The Brief

If you’re looking for a quick, decent quality bite, there’s likely a chain in SoCal to hit the spot: In-N-Out for burgers, Mendocino Farms for sandwiches, Cava for Mediterranean food and yes, Chipotle for Mexican food.

But South Asian options at this level of speed, scale, and convenience are harder to come by.

The family behind Biryani Boys, the Pakistani fast-casual joint currently operating out of Anaheim Food Co., is hoping to fill that void. Owner Irfan Ahmed said he is focusing on making Pakistani food scalable.

“The concept behind Biryani Boys is to make South Asian food approachable in much the same way that Chipotle or Cava is approachable,” Ahmed said.

“They took these cultural cuisines, and they made them household staples in the American culinary experience and cultural experience,” he added.

Ahmed said he thinks folks are ready for a fast-casual South Asian option because he’s already seen it work in the U.K.

“Desi food is very much part of the cultural fabric there. There's quick-service, nice sit down, and everything in between," he said. "But for Americans whose lifestyles are begging for convenience, I think desi food generally does not yet serve that segment very well.”

Biryani Boys staff and team

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Courtesy of Biryani Boys

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Signature dish

Ahmed is the son of South Asian immigrants; his father, Jamil Ahmed, was born in India pre-Partition, after which he moved to Pakistan, where Ahmed’s mother, Talat Iqbal, was born and raised.

Growing up in Anaheim, Ahmed saw his mother, an excellent cook, operate a catering service out of their family home and in kitchens at local mosques.

One of her signature dishes was her biryani, a piping hot, long-grain rice cooked with a warm, salty, savory blend of spices like cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, cloves, and cumin; vegetables like potatoes and onions; and usually a type of marinated meat, often served alongside a diced cucumber and tomato salad and a serving of yogurt.

Biryani Boy combo

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Courtesy of Biryani Boys

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Ahmed began sharing his mother’s biryani with his friends at annual friendsgiving potlucks with “the boys,” which is what inspired the restaurant’s name. As the potlucks grew over the years, drawing up to a hundred people each year, the biryani quickly became a mainstay.

While her food played a big role in the family, outside the house, Ahmed rarely saw any restaurants that offered the type of Pakistani food he wanted to eat.

So he worked with his family — including his parents, sister Sadaf Ahmed, and wife Sohila Khalili — to make his own, using his mother’s recipe to open up a restaurant different from the sit-down spots and buffet-style offerings he saw around him. The family opened their kitchen out of Anaheim Food Co. in October 2023 and has plans to open a brick and mortar space later this year.

Biryani Boys logo

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Courtesy of Biryani Boys

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To make a meal quick and simple to produce, Ahmed has narrowed down choices and created a customizable, modular system like the one found at Chipotle.

Diners can choose between two types of biryani: The Sindhi biryani, pulling from southeastern Pakistan and characterized by its spicy, savory, and tangy spice blend, plus additional flavor from prunes or plums, or the pulao, made with a simpler and lighter spice blend.

Both biryanis can be ordered with a ground beef seekh kabob, a pulled beef nihari or pulled chicken (both of which Ahmed likens to a birria), boneless chicken breast marinated overnight in cream and yogurt, or a potato kabob for vegetarians.

Then you have the sauces: raita, made with yogurt and spices, plus chutneys: a mild, cilantro based green chutney; a tamarind chutney; and an extra spicy red chutney to add flavor.

Ahmed noted that he is not hoping to create a fusion dining experience, or even one that is driven by authenticity alone. “You’re going to get your purists who are going to say, ‘This isn't my mom's Hyderabadi biryani.’” he said. “I'm not fusing flavors, I'm just changing the medium or the modality in which it's served. So I'm taking desi flavors, and I'm serving them in a way that's more familiar for the average common American.”

There’s also a range of rolls (flaky parathas wrapped around a meat or veggie filling), crinkle-cut masala fries topped with a house spice blend, and potato balls, similar to the beloved Porto’s classic from the outside, but more akin to a classic chapli kabob by taste. A range of lassis flavored with rose or fruits like guava, mango, peach, and strawberry, add a bit of sweetness along with South Asian-inspired cheesecakes topped with nuts and rose petals.

Ahmed emphasized how important it was for him for the brand to be visibly Pakistani. “There's a reason why I was very particular about choosing Pakistani, as opposed to just South Asian or Indian,” he said, adding that while there are cultural and culinary similarities between the two countries, the regional distinctions and the visibility matter.

“There are some distinctions in Pakistani food that you wouldn't find in Indian food. For example, it's heavier on the meat base, it's a little less spicy depending on where the region is," he said. "To me, biryani uses ingredients that are indigenous to the region of Sindh. Some of the kabobs have heavy Afghan influence, especially chapli and shami kabob, which is very unique to that part of the world as opposed to India."

Rose flavored lassi to quench your thirst

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Photo courtesy of Biryani Boys

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For the brand, he opted for a modern, sleek blue design, inspired by the Badshahi Mosque in Sindh, Pakistan, and embellished with Islamic motifs, like geometric patterns and crescent moons.

“The aftermath of 9/11 deeply affected the American Muslim community, leading to a reluctance among many Muslims to incorporate Islamic cultural elements into their public personas due to concerns about potential backlash or harm," Ahmed said. "I felt that it was time to correctly represent my true Muslim-American identity.

“Most Pakistani restaurants in Southern California, and maybe the U.S. in general, will call themselves Indian because it's easier to do that from a business perspective, because it's less controversial," he added. "And you expand your market; there are more Indians than there are Pakistanis, and you don't want to disenfranchise your core constituency. So it's better to say Indian than it is to say Pakistani."

He noted that while a majority of the response to Biryani Boys has been positive and supportive, he’s gotten some pushback on social media, including from folks who ask what makes his food distinct from Indian food.

“I was very scared when I put ‘modern Pakistani eats’ on the branding, and I am still to this day, but I've been blown away overall by the positivity and the reception, because I would say maybe 50 to 60% of our consumers are actually Indian, and they love the food,” Ahmed said.

Classic Desi Desserts include: Rasmalai Biscoff Cheesecake and Gulab Jamun Biscoff Cheesecake

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Courtesy of Biryani Boys

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Ahmed notes that he is most proud of starting a restaurant despite all the challenges that come with it and for seeing if he can make biryani scalable.

“Most restaurants don't do well selling biryani because it's hard to scale biryani. It's too labor intensive. It's not monetizable in the same way, you can't make money selling it in the same way here. Labor is much cheaper in India and Pakistan,” he said. “The second thing to be proud of is the fact that I am Indian and Pakistani, and am really creating and elevating our cuisine in the eyes of the average Westerner. If I could do that right, I achieved my goal.”

MyLA311, the system designed to help residents access city services for graffiti removal or streetlight outages, got a makeover last year, but since then some Angelenos and Los Angeles city staff have reported it has been plagued by problems.

The city has received “numerous complaints” about the updated website and app, including issues with GPS and logging work, according to officials.

MyLA311 is set up so residents can report non-emergency issues and track requests for tree inspections, homeless encampment services and illegal dumping, to name a few. There are 86 options in neighborhoods, according to Mayor Karen Bass’ office, which helped launch the new system.

Staffers within the city’s Department of Public Works have said they’ve been frustrated by the rollout, according to city officials. They say it now takes longer to add their responses to service requests, and the city can’t record completed work that doesn’t have a service request connected to it.

City Council members Imelda Padilla and Monica Rodriguez led a motion aimed at addressing the issues, saying they’ve caused concerns about the system’s overall functionality and accountability.

“Reports and individuals are telling us that because of this broken 311 app, folks are once again going back to using Excel sheets, phone calls, paper and pen in order to engage in service delivery, and I think that that's a problem,” Padilla said during Wednesday’s council meeting.

The motion instructs Public Works to make a formal report of any problems with the system, including how they may be affecting service timelines and completion rates, and asks the city’s IT agency to come up with potential solutions.

It was approved in a 12-0 vote Wednesday. Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield, Eunisses Hernandez and Adrin Nazarian were absent.

How we got here

Bass announced the launch of the new MyLA311 last year, saying the previous website and app were outdated and had lasted years past their lifecycle.

In a 2023 directive, she’d called for the system to be modernized with the goal of providing better customer service and communication about the status of residents’ requests.

“This new and improved way to request and receive city services is another example of how we are breaking away from the old way of doing things to make our neighborhoods cleaner and safer,” Bass said in a March 2025 statement.

But some people say the new system is falling short.

According to the North Hollywood Northeast Neighborhood Council, the new app has “actually made it harder for Angelenos to request services.”

The Sylmar Neighborhood Council agreed the system needs improvements, writing in a community impact statement that MyLA311 fails to serve L.A. taxpayers effectively if it’s difficult to use or inaccurate.

In public comments, some residents cited “major issues” with the system, including GPS and location accuracy, invalid addresses and missing or incomplete service categories. One commenter wrote that addresses were being routed to other areas, some of them outside the city.

“As a result, they frequently lead to confusion in the field, delays in response and, in some cases, requests going unaddressed due to the difficulty in locating the reported issue or misdirection caused by inaccurate data,” the commenter said.

What’s ahead

The City Council approved several instructions aimed at improving MyLA311, including the following:

• Public Works is expected to report back on its issues with the system.
• The city’s Information Technology Agency is expected to report on system performance, including operational issues, and provide solutions as needed.
• Public Works and IT are expected to provide quarterly reports on service request data, including backlogs, average response times and requests received and closed.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority seemed ready Wednesday to allow the Trump administration to potentially proceed with mass deportations of more than a million foreign nationals, including those from Haiti and Syria, who live and work legally in the United States.

Until now these individuals have been accorded temporary legal status because their safety is imperiled by war or natural disasters in their home countries.

Congress enacted the Temporary Protected Status program in 1990, and every president since then — Republican and Democrat — has embraced TPS. President Donald Trump, however, is trying to end it.

On Wednesday his solicitor general, D. John Sauer, told the justices that the statute clearly bars any court review of the administration's decisions. And he dismissed the idea that a separate law established to provide procedural fairness does not allow the courts to review the Homeland Security agency's decision-making either. Pressed by the court's three liberal justices, Sauer insisted that the courts cannot review anything.

"None of those procedural steps required by the statue are reviewable. That's your position?" asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

"Correct," responded Sauer.

"What you're basically saying is that Congress wrote a statute for no purpose," Sotomayor said.

Justice Elena Kagan noted that under the statute the secretary of Homeland Security is supposed to consult with the U.S. State Department about what the conditions are in those countries that people have been forced to flee. What if she didn't do that at all, Kagan asked. Or what if she asked, but the response from the State Department came back: "Wasn't that baseball game last night great!"

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked what would happen if the secretary used a Ouija board to make decisions?

To all these hypotheticals, Solicitor General Sauer stood firm. That prompted this from Sotomayor: "Now, we have a president saying at one point that Haiti is a 'filthy, dirty, and disgusting s--thole country.' I'm quoting him. He declared illegal immigrants, which he associated with TPS, as poisoning the blood of America. I don't see how that one statement is not a prime example … showing that a discriminatory purpose may have played a part in this decision."

Sauer pushed back, noting that Kristi Noem, the then-DHS secretary, had not mentioned race at all. That prompted this response from Justice Jackson, the only Black woman on the court, "So the position of the United States is that we have an actual racial epithet that we aren't allowed to look at all the context."

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the mother of two adopted Haitian children, interjected at that point to clarify the administration's position. Are you conceding that individuals with TPS status could bring a challenge based on race discrimination? she asked.

Sauer appeared to concede the point.

Representing the Haitians, lawyer Geoffrey Pipoly described the administration's review as "a sham."

"The true reason for the termination [of TPS status] is the president's racial animus toward non-white immigrants and bare dislike of Haitians in particular," Pipoly said. "The secretary herself described people from Haiti" and from other non-white countries as "killers, leeches, saying, 'We don't want them, not one,'" while "simultaneously enacting another humanitarian form of relief for white and only white South Africans."

That was too much for Justice Samuel Alito who asked Pipoly, "Do you think that if you put Syrians, Turks, Greeks and other people who live around the Mediterranean in a line-up, do you think you could say those people are … non-white?"

An uncomfortable Pipoly resisted categorizing each group until Alito got to his own roots.

"How about southern Italians?" Alito inquired, prompting laughter in the courtroom.

Responded Pipoly: "Certainly 120 years ago when we had our last wave of European immigration, southern Italians were not considered white. … Our concept of these things evolves over time."

At the end of Wednesday's court session, one thing was clear: President Trump may be furious at some of the conservative justices he appointed for invalidating his tariffs, but for the most part, he is getting his way. Especially in light of the court's 6-to-3 decision, announced Wednesday, which effectively guts what remains of the landmark Voting Rights Act, once celebrated as a signature achievement of American Democracy.

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The last dog from the Eaton Fire taken in by Pasadena Humane has now been adopted.

Artemis the German shepherd was originally taken to the Pasadena animal shelter for emergency boarding. His family, which lost its home in the January fire, ultimately decided to put him up for adoption.

"The silver lining to all of that is — with all this tragedy — this incredible story of hope where we were able to help foster these animals we’re returning home," said Sarie Hooker,  communications manager at Pasadena Humane.

During his stay at Pasadena Humane, the cream-color pup won over many hearts.

"He's just such a striking boy. He's got this really fun, loving personality. He's very regal," Hooker said.

Hooker said Artemis was adopted by a family through the shelter's foster-to-adopt program.

"He just did amazingly. And the next thing we knew, he was adopted," Hooker said. "So it's a happy story."

Artemis says hello to a new family.

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Courtesy Pasadena Humane

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The Eaton Fire destroyed nearly 9,500 structures, including about 6,000 homes. Two days after the fire broke out, Pasadena Humane reported receiving more than 350 pets from displaced residents.

By the second week of the fire, the shelter had taken in some 600 pets, Hooker said.

" In totality, we were able to help with thousands of animals specifically for emergency boarding," Hooker said, including every kind of pet you can think of, as well as wild animals.

" We were seeing skunks, squirrels, hawks, owls, peacocks, raccoons, possums," she said.

Artemis isn't just the last dog to find a home — or return home — from the Eaton Fire.

He is the last animal.

" Artemis was our final, final animal — like dog, cat, critter. Anything else under the sun.  He was the last boy. So we're very happy," she said.

National and local organizers are calling on communities to abstain from work, school and shopping Friday in recognition of May Day.

The “economic blackout” is modeled after January protests in Minnesota following the surge of immigration enforcement and shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens.

“Our vision includes an economy that works for everyone with a living wage, strong labor protections and programs that keep families housed, fed, educated and healthy,” said Francisco Moreno, executive director of the Council of Mexican Federations in North America, in a Tuesday press conference.

The organization is one of more than 100 involved in planning a Los Angeles May Day rally with the theme, “solo el pueblo shuts it down:  no school, no work, no shopping.”

This year’s largest planned gathering starts at MacArthur Park, a longtime hub for day laborers and street vendors. Last July, immigration agents in armored vehicles descended on the park. The ongoing immigration raids and city policies have contributed to the challenges street vendors face.

“Starting there really sends a message that we're here,” said Kristal Romero, press secretary for the  Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. “We're standing with this community, and if you take on one of us, you take on all of us.”

May Day’s history in LA

May Day, sometimes called International Workers' Day, started after an 1886 strike tied to the fight for an eight-hour work day. The protest turned violent after police attacked workers. In the 1990s, L.A. organizers started to connect the labor movement with advocacy for immigrant rights.

This year’s event also marks the 20th anniversary of 2006’s massive rallies in support of immigration reform.

Romero said the Federation has offered training on de-escalation, conflict resolution and non-violent protests and that hundreds of people will act as “peacekeepers” during Friday’s rally and march.

“ A lot of times, folks can get caught in echo chambers and it may really feel hopeless,” Romero said. “The big point of these events is to inspire hope to show people we're all here, we're all fighting for the same thing.”

Los Angeles County

MacArthur Park

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: March begins at the corner of South Park View Street and Wilshire Boulevard and heads toward downtown L.A.
Organizers: Los Angeles May Day Coalition

L.A. City Hall

Time: Noon
Location: City Hall, 200 N. Spring St., downtown L.A.
Organizers: Union del Barrio and the Community Self-Defense Coalition

Boyle Heights

Time: 3 p.m.
Location: Mariachi Plaza, 1831 First St.
Organizers: Centro CSO

Long Beach

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: March starts at The Marketplace, 6501 Pacific Coast Highway, and ends at Mother’s Beach.
Organizers: Long Beach Indivisible, more details here.

San Fernando Valley

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: Northeast corner of Topanga Canyon and Victory Boulevard, Woodland Hills
Organizers: Indivisible Woodland Hills, SF Valley Brigade, others

Santa Clarita

Time: 10 a.m.
Location: 24292 Valencia Blvd.
Organizers: Indivisible CA27

Orange County 

Orange

Time: 3 p.m. rally
Location: City Hall, 300 E. Chapman Ave.

Time: 5 p.m.
Location: Orange Plaza Circle, Chapman Avenue and Glassell Street
Organizers: OC Indivisible Coalition

Santa Ana

Time: 3:30 p.m.
Location: Sasscer Park, 600 W. Santa Ana Blvd., Santa Ana
Organizers: OC May Day Coalition