The Brief

There are food names in Los Angeles that thrill the soul. Canter’s. Pink’s hot dogs. Roma Market. They’re all known for quality, tasty food. But if you look closer, there’s a common theme — they all get their meat from the same supplier: RC Provisions.

Which probably should be as well known as the other marquee names.

It seems like everyone in Los Angeles uses it. Old-school Jewish delis like Factors, Canters and Langers. New-school Jewish delis like Wexler’s and Belle’s.

That world-famous chili used by Original Tommy’s, Pink’s Hot Dogs and Dodger Dogs? The capocollo served at Italian delis like Bay Cities and Roma Market?

Pink's Classic Chili Dog — chili courtesy of RC Provisions

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Courtesy Pink's

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Yup. RC Provisions.

It all comes from a 25,000-square-foot facility on Victory Boulevard, right off the Burbank exit of the 5 Freeway. The company just bought the building on the corner, which will add 2,500 square feet. It’s such a large operation that the federal government requires they have a USDA office on site.

RC Provisions "our best in the west" pastrami

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Josh Heller

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Owner Matt Giamela says, “We’re extremely honored and privileged to be a part of such a large organization of great establishments.”

Missing Italian subs

Matt Giamela’s grandparents left Plainfield, N.J., for Southern California in the early '50s because they "heard the weather was so beautiful out here.” They moved to Olive Avenue and Beachwood Drive in Burbank, where there already was a small enclave of Italian Americans.

His dad, Bill Giamela, “loved the submarine sandwiches back home as a kid, growing up in an Italian American family,” Matt Giamela said. “You eat pasta on Sundays and you eat Italian sandwiches a couple of times a week. So there’s delis all over New Jersey. He missed those Italian-style sandwiches.”

The only spot he could get his fix was at Santoro’s Submarine Sandwiches, which has been open on Burbank Boulevard since 1956.

So at about 20 years old, Bill Giamela opened his own shop on Riverside Drive in 1964.

“He got an old O’Keefe and Merritt stove that he bought at a flea market,” Matt Giamela said.

Bill Giamela eventually grew Giamela’s into a regional sub sandwich empire with nine stores.

Giamela’s sold Italian cold-cut classics, pepper steaks and their famous meatballs. Matt Giamela says, “My grandma would wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning and make the meatballs at the house on Beachwood, and then would take the bus to the Riverside Drive location and help my dad make the sandwiches.”

These days, there are three locations left, but Matt Giamela says they’ve recently expanded the dining room at Giamela’s in Atwater Village to allow more people to dine in and host events and dinner parties.

Italian dishes were the family’s natural calling. However, pastrami, of Eastern European origin, was less familiar. The Giamelas didn’t always know what to do with it. Matt Giamela says, “My dad used to serve pastrami cold. He didn’t know any better. He’d just put the cold meat directly on the slicer.”

But that would soon change.

“Being an Italian-American hustler, [he] wanted to go straight to the source — so he came here to RC Provisions,” Matt Giamela said.

The business originally was founded in 1958 by Alex Russak and Lou Cholodenko, who lent their last initials to the brand name. By 1966, the business had been sold to Ron Fisher, who became Bill Giamela’s friend.

“They developed a relationship over the decades, and then in 2000, Ron wanted to retire, so he sold it to my father, and we’ve been running it ever since,” Matt Giamela said.

A slice of pastrami heaven

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Josh Heller

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Best pastrami of my life

Today, the RC Provisions team makes sure it can serve the exact specifications that each restaurant is looking for. (If you sell over 500 pounds per week, RC will make your own white label custom blend, like they do for the big boys Langer’s, Canter’s or Brent’s.)

The specific flavor is determined by the amount of time the meat spends being brined — it can take four to five days — and smoked and how it’s cut and prepared by the end user.

In the pastrami category alone, RC Provisions sells a range of styles: navel pastrami, New York pastrami, brisket pastrami, pepper beef pastrami, eye of the round and pastrami pepper beef flats.

And nothing goes to waste — all the trim goes into making that world famous chili.

When I visited the factory, I got a chance to try one of the newer recipes: Wagyu pastrami, with meat sourced from Brandt Beef in Brawley. It had been heating up in a makeshift steamer for a few hours, so that the fat marbling in this fine cut of meat could become undeniably buttery.

Matt Giamela — who’s been making professional sandwiches since he was 12 years old — toasted the rye bread, loaded it with the meat and added some Swiss cheese and Russian dressing, which came from a deli account they’ve been trying to lock in.

It was no doubt the best pastrami I’ve ever had in my life.

On my way out the door, Giamela offered me a 2-pound hunk of meat.

When I got home, I called my great buddy Mike, whom I’ve known since Hebrew school but who hasn’t been able to hang out for months because he’s been too busy with Law School. Within a moment's notice, he said he was coming over and bringing a corn rye loaf from Bea’s Bakery. This future lawyer has a lot of notes about a lot of things, but this was also the best pastrami he’s ever had.

My mom happened to be at the house, and she doesn’t eat red meat unless she’s on vacation in Europe. But she tasted this and loved it so much she wanted to bring home some meat for my dad. Later, he literally broke his veganness to give this a try, which he absolutely loved.

So when a friend from out of town marvels at the pastrami at Langer's — you can hold the secret to your chest — or you can spill. Up to you.

The Los Angeles World Cup host committee has quietly posted its guidance on human rights after months of speculation over where the plan was and when it would be published.

Advocates had pushed the committee, an arm of the Los Angeles Sports & Entertainment Commission, to produce its plan. But now that it's out, they're not satisfied with what they're seeing.

The human rights guidance is required by FIFA and outlined on the host committee's website. It includes a list of online resources including where to file complaints with various local and state level agencies and a summary of local, state and federal laws protecting human and civil rights. The committee is also touting a partnership with L.A. County in which people can call 211 to report a concern during the tournament.

"Los Angeles is weeks away from hosting one of the largest sporting events in the world, and yet what has been posted is not a plan,” Stephanie Richard, director of the Sunita Jain Anti‑Trafficking Initiative at Loyola Law School, said in a statement. “It is a list of laws and hotline numbers."

The human rights document also skirts fears around ICE and its potential presence at the tournament and surrounding celebrations. Todd Lyons, the agency's head, said earlier this year that ICE's investigatory branch will play a key role in security for the tournament.

But ICE and immigration enforcement aren't mentioned on the host committee's web page on human rights or in its outline of its approach to human rights. "Immigration status" only gets a mention in the list of existing anti-discrimination laws.

"It certainly could have been much stronger," Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, said of the plan. She added that her organization participated in a roundtable on the plan, and she was disappointed ICE and recent immigration sweeps weren't mentioned in the resulting document.

"In order for all of this to happen, immigrant workers are part of it," she said of the World Cup. "Your hotel workers, your service workers, stadium workers, drivers." 

LAist reached out to spokespeople for the host committee for comment via email, phone and text, but did not hear back in time for publication. FIFA's press team also did not respond to an email from LAist.

According to the host committee's website, the human rights plan is the result of coordination with the city and county of Los Angeles, the city of Inglewood, and 14 roundtable discussions held in the fall of 2025.

"As a non-profit organization, the Host Committee’s role is primarily and necessarily focused on aligning and collaborating with governmental and non-governmental organizations," the document sums up the committee's approach.

The plan also promises more actions, including "Know Your Rights" training for L.A. residents and visitors and "Know Your Responsibilities" training for businesses and vendors. The committee also says it will develop a "rapid response" strategy to respond to potential problems at the tournament.

Available details on those plans were scant. And with the tournament just 30 days away, labor unions and community groups are continuing to voice concerns about potential ICE presence at SoFi Stadium and other potential consequences of the tournament coming to town.

The mayor of Arcadia has agreed to plead guilty to a charge she acted as an agent for China, federal prosecutors announced Monday. She has resigned from her position with the city.

Eileen Wang, 58, faces one count of acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The charge carries a potential sentence of up to 10 years in federal prison.

What we know about the criminal case

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Wang and Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills worked at the direction of the Chinese government and with individuals based in the U.S. to promote pro-People’s Republic of China propaganda in the United States. Those actions occurred between 2020 and 2022, prosecutors said.

According to federal prosecutors, Wang and Sun operated a website — known as U.S. News Center — billed as a news source for the local Chinese American community in Los Angeles County. They posted content on the site, described as "pre-written articles," based on directives from Chinese government officials.

Sun, 65, pleaded guilty in October 2025 in federal court to acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government. He is serving a four-year federal prison sentence.

Prosecutors also said Wang communicated with John Chen, whom they described as “a high-level member of the [Chinese government] intelligence apparatus,” in November 2021, and asked him to post an article from her website.

In a group chat, Wang referenced the article and wrote: “This is what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs wants to send,” according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Chen pleaded guilty in New York to acting as an illegal agent of the People’s Republic of China and conspiracy to bribe a public official. In 2024, he was sentenced to 20 months in federal prison.

What's next

Wang, who was elected to the City Council in November 2022, was expected to make her first appearance in U.S. District Court Monday afternoon.

Citing a plea agreement, prosecutors said she's expected to enter the guilty plea within the next few weeks.

Arcadia's mayor is selected from the elected council members. A post on the city's website announced that Wang had resigned her position as of Monday and that a new mayor would be picked from the remaining council members at the next meeting.

The Supreme Court on Monday gave itself more time to consider a national ban on telemedicine access to the abortion pill mifepristone.

Justice Samuel Alito extended an earlier order he issued by three more days, so rules for prescribing mifepristone online or through the mail remain in effect through Thursday at a minimum.

The case at issue

The tumult over the future of telemedicine access to mifipristone started on May 1 with a ruling from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling re-instituted prescribing rules from before the pandemic that required patients to receive mifepristone in person in a doctor's office or clinic.

The Food and Drug Administration determined that the rule was medically unnecessary in 2021. The state of Louisiana sued last fall, arguing that telemedicine access undermines the state's abortion ban.

What is telemedicine abortion?

The telemedicine abortion process starts with a patient connecting with a healthcare provider on the phone or online. If the patient is eligible, that provider can prescribe two medications — mifepristone and another pill called misoprostol. Patients can pick up the medicine at a local pharmacy, or providers can mail the drugs to a patient's home.

That access is a big part of the reason why the number of abortions nationally has actually increased since the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. Now, most abortions in the U.S. use this combination of medications, and one quarter happen via telemedicine.

After the 5th Circuit ruling, some providers said they would continue offering telemedicine access to abortion medication using a different protocol that involves higher doses of misoprostol and no mifepristone.

Researchers say that method is just as safe and effective, but tends to cause more pain for patients and more side effects, like nausea and diarrhea. Misoprostol has other medical uses, such as treating gastric ulcers and hemorrhage, and has been on the market longer than mifepristone. It is likely to remain fully accessible, even if mifepristone is restricted.

Since the FDA's prescribing rules for medications apply to the whole country, a change to the rules about how mifepristone can be accessed has national impact. That means it affects states with constitutionally-protected access to abortion, states with criminal bans, like Louisiana, and all states in between.

States' rights

Nearly two dozen Democratic-led states submitted an amicus brief in this case, writing that the appeals court decision put the policy choices of states with bans above the choices of states "that have made the different but equally sovereign determinations to promote access to abortion care."

There are also stakes related to the power of FDA and other expert agencies to set rules. While the Trump administration's FDA did not respond to the Supreme Court's request for briefs, a group of former leaders of the agency, who served under mainly Democratic and some Republican presidents, wrote about this in an amicus brief.

They defended the FDA's process in approving the medication and modifying the rules for prescribing it, and say the appeals court decision "would upend FDA's gold-standard, science-based drug approval system."

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