A woman prepares food inside a commercial kitchen at DTLA Kitchens.
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Courtesy of Yuri Amsellem
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Topline:
A look into the world of ghost kitchens, the low-key anonymous spaces your takeout may be coming from. There might be lockers, robots and tablets. And there won’t be any seats.
Why it matters: Many ghost kitchens say they’re attempting to change the food business by offering a low-cost way for smaller vendors to enter the restaurant world. But it can be hard for a new restaurant to build a following off of apps alone. Plus, ghost kitchens are changing how and where we spend our mealtimes.
Why now: Ghost kitchens are continuing to expand across LA as more and more Angelenos use food delivery apps as a quicker, more automated alternative to the brick-and-mortars eateries they once frequented.
Recently, I was working from home in Eagle Rock, hungry, but trying to meet my LAist deadlines. I decided to quickly go get lunch at a sushi place I’d been recommended, Rice and Nori.
Since I’m new to the area and rely on Google Maps for everything, I followed it to an address on Colorado Avenue in Pasadena.
But when I got there, I found myself in front of a liquor store and what looked like a small auto shop. You know, the classic red and black bold lettering with racer stripes along the exterior. Nothing like a restaurant.
But Google Maps insisted that this auto-shop-maybe-it's-a-warehouse was, in fact, where my lunch was being prepared. And on the sign above the door, it said Allied Food To-Go. So I took a deep breath and walked in.
What I found was something like an Amazon locker meets Hot Dog on a Stick. There was no hostess and no tables — no seating at all in fact. Instead, there were white lockers on the left all the way up to the ceiling, and a desk with a tablet on top.
I was confused as to where I was. There was an employee placing food into the lockers, assisted by what seemed to be a robot, but since talking to strangers is on my top 10 list of things I hate to do, I decided to just navigate this one on my own.
Food is picked up via lockers at CloudKitchen locations.
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Lucy Jaffee
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LAist
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The tablet had 15 restaurant options to choose from, and after scrolling past lots of birria and Mediterranean food, I found Rice and Nori on the last screen and picked what I wanted.
I awkwardly stood by the lockers, middle school flashbacks flooding in, wondering what would happen next.
Two robots at Allied Food To-Go ready to deliver food to the lockers.
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Lucy Jaffee
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LAist
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A few minutes later — a text! Apparently my order was ready in locker D2. I pressed a button on my phone and it opened automatically, like the gates of heaven, and there I found my spicy tuna onigiri and edamame. (I’d been looking in the other direction, but I’m pretty sure one of the robots put it there. Later, I found out they have names, Rosie and Johnny).
By now, the space was filling with delivery drivers hustling to grab orders. Still confused, still hungry, I sped off in my car to process what just happened.
Is this normal for Pasadena? Again, I’m new.
What is a ghost kitchen?
Back at home, I googled Allied Food To-Go and discovered it’s a ghost kitchen, a commercial kitchen where multiple vendors make food that’s ordered online for pickup or delivery. Perfect for the digital age, customers and drivers usually pick up their orders using a tablet — no interaction with an employee is necessary.
Allied Food To-Go is just one location of CloudKitchens, a larger company that operates multi-vendor ghost kitchens in cities like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York (Co-founder of Uber Travis Kalanick invested a few years ago). In L.A. according to its website, CloudKitchens currently operates 11 ghost kitchens in places like Long Beach and Koreatown.
I tried to contact CloudKitchens but they couldn’t be reached. I only got through to one location in Echo Park, who declined to comment.
How does it work?
Ghost kitchens took off due to the pandemic when many restaurant owners shifted to delivery-only operations to reach customers out of public safety concerns. By leaving their storefronts and switching to a less costly ghost kitchen, they could also cut costs — making this new set-up popular post-pandemic too.
I wanted to understand more, so I tracked down George Shenefelt, a partner at Rice and Nori. He told me that they’d initially partnered with CloudKitchens to experiment with other concepts (but haven’t thus far) because their locations had become too busy for the kitchen to make anything besides their staples.
Most ghost kitchens function the same way. Food vendors pay rent to the ghost kitchen operator, whether it be a company like CloudKitchens or an individual, to use the space. The prices vary according to the size of the space, type of equipment and whether additional storage is needed, according to CloudKitchens’ website.
The exterior of DTLA Kitchens, an independent commercial kitchen located in southeast Los Angeles.
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Courtesy of Yuri Amsellem
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Another fee is added for utilities and general operating costs, such as the employees (or robots) needed to transport food from the kitchen to customers.
Vendors are given individual or shared kitchen spaces to prepare and produce their food. Their workstations are usually adjacent to other local vendors renting in the same ghost kitchen.
On a food delivery app, these all show up as different restaurants, but their locations will be the same. The only way to tell if it's from a ghost kitchen is to look up the vendor’s address or drive there.
Since ordering delivery is the reality for most of us at the end of a long day, chances are you’ll never stumble into a ghost kitchen like I did.
Struggling without a storefront
While ghost kitchens can be a good way for restaurants to cut costs, they come with several downsides. Shenefelt says he has found staffing the ghost kitchen to be challenging.
“It kind of feels like a prison,” he said. The space has no windows and is only around 200 square feet, turning off many employees looking for more interactive work experiences.
Another major drawback is that without a storefront, a new restaurant can struggle to find customers. Rice and Nori has been around since 2018, has two locations and an Instagram following. But others are not so well-established.
Janet Kang originally started Pizza Baby as a ghost kitchen but broke her lease last September because sales were too low. Between paying for rent and utility costs, she had no extra money available for marketing to draw in customers.
She said it’s a “matter of money,” whether using a ghost kitchen ultimately turns out to be profitable. “Do you have enough cash reserve to stick around long enough to get noticed?”
The inside of a commercial kitchen for rent at DTLA Kitchens.
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Courtesy of Yuri Amsellem
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Winston Shipp, founder of ¡Quesadilla Mía! shared a similar experience. He started in the pandemic renting a space at a delivery-only CloudKitchen. But few knew of their brand.
“You are at the mercy of people searching on apps looking for food,” said Shipp. He also left CloudKitchen and now rents a kitchen for a limited number of hours per week, rather than having a permanent space in a ghost kitchen.
Shipp sees ghost kitchens as ideal options for already-successful restaurants looking to move delivery away from their brick-and-mortar locations. Kitchen staff can better focus on dine-in customers and prevent long lines and wait times.
However, Yuri Amsellem, owner of DTLA Kitchens, a commercial kitchen that is used as a ghost kitchen and for other ventures like filming in southeast LA, sees ghost kitchens as a “great start” for small businesses. “We are incubators,” he told LAist, where vendors will eventually expand into their own brick-and-mortar locations.
Should I order from one?
If you need a reliable lunch option when hunger strikes, ghost kitchens are the way to go. With no dine-in customers to distract the kitchen, your food will arrive quickly to your doorstep. Or, you can pick it up from an automatic locker.
But if you’re new to a restaurant and need some advice on what to order, opt for a brick-and-mortar. Employees can impart their knowledge about flavor, the level of spice, or whether the dish you want contains traces of gluten, among other preferences.
Five sushi hand rolls from Rice and Nori, with fillings ranging from cucumber to spicy salmon, wrapped in your choice of seaweed or soy paper.
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Courtesy of George Shenefelt
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Plus, it's hard to beat an excellent mealtime ambiance.
So, would I go back to a ghost kitchen?
Maybe.
My Rice and Nori order from Allied Food To-Go was delicious and the food quality was not compromised. It was packed in sealed containers with extra soy sauce and chopsticks.
But at the end of the day, I prefer a meal shared with friends amid a lively restaurant. No ghost kitchen can replace that.
Flooding in Seal Beach Saturday afternoon. Heavy rains began Sunday.
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Courtesy Rhea Presiado
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Topline:
Up to an inch of rain is expected today across Los Angeles County from the effects of Hurricane Marie hundreds of miles away in the Pacific Ocean, according to the National Weather Service.
Street flooding: Roadway flooding was reported this morning on the westbound 134 at the 5 Freeway, near Glendale and Griffith Park.
Coastal Flooding: All weekend, forecasters have warned of dangerous rip currents and an elevated risk of coastal flooding.
Flooding was reported yesterday in Seal Beach and Long Beach.
"We have quite a few reports already of waves up to 10 feet on some beaches — Zuma Beach especially, where we've gotten reports [of] strong rip currents," said Todd Hall, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
What's next: Hall said to expect more showers across L.A. County today. Tomorrow, he said isolated rain is expected, mostly in the mountains.
Topline:
Up to an inch of rain is expected today (Sunday, Sept. 6) across Los Angeles County from the effects of Hurricane Marie hundreds of miles away in the Pacific Ocean, according to the National Weather Service.
Street flooding: Roadway flooding was reported this morning on the westbound 134 Freeway at the 5, near Glendale and Griffith Park.
Coastal Flooding: All weekend, forecasters have warned of dangerous rip currents and an elevated risk of coastal flooding.
Flooding was reported yesterday in Seal Beach and Long Beach.
"We have quite a few reports already of waves up to 10 feet on some beaches — Zuma Beach especially, where we've gotten reports [of] strong rip currents," said Todd Hall, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
Advisories and closures:
An ocean water quality rain advisory has been issued for all L.A. County beaches until Wednesday, Sept. 9 at 2 p.m. That means to avoid ocean water contact for at least 72 hours after the rain.
What's next: Hall said to expect more showers across L.A. County throughout Sunday. On Monday, he said isolated rain is expected, mostly in the mountains.
Fiona Ng
is LAist's deputy managing editor and leads a team of reporters who explore food, culture, history, events and more.
Published September 6, 2026 7:08 AM
Firefighters assess the remains of the Lineage warehouse that burned for a week and sent smoke into nearby communities.
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Andrew Lopez
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Boyle Heights Beat
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Topline:
Final cleanup of the burned Boyle Heights warehouse was completed Saturday, according to Lineage Logistics and air quality officials.
Why it matters: On Aug. 29, Lineage removed an estimated 88 million pounds of rotting food waste from the site. It then faced a seven-day deadline to complete the final phase of cleanup, including debris removal, power washing and disinfecting of required areas.
What the company says: Lineage said workers have spent 210,000 hours on cleaning up the 491,000 square-foot site, which burned for about a week after igniting on July 7. The cost of cleanup, the company said, is more than $100 million.
Odor issues: Air quality officials from South Coast AQMD said odor complaints have fallen to fewer than 5 per day since food waste removal — instead of several hundred per day in July.
What's next: Lineage must continue to comply with an odor abatement order from South Coast AQMD, including sealing wastewater from the cleanup in a tank.
Lineage is also required to continue air monitoring around the warehouse.
Keep up with LAist.
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The Bee Museum is inside the vintage store, Hive & Hanger, in Burbank.
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James Bartlett
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LAist
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Topline:
Hive & Hanger in Burbank sells vintage clothes and antique jewelry. Inside, you'll also find a pop-up Bee Museum.
What? The owner is Carrie Diazzz, a vintage maven turned urban apiarist. She admits with a smile two extra Zs at the end of her real last name are a homage to her beloved bees.
The backstory: When the store opened in 2020, it was originally all-vintage. The museum was opened almost a year ago after Diazzz became fascinated with the honeybee.
A sign on the front door says “Beekeeper owned,” and inside the Hive & Hanger store in Burbank, the layout is a mix of vintage clothes, antique jewelry and something rather unexpected: a pop-up Bee Museum.
The owner is Carrie Diazzz, a vintage maven turned urban apiarist. She admits with a smile two extra Zs at the end of her real last name are a homage to her beloved bees.
When the store opened in 2020, it was originally all-vintage. “I was not looking to change careers,” she said, but after taking a two-hour beekeeping experience course, she was hooked.
Hive & Hangar in Burbank doubles as a bee museum.
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James Bartlett
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LAist
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“I don’t like dirt, and I don't like bugs. I'm a heels and lipstick, nails, kind of person,” she said. “There's just something magical about the honeybee. The more you know, the more you want to know.”
That prompted her to pursue a bee master certification at UC Davis. She collaborated with Elina Niño at the university’s Bee Lab to curate information and research to bring her pop-up Bee Museum to life almost a year ago.
A crash course in bees
The Burbank Bee Museum.
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James Bartlett
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LAist
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There’s a Bee 101 explainer by the front door, which shows the differences between bees and wasps, and fun touches like pop songs containing the word “Honey,” and a list of Noteworthy Beekeepers including Aristotle, Benjamin Franklin, Leo Tolstoy, Emily Dickinson, Angelina Jolie and Sherlock Holmes.
One long-standing myth is that honeybees are stingers. “People always ask me how often I get stung, but I don’t wear gloves, and I don’t use smoke, and it very rarely happens. And honeybees die after they sting, as opposed to wasps, who can sting repeatedly,” she said.
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James Bartlett
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LAist
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Most arresting is a floor-to-ceiling collage series of framed model fruits, vegetables, nuts and berries, all of which the honeybee has a role in pollinating. Beside that is an exhibit on pesticides, one of the insect's biggest threats. Pieces of dried honeycomb are everywhere.
Diazzz has also been hosting school trips for the Boys & Girls Clubs. “I might be the only beekeeper they will ever meet,” she noted. The point is to give bees the respect they deserve. “Did you know that it takes 12 honeybees their entire lives to make one teaspoon of honey?”
Rescuing hives across Southern California
The Bee Museum serves up not just honey, but bee knowledge.
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James Bartlett
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LAist
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There are no live bees in the store, but Diazzz has her own hives in Burbank.
“They are from rescues: I cut the hive out from a wall,” she explained. She takes care of hives from San Diego to Bel Air, with many in the San Fernando Valley, and a couple with a view of the Hollywood Sign. Her caretaking quests have taken her on skyscraper roofs, at apartment buildings and in parking lots.
Almost a year ago, she began her studies as a honey sommelier at the American Honey Tasting Society in Connecticut, where she learned about the science and experience of honey. Her future includes going off to Bologna, Italy, the world honey hub, for the final round of studies and tests at the Albo Nazionale degli Esperti in Analisi Sensoriale del Miele or the National Register of Experts in Sensory Analysis of Honey.
Carrie Diazzz, owner of the store and the museum, sells small jars of honey sourced locally and from her own hives.
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James Bartlett
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LAist
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“Nectar and honey are not the same thing,” she explained. “Nectar is the liquid sticky substance that bees collect from flowering plants and take back to the hive. They transform it into honey by dehydrating the moisture out of the nectar, and capping it over with wax.”
Diazzz recently held her first informal tasting experience at The Bee Museum, and has small batches of various local honeys for sale: cactus, sage, and honey from her own hives. “I usually leave the honey alone, and only take any extra they have made to sell,” she said, because bees use the honey as sustenance. Her favorite? “A toss-up between dandelion and sunflower. Orange blossom is delicious too, but very sweet.”
NPR's Linda Holmes is a daily puzzle devotee. She recommends games that will test your knowledge of geography, history, and even the most obscure corners of Wikipedia.
Keep reading and dive right into her list of recommendations.
Maybe you, like me, are a daily puzzle player. Maybe you like a Wordle, or a crossword, or one of the other entries from the New York Times puzzle empire.
But maybe you're looking for something else.
So, with a tip of the hat to the people on Bluesky who helped me discover a bunch of games I love in the last month or two, I'm sharing a few games that I'm particularly enjoying these days — ones that are not NYT word games. (No disrespect to my original love, Spelling Bee.)
There are more, of course: the spelling bee game Beeswax, the word game Smush, the vexing Anthropeum, the movie games Framed and Cinematrix. Truthfully, I have more games in the "daily games" folder on my phone than I could ever actually play daily. But given a choice between puzzling and doomscrolling, I'll take the puzzles every time.
Any idea where Regina is? Do your best in MapTap's daily geography game.
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Screenshot by NPR
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MapTap is a very simple game. You are shown a 3D globe that you can rotate with your finger, but there are no lines dividing countries or territories. So you are just looking at the unmarked terrain of the world, and you are challenged to tap as close as you can to a particular named location. Maybe "London, England, U.K." You tap. It shows you the distance between where you tapped and where the place really is. You get more points the closer you are. There are five questions in each daily round.
This game can be genuinely humbling, because without those familiar borders showing, it can be difficult to even locate places you are very familiar with. (Without state and national boundaries, it always takes me a minute to precisely find even a place I myself have lived.) But what I love about MapTap is that as I do it, over and over, I actually get better at world geography, which is worthwhile and enriching.
Look carefully: What's your best guess for where and when this photo was taken? TimeGuessr makes you a detective.
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Screenshot by NPR
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In the same family as MapTap is TimeGuessr, where each day's challenge is made up of five puzzles that each start with a photo. Your task is to choose, on a timeline, what year the photo was taken, and to choose, on a map of the world, where it was taken. Sometimes, the photos are of historically meaningful events, like the aftermath of a battle or a natural disaster. Sometimes, they are photographs of ordinary people going about their lives.
The trick with TimeGuessr is detective work. Some hints are straightforward: a sign in the window of a store that might tip off the location (if you can figure out what language it's written in), a license plate, something along those lines. But sometimes, the clues are more subtle. What are the people in the photo wearing? What do the cars look like? How is everybody wearing their hair? It's a fascinating exercise in putting together clues, and again, you can actually increase your knowledge of the world while you play.
Everything is connected (somehow) in The Loop, which is a perfect first-thing-when-you-wake-up game.
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Screenshot by NPR
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The Loop is my favorite early-morning game, perfect for when I'm only partially awake. It offers you 12 simple illustrations that you have to arrange in a circle so that each illustration connects in some way to the ones on either side of it.
So, for instance, in one round I played, a square-root symbol connected on one side to a carpenter's square (because square/square), which then connected to a picture of a toolbox (because a carpenter's square is a tool). On the other side, the square-root symbol connected to a carrot (because it's a root vegetable), and then the carrot to an icicle (because they're the same shape). It can be fun to crack all the different ways that the images connect to each other, but the game design also offers so many chances to get it right that there's a huge amount of grace for making mistakes. That, of course, is why it's perfect for being half-awake.
It's up to you to figure out who's innocent and who's guilty in Clues by Sam.
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Screenshot by NPR
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Clues by Sam is a logic puzzle. It presents you with a grid — four across and five down — of people, each represented by a name, an emoji and an occupation. Your job is to figure out which of those people are innocent and which are criminals. (There is no set number; there could be lots of criminals or only a couple.) Your opening clue might say, "Michael is one of three criminals in row 2." Then you click on Michael and mark him as a criminal, and when you're right, that gets you another clue, and so on.
Like most of these games, this one is enjoyable largely because it's simple, but its diabolical twist is that you can't guess. If you try to label Jane innocent, for instance, and she eventually will be, but the game hasn't given you enough information yet to actually know that, then that answer is wrong and is rejected. You are only allowed to deduce from the clues you have, because it is genuinely the journey and not the destination. Note that Clues by Sam gets harder each day from Monday through Sunday, so if you're a beginner, give it a whirl early in the week to get the hang of it.
Catfishing asks you to figure out the title of a Wikipedia page from its categories — which is harder than it sounds.
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Screenshot by NPR
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Without a doubt, the hardest game I play regularly. In this game, you get a list of at least some of the categories that a particular Wikipedia page belongs to, and you have to try to figure out what page it is. There are ten questions; my average score is about four, and the highest I've ever gotten is eight.
For example, if you know a page is filed under "20th century musicians," and "21st century musicians," and "American folk musicians," and "people born in Minnesota," you might start to zero in on Bob Dylan. But be warned: Many of the answers are far more obscure than that, and it's very common for me to give up and reveal the answer, only to learn that I never stood a chance, because I've never heard of the person (or event, or phenomenon) at all. It doesn't matter how many ways you classify certain medieval rulers or political conflicts of 19th century Iowa; I may never get there.
This piece also appeared in NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what's making us happy.
