The Brief

It’s hard to look at a restaurant menu without being able to order anything from it, but Tien Nguyen has made it her mission to do exactly that.

Nguyen, a food writer and Los Angeles Public Library creator in residence, has been digging through the library’s archives of restaurant menus, some of which go back to the early 1900’s. She’s specifically focused on the neighborhood we now know as Koreatown, and says tracing the evolution of dishes offered can help us understand its history.

“ L.A.'s Koreatown is a really great example of the ways we can look at menus and see how the neighborhood has changed over time,” she said.

She’s been sharing her research with the public, and will be giving a talk this Saturday at L.A. Central Library’s Taper Auditorium.

How restaurants reflect K-Town’s history

In the early 20th century, Koreatown was mostly known as Wilshire Center. Its Art Deco apartments were freshly built, and landmarks like the Ambassador Hotel were trendy spots for celebrities and dignitaries.

“There's one menu that I remember that is in honor of Albert Einstein and his wife Elsa, and you could see there was a big feast and banquet for them,” Nguyen said. “There were also menus for the king and queen of Greece.”

But soon after, other L.A. neighborhoods became in vogue and Koreatown hit a period of decline, even as high-rise buildings started to go up in the mid-20th century.

Following that, Koreatown started to take shape as into the diverse ethnic enclave it is today. Nguyen ties the changes to the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which removed the United States’ highly restrictive quotas on immigration from certain countries, especially those in Asia.

About the menus

Nguyen told LAist the menu of the Korean restaurant The Prince is one of the best examples of this evolution. The restaurant now offers comfort food favorites like bibim mandu and its signature dakgangjeong. But in the middle of last century, it was known as The Windsor, and offered European continental fare.

The Windsor's food offerings from 1958.

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Courtesy Los Angeles Public Library

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“ It looks like they have great cocktails, they have really great fresh fruit alongside steaks and all sorts of different types of pastas,” Nguyen said. “When I look at those menus, you do have a bit of FOMO, but at the same time, I also am a person of color. So there's also this recognition that maybe I wouldn't have been welcome in some of those spaces as well.”

In the 1990s, the space came under new ownership and became The Prince – a Korean restaurant that still preserves its Old Hollywood charm.

“The thing to get there really is the Korean fried chicken, the tteokbokki – the rice cakes – and the Korean pancakes,” Nguyen said.

Another example which shows the emerging Korean influence of the area comes from the restaurant Beverly Soon Tofu, which opened in 1986. The restaurant’s menu was painted onto gourds, one of which is currently on display at Koreatown’s Pio Pico Branch Library until the end of the month.

Nguyen, who co-authored a cookbook with Beverly Soon Tofu’s founder Monica Lee (not to mention two books written with Kogi’s Roy Choi), said the menu was inspired by Korean countryside decor.

Monica Lee of Beverly Soon Tofu, pictured soon after her restaurant's opening in 1986, along with a letter announcing the opening.

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Kevin Tidmarsh/LAist

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“ These dried gourds were also used as lanterns, so that was her inspiration for wanting to make it look like a menu, because her restaurant at the time was decorated kind of like a countryside restaurant,” she said.

As Korean-Americans settled in what Monica Lee called a sometimes “hot, busy and bothersome” city when she founded her restaurant in 1986, they shaped the neighborhood into the largest Koreatown in the United States – and also shaped the way Americans far and wide eat.

An translation of Beverly Soon Tofu's opening announcement.

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Kevin Tidmarsh/LAist

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“ You go to Trader Joe's, and there's that kimbap that was really popular for so many years,” Nguyen said.

Korean-Americans did this alongside many other immigrant populations that call Koreatown home – many of its strip malls represent cuisines from several different countries.

“What's kind of amazing about that to me is that it is something that feels natural,” Nguyen said. “ Koreatown has a large Oaxacan population, for example. It has a very big Bangladeshi population. And so all these foods, all these cultures, [mingled] together to create a food culture that I think is so distinctly Los Angeles.”

Nguyen also credited Korean restaurants with sourcing fresh ingredients locally – even though they aren’t as celebrated as other Californian restaurants for doing so.

How to attend the talk

Nguyen will give her talk “Menus as Neighborhood Maps: How Los Angeles Restaurant Menus Tell Stories of Community Formation” at 10:30am Saturday, March 14, at the L.A. Central Library’s Taper Auditorium.

You can RSVP here.

California is notoriously slow at counting ballots, which means it may take a while before voters have results for some significant races. A big one is the L.A. mayor's race with Nithya Raman gaining some ground on Spencer Pratt in the race for second place.

Here are five other races we're watching.

Complete results for L.A. County and Orange County >>

L.A. City Council, District 9

Jose Ugarte maintains his lead ahead of Estuardo Mazariegos as of Thursday night. The two leave four other Latino candidates far behind in this race.

For the first time since 1963, L.A.'s District 9 will not be represented by a Black councilmember.

L.A. County Sheriff

Incumbent Robert Luna and former sheriff Alex Villanueva are holding on to their places in the two top spots. Luna maintains a significant lead — about 20 percentage points — over Villanueva.

If you're getting déjà vu, that's because the two went head-to-head once before in the 2022 General Election.

L.A. County Measure ER

Voters are still on track to reject L.A. County's attempt to raise sales taxes by half a percent.

The increase was expected to have generated $1 billion to backfill funding gaps left by federal cuts to Medi-Cal.

Orange County Board of Supervisors, District 5

Incumbent Katrina Foley is still falling just short of regaining her top spot from Diane Dixon. Unless Dixon receives more than 50% of the votes, the two will face off in the November election.

U.S. House, District 32

Incumbent Rep. Brad Sherman and Republican Larry Thompson are likely to square off in November for the race to represent District 32 in the U.S. House of Representatives. Sherman maintains a tight lead.

District 32 spans from the western San Fernando Valley to the coastal cities.

Tracking your ballot

You can track the status of your ballot through California's BallotTrax website.

If your mail-in ballot has any problems (like a missing or mismatched signature), your county registrar must contact you to give you a chance to fix it.

Ask us a question

A potent carcinogen may have spread to communities as far as nine miles downwind of the Eaton and Palisades fire burn zones during debris clean-up, according to a new peer-reviewed study in the journal Nature.

A team of researchers has been studying the air pollution effects of clearing the remains of more than 16,000 homes and businesses destroyed in the 2025 fires.

Scientists with UCLA and UC Davis drove through Altadena and Pacific Palisades in an electric vehicle with mobile air monitors periodically over about seven months after the fires. They measured nanoparticles of hexavalent chromium, or chromium-6, within the cleanup areas. Paint, auto parts, electronics and fire retardant are possible sources, but more study is needed to understand where the chromium came from, the researchers said. They also detected other airborne metals, including lead and arsenic.

The researchers used computer modeling to understand how far those airborne particles may have spread beyond the immediate burn zones. About 3 million people live in the areas that could have been exposed, according to the scientists’ models.

The highest concentrations of nanoparticles — particles less than 1/1,000th the width of a human hair — were measured in March 2025, about two months into the debris removal effort in both burn zones. But the toxicity declined as time passed.

“ The good news is that some of those toxic metals, they were converted back to less toxic forms over time,” said Michael Kleeman, professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis and lead author of the study. “So in the months after the wildfire, the threat from this sort of decayed away.”

In communities outside the burn zones, concentrations diluted further as the plume moved downwind, Kleeman said. By eight months after the fires, the researchers measured that heavy metal concentrations had fallen to background levels for the L.A. basin.

The research highlights how “even after the fire is over, the danger isn't gone,” Kleeman said.

An aerial view of properties cleared of fire debris in Altadena in July 2025.

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Mario Tama

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Getty Images

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Cleared lots in the Palisades Fire burn zone stretch into the distance.

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Qian Weizhong

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VCG / Associated Press

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How concerned should you be? 

The researchers and outside experts emphasized to LAist that the study’s findings do not prove widespread contamination of homes, businesses or the environment.

“ I hope we can get a message of caution out there, but not panic,” said Kleeman.

Andrew Whelton, a Purdue University post-disaster environmental risk researcher who was not involved in the study, said the research is far from proving what, if any, harm to human health could occur, especially because no indoor testing was carried out.

“Drawing a line from street-level detections to indoor exposure, without confirming that the [chromium-6] outdoors entered homes at levels posing health risks, is a significant leap,” he said.

Whelton, who carried out soil testing in the L.A. fire burn scars, said he worries the paper could needlessly sow fear because so many open questions remain. He has argued for funding and establishing more comprehensive contaminant testing at the individual household level in the wake of such destructive fires — the most definitive way to know your personal risk.

“The bottom line: detecting nanoparticles in outdoor air does not mean harm occurred to 3-plus million people living and working inside buildings,” Whelton told LAist.

The average levels of chromium-6 detected in the air during debris cleanup in March were well below limits set for workplaces by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, but above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency long-term screening levels for homes, according to the study.

Still, those comparisons are imperfect because the particles measured were far smaller than what’s used for current health standards — meaning they can more easily travel throughout the body, Kleeman said.

“We don't know for sure what the concerning level should be,” he said.

Workplace standards, for example, are set for healthy adults working eight-hour shifts, “rather than for sensitive populations such as young children, pregnant individuals, older adults, or people with chronic illness,” said Jun Wu, an environmental health scientist and professor at UC Irvine’s School of Public Health, who also was not involved with the study.

More comprehensive study is needed to get at what true exposures may, or may not, have occurred, the Kleeman and outside researchers emphasized.

“This is a single, novel finding based on limited sampling, with the downwind reach estimated by modeling,” Wu said, “so broader monitoring is the natural next step.”

Where the nanoparticles may have spread

The broadest potential plume was from the Palisades Fire, spreading as far as the southern San Fernando Valley to the north and Beverly Hills and West Hollywood to the east. Kleeman said computer modeling of prevailing winds show the plume being pushed toward central L.A.

“Santa Monica, Venice and moving toward central L.A. took the brunt of the plume,” Kleeman said.

Prevailing winds didn’t spread the plume quite as far in communities near the Eaton Fire, with modeling showing northeast Pasadena being the primary community affected.

A map from the study showing the ZIP codes where a airborne chromium-6 may have spread during debris removal.

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Courtesy UCLA / UC Davis

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Many unknowns remain about the public health effects of catastrophic fires in urban areas — and how far those risks may drift beyond the burn zone.

“More work is needed to understand how widespread and persistent these particles were, how exposure varied by location and cleanup activity, and what the health risks were for nearby residents,” said Sina Hasheminassab, an air quality researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was not involved in the study.

Additionally, the study raises questions about how to better protect people’s health not only during, but also after destructive urban fires, said Wu.

“Much of our attention goes to the smoke during the active fire, but this study points to the cleanup and recovery phase,” she said. “This time window deserves just as much attention as the fire period itself.”

For example, some survivors whose homes survived never left during debris removal — some cited concerns about not being able to afford another place to stay without upfront insurance payouts, as well as worries about looting.

The study notes that workers in the burn zones faced the highest risk.

“Based on our field observations, many workers in the debris cleanup zone did not wear masks despite California requirements to provide approved air purifying respirators to workers,” the researchers wrote.

Crews remove wildfire debris on hillside property in Pacific Palisades last year. Researchers note in a recent study that many workers they saw weren't using respiratory protection.

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Charles Delano

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U.S. Army Corps of Engineers

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Survivors push for policy to protect public health after wildfires

Nicole Maccalla’s home in Altadena was damaged but ultimately survived the Eaton Fire. She and her two teenagers moved back in nearly six months after the fire, while debris removal was ongoing. Her daughter’s school nearby was also reopened just a month after the fires.

“ I know I was exposed. I know my kids were exposed,” Maccalla told LAist. “I'm not really sure what to do with that, to be honest.”

“Our entire community is really now guinea pigs,” she added. “It’s deeply concerning.”

Nicole Maccalla, with her kids, Seb and AJ. Their Altadena home survived the Eaton Fire but suffered serious smoke damage.

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Courtesy Nicole Maccalla

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Maccalla, a data scientist and member of Eaton Fire Residents United, helped guide ongoing research by scientists like Kleeman to better understand the levels of contamination after the fires.

She said this study is a warning.

“ I think in the future, we need to move a little slower in fire recovery. The goal should not be speed. The goal should be health and safety,” Maccalla said. “We rushed it, and I hope that we learn from this mistake.”

She and fellow survivors see some hope in a new bill they helped inform. AB 1642, or the Wildfire Environmental Safety and Testing Act, is making its way through the California Legislature.

The bill, written by Assemblymember John Harabedian, would establish the first statewide health standards for testing and cleaning up debris in and outside standing homes, schools, businesses and other structures after a wildfire.

Maccalla urged fellow survivors worried about the results of this study to prioritize caring for their mental and physical wellbeing.

“The stress of all of this is just going to be an added component that will be another contributor to us getting sick long term,” she said. “So many of us are still in survival mode. It's time, I think, to start taking care of ourselves a little bit.”

A year ago, the Trump administration launched a deportation campaign that would leave an indelible mark on L.A. County.

On the morning of June 6, masked federal immigration agents targeted a Home Depot in Westlake, where day laborers were gathered to solicit construction work. About 3 miles east, more masked agents descended on Ambiance Apparel, a fast-fashion warehouse in downtown Los Angeles.

At both locations, Angelenos witnessed workers getting handcuffed and hauled away. For some, those workers were friends, siblings, spouses or parents.

Purportedly meant to remove criminals from the country, federal immigration officials would go on to arrest more than 14,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area in 2025 — the majority of whom had no criminal record, according to an LAist analysis of recent data from the Deportation Data Project.

These detentions, and the ones that followed, ignited sweeping marches and community activism. Met with occasional violent resistance, the federal government deployed active-duty military personnel to the region.

So far, the mass deportation effort has left the following in its wake:

• In Ladera Heights, a food vendor clung to a tree to avoid being taken by federal agents. When they hauled her away, she was still wearing her work apron.
• In the San Fernando Valley, a high school senior took his dog for a walk and did not come home. A neighbor said she saw four men in tactical vests standing near unmarked SUVs shortly after the teenager was detained.
• In Monrovia, a 52-year-old day laborer who worked to support his wife and four daughters died after being struck by an SUV on the freeway. He was attempting to flee a raid at a local Home Depot. 

Families who were suddenly left without their breadwinners struggle to pay their rent. Asylum seekers are detained at routine check-ins. A record number of immigrants have died in civil detention. Many U.S. citizens of color now carry their passports to move about town. Federal agents have detained scores of citizens — sometimes for days. And, to date, more than 200,000 children have been separated from their parents. 

Trump’s mass deportation effort, first tested in Bakersfield, has been escalated to other cities: This includes Chicago, where federal agents killed Silverio Villegas-González, a 38-year-old single father, and almost killed Marimar Martinez, a Montessori school teaching assistant. Then, in Minneapolis, federal agents shot and killed Renee Good and Alex Pretti. The federal government branded Martinez, Good and Pretti — all U.S. citizens — as “domestic terrorists” and accused them of trying to harm officers.

Eeking out a living in the raids’ aftermath

In downtown L.A.’s once-bustling fashion district, business hasn't bounced back. LAist spoke with multiple workers in the area. They declined to share their names for fear of reprisal.

Since the raid at Ambiance, “it hasn’t been the same,” said a worker at a nearby shop. She works at a party supply store specializing in piñatas and embroidered graduation stoles. She’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop, she said.

“[One feels] insecure because you never know how the day is going to go,” the worker told LAist.

At Ambiance Apparel, around the block, an employee estimated a massive loss of income for the store, as much as 50%. (The store did not immediately respond to requests for comment.)

That same effect has played out at small businesses all over the county. Neighborhoods that were hit hard by immigration raids — including Boyle Heights, Echo Park and Westlake, along with southeast L.A. cities like Bell, Pico Rivera and South Gate — report less customer traffic and reduced daily sales.

Angelenos, including workers' family members, gather in front of Ambiance Apparel after several employees were taken into custody by federal agents last summer.

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Genaro Molina

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Getty Images

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Since last June, the Home Depot in Westlake has been targeted for raids at least four times. Even so, day laborers still mill about the home improvement megastore’s parking lot, soliciting construction work from homeowners and contractors.

One worker, a 39-year-old from Guatemala who declined to give his name, said he witnessed the raid last year but managed to get away. He was frightened, he told LAist, but he still came back to work the next day; he has five children to support, including one studying to become a nurse.

“Ni modo, hay que comer,” he said, noting that people need money to eat. “Siempre hay necesidad.”

The reality, he said, is that he’s defenseless if agents were to show up again. Despite his own situation, he feels for the other workers around him.

“Es muy triste,” he said. “Están luchando por sus hijos, para seguir adelante” — “It’s really sad. They’re fighting for their children, to get ahead.”

Finding strength in community  

Beyond the marches last summer, Angelenos continue to find ways to support local immigrant communities. Some have offered to buy groceries for those who struggle to make ends meet or are simply scared to leave their homes. Others have volunteered to give their neighbors rides to school or work. Several regions have organized community patrols to warn about the presence of federal agents.

Activism has not eluded younger generations. At high schools and middle schools across the county, students have walked out of class in protest.

At Olive Vista Middle School in Sylmar, about 100 students left their science, English and math classes earlier this year. To critics who thought they should have stayed inside, 11-year-old Alejandro said: “They don't understand how much we love our parents.”

Across the U.S., detained immigrants themselves are engaging in activism. From Delaney Hall in New Jersey to Adelanto in California, people inside ICE detention centers have launched hunger strikes to expose conditions they describe as unsafe and inhumane. The Department of Homeland Security insists there are no hunger strikes at these facilities, and that detainees get “three meals a day, medical care, and receive full due process.”

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights has also planned a slew of L.A. events during the months of June and July to draw attention to the raids’ impact on local families — and to the unique challenges faced by certain workers, including car washers and custodians.

“A year after the cruel immigration surge that shook all Angelenos, our message is clear: Fear did not defeat us, cruelty did not divide us, and militarization did not silence us,” said executive director Angelica Salas in an email. “We remember, we resist, and we recommit ourselves to the struggle for justice, dignity and the humanity of every Angeleno.”

A Los Angeles council member and a reality star are separated by about 33,000 votes in the race for a runoff spot against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass in November.

Early trends show L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman making slight gains on reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, with the latest tally released Thursday evening narrowing the gap slightly.

The Associated Press has called one runoff spot for Bass.

Votes are still being counted, and the L.A. County Registrar of Voters will receive ballots postmarked by Election Day up until seven days later. Hundreds of thousands of votes remain to be counted, according to the registrar.

Where the race stands now

By Tuesday night, Pratt had collected enough votes to put him squarely in the second spot, with a substantial lead over Raman.

But by late Wednesday, Raman had gone from just over 20% of the vote on election night to a little over 22%. Pratt gained about a tenth of a percentage point to about 30%. Thursday's release put Raman at 23.42% to Pratt's 29.35%.

“I think she has a shot at catching Pratt but I think it's a long shot,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “It requires her to get a large percentage of the votes that remain to be counted.”

Raman, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, is likely to benefit from the later vote tally, Yaroslavsky said.

“The later votes tend to be more Democratic and more progressive and that inures to her benefit,” Yaroslavsky said.

[Note: Katy Yaroslavsky, his daughter-in-law, is far out in front in her reelection bid for CD5.]

Why it still may not be enough

The problem for Raman is that two days ago she was about 40,000 votes behind Pratt and last night was about 38,000 votes behind Pratt, he said.

Raman needs to gain much more than 2,000 votes a day to eclipse the 38,000 vote deficit, according to Yaroslavsky.

[The Thursday release had her gaining at a higher clip.]

“She really has to get the preponderance of the votes that will be coming in in the next week or so,” he said.

Paul Mitchell, a Democratic strategist whose company tracks ballot return data, said Republicans were reflected heavily in the early returns but as the votes continue more Democrats will be represented.

However, it may not be enough to give Raman the boost she needs. He noted that Pratt is losing votes in every vote update, but not all of those votes are going to Raman. They’re split between her and Bass.

“While [Pratt] will drop every release, I'm not sure that Raman will increase fast enough to meet and surpass him,” Mitchell said.

He explained a theory that many Bass and Raman voters held onto their ballots ahead of Election Day and that many of them were likely "establishment voters," meaning they leaned toward the incumbent.

“ So I think that in the end, we might find that [Pratt] hangs on, and the reason why he hung on is because the people who were voting at the end, the Democrats, were voting more for Karen Bass,” Mitchell said.