffic control. Under another proposal, the city would also be able to tap an LA28 contingency fund if it isn't fully repaid by the federal government for policing costs at Olympic venues.

The agreement is nearly nine months overdue and still needs approval by Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council.

The 2028 Olympics are intended to be privately financed, and an existing city agreement with LA28 states that the Olympics organizers, not L.A., will pay for extra costs for public services in support of the Games. But L.A. is the financial back-stop for the Olympics, meaning if LA28 goes in the red, taxpayers will pick up the bill.

Beyond that, the city services agreement presents another area where L.A. could incur additional unexpected expenses for hosting the Games. L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez warned LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover earlier this year that a bad deal could "bankrupt" the city.

Jacie Prieto Lopez, an LA28 spokesperson, and Paul Krekorian, who leads the city's office of major events, said in statements that the freshly inked agreement would help deliver a fiscally responsible Games.

"Mayor Bass’ priority is that the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games be fiscally responsible, protect taxpayers, and benefit Angelenos for decades to come. This agreement helps deliver that commitment," Krekorian said.

But the contract between the two parties doesn't fully resolve one of the biggest areas of financial risk for the city: the enormous cost of security for an event as extensive and high-profile as the summer Olympics and Paralympics.

Organizers are counting on the federal government to pay for public safety at Olympic venues that are considered part of a "national special security event." That includes costs for LAPD staffing. LA28 has not included security costs in its $7.1 billion budget — a fact that City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto criticized earlier this year.

The federal government has so far allocated $1 billion for security costs for the Olympics. Exactly where those federal funds will go has not yet been determined, and there's no guarantee they will cover all of L.A.'s policing costs.

To address this, city officials have also proposed an amendment to a 2021 agreement between the city and LA28. That amendment would establish that if L.A. is not reimbursed by the federal government for all its eligible expenses, it could dip into LA28's contingency fund of $270 million before the private organizing committee could use those funds for any legacy projects.

But that bucket of money will first be used for any costs that Olympics organizers still owe if they run out of revenue — meaning if the Olympics don't turn a profit, the city's access to that money will depend on how much is left for the taking.

Civil rights attorney Connie Rice, who has been tracking the city's negotiations with LA28, told LAist the agreement was a "PR document" not a deal. She pointed out that if the federal government does not pay up for security spending as expected, L.A. could be in trouble.

" It leaves the taxpayers with a GoFundMe strategy," she said.

The city services agreement lays the groundwork for more negotiations between LA28 and the city. Each venue will require its own agreement, to be negotiated by July 1, 2027. Venues in the city of L.A. include Dodger Stadium, the L.A. Convention Center, L.A. Memorial Coliseum and the Venice Beach Boardwalk.

The City Council's ad-hoc committee on the 2028 Games will meet Tuesday afternoon to vote on the agreement.