The Brief

For many in SoCal, Filipino baked goods like the pandesal, a sweet roll eaten at breakfast with coffee, is the taste of home.

SoCal has the second-largest population of Filipinos in the world, just behind Manila, with large enclaves in parts of the San Gabriel Valley and the South Bay.

Filipino-founded chain bakeries, rooted in cultural influences from China, Spain and other Southeast Asian countries, have served their local Pinoy communities for decades.

Stalwarts include Goldilocks Bakeshop, which established its first U.S. location in Artesia in 1976, and Red Ribbon Bakeshop, which opened in West Covina in 1984. Each has continued to expand to numerous locations throughout the region. Meanwhile, United Bread & Pastry in Silver Lake has remained a mom and pop neighborhood favorite for 40 years.

Adding a twist

Now, however, a new generation of bakers is taking those Filipino recipes and creating their own spin. Bakers like Kym Estrada and Arvin Torres, co-owners of San & Wolves Bakeshop in Long Beach. They specialize in traditional Filipino baked goods that are 100% vegan, nut-free and soy-free.

A fresh tray of pandesal from San & Wolves in Long Beach, the Filipino baked roll served for breakfast with coffee.

(

Courtesy San & Wolves

)

The couple started the business as a pop-up in 2017 while living in New York, but ultimately decided to move back home to Southern California. After hosting a series of pop-ups here, they saw the demand for their baked goods grow, and they opened their bakeshop in March earlier this year.

Pandan and black sesame cinnamon rolls from San & Wolves in Long Beach.

(

Gab Chabrán

/

LAist

)

Ube malasada and calamansi chocolate marble loaf at San & Wolves Bakeshop in Long Beach.

(

Gab Chabrán

/

LAist

)

Despite being a vegan bakery, Estrada and Torres say they regularly sell their bread to the local community.

“ They don't care that it's vegan. They're just happy to support a Filipino business,” Torres said. “And they'll tell me, ‘Oh, I thought I'd come in because my daughter or husband told me about it,’ and then they'll leave with a handful of items.”

Kym Estrada and Arvin Torres, co-owners of San & Wolves in Long Beach.

(

Gab Chabrán

/

LAist

)

At San & Wolves, in addition to their pandesal, they also serve bibingkas, made with rice flour and blueberries, buko pop tarts filled with young coconut flesh topped with dark purple frosting, black sesame cinnamon rolls, and various other cookies and cakes.

The couple says their favorite pastry is pan de coco, similar to pandesal, a sweet roll filled with bukayo, a shredded coconut filling.

Torres recalls one night when Estrada was baking in their kitchen and she emerged with her latest version of pan de coco. He took a bite, and it instantly stopped him in his tracks.

San & Wolves Bakeshop in Long Beach offers vegan versions of both traditional and nontraditional Filipino baked goods.

(

Morgan Rindengan

/

Courtesy San & Wolves

)

“It tastes exactly like how I remembered it when I was a kid. So it has this personal tie for me. But also, it is my favorite because it's a traditional Filipino baked good. Every Filipino probably knows what a pan de coco is,” Torres said.

6100 is the place

In Santa Ana, chef Karlo Evaristo recently opened his brick-and-mortar bakery, 6100, after successfully using Instagram to sell his sourdough loaves out of his home. The name is inspired by the ZIP code of his hometown, Bacolod City, in the Philippines.

While 6100 sells a variety of European-inspired sourdough breads and pastries, his Filipino background can be seen throughout.

Chef Karlo Evaristo's bakery is inspired by the zip code of his hometown in the Philippines.

(

Courtesy of 6100 Bread

)

Take his milk bread recipe. It’s a soft, fluffy bread in Asia that’s usually made with yeast, but Evaristo's recipe uses sourdough, which he allows to ferment for three to four days. Biting into the cloud-like, squishy bread, you wouldn’t think it’s sourdough, but that’s just part of Evaristo’s magic.

In addition to his bread program, Evaristo offers Filipino-inspired baked goods like ube cruffins, which are a cross between a muffin and a croissant, topped with ube sweet cream. He also offers a ham and cheese croissant modeled after a croque monsieur sandwich, which is made with Persian ham and a mornay sauce made with gruyere.

Chef Karlo Evaristo of 6100 Bread in Santa Ana.

(

Courtesy of 6100 Bread

)

And then there's his pandesal.

“I needed to put it on the menu so people would know I’m  Filipino,” Evaristo said. “It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor.  If we talk about bread culture in the Philippines, pandesal should be the number one thing on that list.”

With no formal training as a baker, Evaristo built his career working in restaurants, including one his family owns in the Philippines and one in Singapore.

In 2018, he and his wife moved from the Philippines to Orange County. There, he began cooking at various restaurants and hotels in the area, eventually doing pasta pop-ups.

Hosting a pop-up at Melody, a wine bar in Virgil Village, Evaristo was mesmerized by the sourdough bread he tasted from Bub & Grandma's.

“It was just mind-blowing to me 'cause I never had good sourdough,” he said.

Hellbent on learning how to make it, he created his starter and then began serving his sourdough at his pop-ups.

A cruffin, a pastry that is a hybrid of a croissant and a muffin, from 6100 Bread in Santa Ana

(

Courtesy of 6100 Bread

)

When the pandemic happened, Evaristo pivoted to selling his bread out of his home; soon, crowds of people started showing up at his front door. So much so that he soon had to find his own space.

He chose Santa Ana because of the inexpensive rent, and found a Quonset hut identical to their next-door neighbors, Le Hut Dinette.

The bakery places an emphasis on hospitality and welcoming everyone. He sees that as a reflection of his Filipino background, too.

“That's part of our DNA as Filipinos, we like feeding people.," he said. "If you go to the Philippines and see somebody eating, they'll always ask you if you want some. That's just part of our culture. We can't be eating and not offer it to someone else."

Topline:

The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."

What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."

Every year in Santa Ana, Luis Cantabrana turns the front of his home into an elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe that draws hundreds of visitors.

Along the front of the house, the multi-colored altar is filled with lights, flowers and a stained-glass tapestry behind a sculpture of the Lady of Guadalupe. Cantabrana’s roof also is lit up with the green, white and red lights that spell out “Virgen de Guadalupe” and a cross.

Visitors are welcomed with music and the smell of roses as they celebrate the saint, but this year’s gathering comes after a dark year for immigrant communities.

Luis Cantabrana stands in front of the stunning altar he built in front of his home in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Every year, his display draws hundreds of visitors.

(

Destiny Torres

/

LAist

)

Why do they celebrate? 

In 1513, the Virgin Mary appeared before St. Juan Diego between Dec. 9 and Dec. 12, asking him to build a church in her honor. Her image — a brown-skinned woman wearing a green veil with her hands together in prayer and an angel at her feet — miraculously appeared on his cloak.

To celebrate in Santa Ana, worshippers gathered late-night Wednesday and in the very early hours Dec. 12 to pray the rosary, sing hymns and celebrate the saint.

Cantabrana has hosted worshippers at his home for 27 years — 17 in Santa Ana.

The altar started out small, he said, and over the years, he added a fabric background, more lights and flowers (lots and lots of flowers).

“It started with me making a promise to la Virgen de Guadalupe that while I had life and a home to build an altar, that I would do it,” Cantabrana said. “Everything you see in photos and videos is pretty, but when you come and see it live, it's more than pretty. It's beautiful.”

The Santa Ana home's elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe draws hundreds of visitors each year.

(

Destiny Torres

/

LAist

)

Gathering in a time of turmoil 

Many also look to the Lady of Guadalupe for protection, especially at a time when federal enforcement has rattled immigrant communities.

“People don’t want to go to work, they don’t want to take their kids to school, but the love we have for our Virgen de Guadalupe,” Cantabrana said. “We see that la Virgen de Guadalupe has a lot of power, and so we know immigration [enforcement] won’t come here.”

Margarita Lopez of Garden Grove has been visiting the altar for three years with her husband. She’s been celebrating the Virgencita since she was a young girl. Honoring the saint is as important now as ever, she said.

“We ask, and she performs miracles,” Lopez said.

Claudia Tapia, a lifelong Santa Ana resident, said the Virgin Mary represents strength.

“Right now, with everything going on, a lot of our families [have] turned and prayed to the Virgen for strength during these times,” Tapia said. “She's a very strong symbol of Mexican culture, of unity, of faith and of resilience.”

See it for yourself

The shrine will stay up into the new year on the corner of Broadway and Camile Street.

California’s unemployment agency kept paying cellphone bills for 4 1/2 years without checking whether its workers actually were using the devices.

That’s how it racked up $4.6 million in fees for mobile devices its workers were not using, according to a new state audit detailing wasteful spending at several government agencies.

The Employment Development Department’s excessive cellphone bills date to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it shifted call center employees to remote work and faced pressure to release benefits to millions of suddenly unemployed Californians.

It acquired 7,224 cellphones and wireless hotspots by December 2020. State auditors analyzed 54 months of invoices since then and found half the devices were unused for at least two years, 25% were unused for three years and 99 of them were never used at all.

The investigation, which auditors opened after receiving a tip, identified 6,285 devices that were unused for at least four consecutive months, and said the department spent $4.6 million on monthly service fees for them.

From the beginning, the department had about 2,000 more cellphones than call center employees, according to the audit. The gap widened over time after the pandemic ended and the department’s staffing returned to its normal headcount.

As of April, the audit said the department had 1,787 unemployment call center employees, but was paying monthly service fees for 5,097 mobile devices.

“Although obtaining the mobile devices during COVID-19 may have been a good idea to serve the public, continuing to pay the monthly service fees for so many unused devices, especially post-COVID-19, was wasteful,” the audit said.

Department officials told auditors they were unaware of the spending, but auditors pointed to regular invoices from Verizon that showed which phones were not being used.

“We would have expected EDD management to have reconsidered the need to pay the monthly service fees for so many devices that had no voice, message, or data usage,” the audit said.

The unemployment department began acting on the auditors’ findings in April, when it canceled service plans for 2,825 devices. It has since implemented a policy to terminate service plans for devices that go unused for 90 days.

The California state auditor highlighted the mobile devices in its regular report on “improper activities by state agencies and employees.” The audit also showed that the California Air Resources Board overpaid an employee who was on extended leave as he prepared to retire by $171,000.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.