The Brief

Mercado Gonzalez Northgate Market has been open since November, but it’s still near capacity on weekends. Yes, it does get many things right, including variety, ambience and family-friendly options, but it comes at a price.

The parking lot can be a circus, and the long lines for certain eats means it’s easy to get hangry.

But there is another direction you can take. Orange County is full of other food hall options that have been around much longer than the new kid on the block and also deserve some respect.

Here's a handy guide to the county’s wide-ranging food hall offerings, that are well into the double digits like L.A. county, but in a more concentrated area.

The OC Mix, Costa Mesa

Birdie Juicery

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Courtesy KTPR

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Flanked by massive home design stores, The Mix is found at the heart of SoCo (South Coast Collection) adjacent to the 405. It is the original food hall concept in Orange County that has turned over several tenants since its opening in 2011.

Portola Coffee is the closest thing to a culinary anchor, having been around since the beginning. Shuck Oyster Bar caters to shellfish aficionados while The Cheese Shop provides a perfect dairy fix (stay for a sandwich and capture a solid cheese pull for your socials).

Birdie Bowl and Juicery, Sunright Tea Studio plus We Olive and Wine Bar are liquid nourishment, with the remainder of available dining including Arc Food and Libations, Butcher’s House and Moulin, which are just outside the food hall.

Packing House, Anaheim

Georgia's gumbo at Packing House

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Courtesy Moxxe PR

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A packed food hall that encompasses two floors plus a wrap around patio, Packing House has been up and running since 2014. The crowded space is occupied by The Blind Rabbit speakeasy, Adya Indian cuisine and Georgia’s for Southern fare, among many others. Parking can get tough, but valet is there to assist.

Vacancies are few and far between at this bustling hall, but once they're in, it's a great place for new brands to get the exposure they need to grow.

4th Street Market, Santa Ana

Dishes from Faka's Island Grill.

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Courtest Upside 365

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One of the sitting areas at the 4th Street Market.

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Courtesy Upside 365

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Introduced to the downtown Santa Ana community in 2015, 4th Street Market is a high-traffic food hall which continually evolves, with new vendors cooking up trending menus or testing a concept before eventually moving into a larger venue.

Alta Baja Market offers casual eats, refreshing sips and products to gift or keep. Faka’s Island Grill puts a twist on familiar Hawaiian flavors. Deli Station caters to sandwich fans, salad lovers and diners who cannot decide.

Union Market, Mission Viejo

This hidden selection of retail and dining has been located on the top level of Kaleidoscope (Crown Valley Parkway/5 Freeway) since 2016. Best known for its special event space, live music, and seasonal family activities, Union Market’s offerings are eclectic. Due to its chill location within the plaza, it's a neighborhood favorite.

Popp’s Booch pours gut-friendly fizzy drinks, while Sana’s Pakistani-Indian cuisine is made with love by the family that operates it. Expansive underground parking and spacious food hall bathrooms make this outlier worth a visit. Additional tenants for both Union Market and Kaleidoscope, including La Patrona Mexican and a coffee concept, are in the works.

The crowd at Sana's Pakistani-Indian cuisine.

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Cassie Sulehri

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Some of the Ethiopian fare at Sana's.

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Cindy Avila

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Lot 579, Huntington Beach

Since opening in 2016, Lot 579 has only had a handful of occupants take up real estate at a time. It is fortunate to have variety, though, with a focus on dessert — like Bella Sophia Chocolates, which are delicately crafted in-house by a husband-and-wife team.

Seeking a proper yet low-key meal? Bear Flag Fish Co. is consistently busy with raw and grilled seafood entrees (plus the best ocean views from its patio), while Phans 55 covers Vietnamese cravings, including steaming pho broth and fresh/crispy spring rolls. Do remember to get parking validated, but also take the time to explore the rest of the plaza known as Pacific City for additional options.

Trade Marketplace, Irvine

Trade, the SNA-adjacent food hall, began cooking for the neighborhood in spring 2017, when its al fresco-only dining area was busy every weekday lunch. Over the next seven years, it appears just one brand, the bar Center Hub, has been a permanent fixture. Otherwise nearly every other business has seemed to turnover.

But there are good places to visit currently. Popular (read: enclosed) dining adjacent to Trade include the OG HiroNori Craft Ramen, Krisp Fresh Living for coffee plus snacks and upscale Ootoro Sushi. On a related note, parking at Trade is very limited at lunch. Unless your workplace is walkable from the hall, hail a rideshare.

McFadden Public Market, Santa Ana

Around the same time as Trade, McFadden came onto the scene a few blocks from 4th Street Market. Like Trade, it’s also been a revolving door of eateries, but the upstairs bar known as Mission Control is still buzzing; having an arcade in the watering hole surely helps. Mongiello’s Pizza and Wings plus Tacompadre for Mexican meals rounds out options (if you cannot locate The Twisted Tiki speakeasy downstairs).

Mess Hall Market, Tustin

One of La Sera Pizzeria's offerings at the Mess Hall Market.

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Anne Marie Panoringan

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Mess Hall within the Flight office complex celebrated its official grand opening in 2019. While local favorite The Lost Bean is tucked away, it occupies a generous spot within the food hall’s open layout. Drink Bar’s cocktails (and other beverages) pair well with a slice from La Sera Pizzeria or grilled meats from The Little Greek.

SteelCraft Garden Grove

The exterior of Steelcraft in Garden Grove.

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Courtesy Kitchen Table PR

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SteelCraft expanded into Orange County in 2019, with a Garden Grove outpost that included primarily outdoor seating and a second level of seating for privacy or special events. From burgers by Swagyu to pasta from Aldente, Tea Otter for boba and Dark Horse for coffee, SteelCraft appears to check all the boxes. Live entertainment is a bonus. Pack an extra layer if you visit near sundown.

Herb and Ranch, Irvine

An influencer’s recent social media fullsome praise was a wake up call for foodies who weren’t already aware of Herb and Ranch adjacent to UCI. Created by Chef Brian Malarkey of “Top Chef” fame, and hidden in plain sight at the back of an office complex, the restaurant caters to early breakfast and lunch seekers, and its operating hours (it closes at 3 p.m.) make it ideal for a cup of coffee paired with carbs.

The inside of Herb and Ranch.

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@occomestibles

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Menus are updated with the seasons, but hot sandwiches, creative salads and comforting Hawaiian favorites dominate the selections.

Rodeo 39 Public Market, Stanton

Rodeo 39 shines in the evening.

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Wonho Lee

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Rodeo 39 is the newest market in the county, having opened in 2020. The number 39 represents the street it’s located along, plus what it’s named after, Beach Boulevard, while Rodeo is the name of the chain (there’s another one in Ontario Ranch).

It’s a modern take on shopping mall food courts from decades past. The saving grace of this particular hall (which kept it from being shut down during the pandemic) is its three sizable patios for al fresco dining. Dedicated takeout parking was also added for efficient service.

Coffee Dose may be one of the newer storefronts here, but its humorous take on caffeine, aka “Anti-bitch serum” has inspired a following. Hawaiian-inspired Shootz is the overall favorite, having moved to a larger restaurant pad within Rodeo to accommodate ordering lines crossing into the main walkway. Lines for Phoholic are generally long, but the flavorful broth and properly cooked noodles make it worth the wait.

Collage Culinary Experience, Costa Mesa

A two-story food hall within Bloomingdale’s, Collage is primarily Asian-inspired, with Paradise Dynasty (a direct competitor of Din Tai Fung) and Le Shrimp being popular enough to have lines outside. A third location of Phoholic opened downstairs not too long ago. The fanciest spot inside Collage is Blossoms and Brass with a full bar, abbreviated menu and attention to detail. Younger palettes will go for Bruxie and Cha Redefine Tea.

The Los Angeles region’s homelessness agency will miss a Tuesday deadline for submitting its federally required annual audit of the agency’s financial records, which could jeopardize its federal funding.

LAHSA executives blamed the delay on a “perfect storm” of leadership changes and competing priorities within LAHSA’s finance department, including an L.A. County review of LAHSA’s delayed payments to contractors.

“Our staff made a good-faith effort to meet the deadline,” interim CEO Gita O’Neill said at a LAHSA Commission meeting Tuesday. “However, over the past year, we've experienced several transitions. As a result, we could not get all the required materials to the auditors as quickly as needed.”

Each year, LAHSA, like all non-federal agencies and organizations that get substantial federal dollars, is required to hire an outside auditor to determine whether it’s properly tracking and reporting the taxpayer funds it manages.

LAHSA’s single audit report for last fiscal year was due March 31, nine months after fiscal year 2024-2025 ended. Earlier this month, LAHSA officials said they were on track to meet the March 31 deadline.

Justin Measley, lead auditor for the firm CliftonLarsonAllen, had warned that LAHSA was months behind schedule turning over records.

At a meeting Tuesday, Measley explained that because of LAHSA’s earlier delays, the firm would need at least an additional week to complete a quality-control review process.

“We’re moving at the fastest pace we possibly can,” Measley said.

On Tuesday, LAHSA officials said the single audit will be filed “at the earliest possible opportunity,” within the next few weeks.

Federal funds at risk

LAHSA manages hundreds of millions of federal dollars each year, through grants from the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.

O’Neill said the agency has been communicating with HUD officials regularly about the missed audit deadline and is “hoping for understanding.”

Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said she’s also been talking with HUD.

“They seem amenable to our situation and to our stated timelines,” Lim said. “So, we are hopeful that this will be a good outcome, despite having missed the deadline.”

HUD did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment Tuesday.

What went wrong 

Measley said LAHSA’s financial statements should have been turned over around last December, but LAHSA only submitted them this month, after blowing through multiple extended deadlines.

Measley said he contacted LAHSA’s governing commission about the overdue documents March 3.

He said he also previewed his firm’s findings, noting one “significant deficiency” in its draft report, related to LAHSA’s timeliness in detecting accounting errors.

LAHSA could contest those findings, officials said. That would add additional back-and-forth between the homelessness agency and accounting firm before the audit report is ready to file.

Justin Szlasa, a LAHSA commissioner who chairs the audit subcommittee, told LAHSA’s CEO he’s concerned that there was no time provided for LAHSA’s governing body to review the audit report.

“Next year, we will absolutely do that,” O’Neill responded. “I think this year, we were under the gun, and so we felt it was the most important thing was to get it uploaded on time.”

O’Neill said the agency hired accounting firm KPMG to help modernize LAHSA’s financial systems, with a focus on its contractor payments.

“We have an outside, trusted voice to help us create a system that works going forward because the system we have is not working at all, in finance,” O’Neill said.

Updated March 31, 2026 at 20:44 PM ET

President Trump on Tuesday escalated his efforts to reshape American elections, signing an executive order that seeks to create lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state, and instructing the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to verified voters.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he believes the order is legally "foolproof." But election experts said the order was unconstitutional, and voting rights advocates and Democratic state officials quickly pledged to sue to block the order from going into effect.

A previous executive order on elections, signed about a year ago, has been blocked by federal judges who said the president lacked the constitutional authority to set voting policy.

The Constitution says the "Times, Places and Manner" of federal elections are determined by individual states, with Congress able to enact changes.

"This Executive Order is a disgusting overreach from the federal government and shows how little the Trump Administration understands about election administration," Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state of Arizona, said in a statement Tuesday. "We will not let this order stand without a fight and will meet the federal government in court," he added.

Arizona is among more than two dozen states Trump's Department of Justice has sued over access to sensitive voter data.

The Trump administration claims it needs the data to enforce states' voter list maintenance. Federal judges in three states have dismissed the Justice Department's lawsuits in those states.

In another case, a DOJ official admitted in court last week that the department plans to share that voter data with the Department of Homeland Security, to run it through the so-called SAVE system to search for noncitizens.

NPR has reported that some U.S. citizens have also been inaccurately flagged by SAVE.

How the executive order seeks to change voting

Trump has long railed — baselessly — about widespread illegal voting by noncitizens and fraud associated with mail ballots.

The new executive order — which was first reported by The Daily Caller — takes aim at both.

It instructs the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to "compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State."

The order then "requires the USPS to transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List, ensuring that only eligible absentee or mail-in voters receive absentee or mail-in ballots," according to a White House fact sheet.

Trump's executive order claims that "additional measures are necessary" to secure voting by mail, a form of voting he has used himself — including last week — but also falsely maligned for years. In the 2024 general election, nearly a third of all voters cast mail ballots.

The Postal Service should also review the design of mail ballot envelopes to protect "the integrity of Federal elections," the order says.

Collectively, the provisions would be a significant change to how mail ballot programs are currently administered in American elections, which are largely carried out by state and local officials.

"Our government's citizenship lists are incomplete and inaccurate. The United States Postal Service is overburdened and inadequate. This combines a car crash with a train wreck," the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for expanded voting access and sued to block Trump's 2025 election executive order, said in a statement.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, wrote on his blog that the order is likely unconstitutional. And regardless, he added, "the timing here makes this virtually impossible to implement in time for November's elections. … It seems highly unlikely any of this could be implemented for 2026, even if it were not blocked by courts."

The order comes as Trump pressures Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul that would impose new voter identification and documentation requirements.

That bill is stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition and the legislative filibuster.

The Supreme Court is also expected to rule this year on whether Mississippi should be allowed to count mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received by election officials after Election Day.

The legal challenge, which could have sweeping implications for mail voting nationwide, was filed by the Republican National Committee and Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Federal immigration officials arrested 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 new data from the Deportation Data Project.

The data project, an initiative between UCLA and UC Berkeley, publishes federal data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

In 2025, federal officials arrested 14,394 people, up from 4,681 the year prior. Forty-six percent of people arrested had criminal convictions, 15% had pending charges, and 39% had no criminal charges or convictions.

In a December news release, the Department of Homeland Security said it had arrested more than 10,000 people in the L.A. area since immigration raids began in June of last year, including "murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators and armed carjackers,” but did not publish details of the number of people who had criminal records.

The data from the Deportation Data Project shows that arrests in L.A. spiked in June, and about two-thirds of people arrested that month had no criminal convictions.

More than 313,000 people were arrested by ICE nationwide in 2025, according to an LAist analysis.

In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said the agency has not “verified the accuracy, methodology or analysis of the project and its results” and said “this only reveals how data is manipulated to peddle the false narrative that DHS is not targeting the worst of the worst.” The spokesperson said 61% of people ICE arrested across the country either had criminal convictions or pending charges.

The agency has regularly published press releases identifying people they have arrested and who they have called “the worst of the worst,” including from the raids in L.A. in June. But an LAist investigation and reporting from other outlets has found that some of the people on those lists already has been in custody and were serving lengthy sentences.

Small businesses struggling financially have another program they could qualify for to help pay the bills.

The program is for businesses in Council District 1, which includes the neighborhoods of Koreatown, Pico Union, Westlake, MacArthur Park and Highland Park.

Individual brick-and-mortar businesses can qualify for grants ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, while street vendors can receive about $3,000, according to city officials. A total of $400,000 is available through the program, and applications are now open. 

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez announced the program’s goal, describing it as a way to support locally owned businesses navigating rising operating costs, shifting customer patterns, and the impacts of recent wide-scale events, like the ongoing immigration raids, along with wildfires, and broader economic uncertainty.

Small businesses struggling financially have another program they could qualify for to help pay the bills.

Who is eligible?

The program is open to independently owned businesses and street vendors located within District 1.

To qualify, businesses must have a valid Los Angeles business license and have been operating in Council District 1 since December 2020, with some flexibility for street vendors. They also need to show they’ve been financially impacted by any largescale events, like the COVID pandemic, immigration enforcement, or the broader economy. Businesses that changed owners can also apply if they’re essentially running the same operation.

How can the money be used?

Grants can be used for daily operational expenses, including rent, payroll, utilities, overhead and other business costs. Roochnik said the funding could also help businesses cover missed rent payments.

Who is running the program?

The grants will be distributed in partnership with the PACE Business Development Center and New Economics for Women. The two organizations provide support to small and immigrant-owned businesses across Los Angeles.

How will recipients be selected?

Funding will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, with applications remaining open until funds run out, Roochnik said. 

What’s the goal?

Hernandez said the program is meant to help stabilize neighborhoods that have been affected by immigration enforcement and economic hardships.

“These small businesses are the backbone of our neighborhoods,” she said, adding the funding is meant to help them “stay open, keep workers employed, and continue serving our communities.”

Naomi Villagomez Roochnik, CD1 communications director, said the announcement was made during a press conference at Delicias Bakery and Some, a longtime Latina-owned business in Highland Park. The neighborhood has experienced significant rising rents due to gentrification and the location was meant to highlight the kinds of businesses the program is meant to support.

How to apply:

To apply, small businesses and vendors can complete the application at bit.ly/cd1smallbizsupport.

Is this a one-time program or part of a larger effort?

The grant is part of a pilot program, with the possibility of it expanding depending on demand and outcomes. The council office has launched similar aid efforts in the past, Roochnik said, such as food distribution and rental assistance. 

Businesses that may not qualify for this specific grant can be connected to other resources, according to Roochnik, including the city’s legacy business program, which is for businesses operating for at least 20 years. 

The post Small businesses, vendors struggling against ICE raids, economic uncertainty eligible for up to $10,000 in grants appeared first on LA Local.