The Brief

For some who lived on the streets of Los Angeles, Inside Safe was a lifesaver — giving them a roof over their head for the first time in years, then helping them find a permanent home.

For others, it was a major disappointment.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is banking on her Inside Safe initiative to help her solve the largest homelessness crisis in California. The program, which brings people from encampments into hotels until housing becomes available, has moved hundreds of Angelenos into permanent homes.

But hundreds more have gone from those hotels back to life on the street.

Nearly two years in, the program is successful enough that it spawned a copycat county-wide effort. Yet it has not affected the vast majority of the nearly 30,000 Angelenos who sleep outside. A lack of long-term housing and a shortage of health care, mental health and addiction services remain huge obstacles, as does the program’s high price tag.

“Lots of people that have been brought inside under Inside Safe, and that’s great,” said John Maceri, chief executive officer of The People Concern, a nonprofit that runs two Inside Safe hotels. “We still struggle with the exit strategy: Where are people going to move to?”

Proponents say data proves the model works: Overall homelessness dropped slightly in the city of Los Angeles in 2024, and the number of people sleeping on the city’s streets is down 10%.

“Homelessness in LA is down for the first time in years,” Gabby Maarse, spokesperson for Mayor Karen Bass, said in an email. “ The progress made by a new comprehensive strategy, which includes Inside Safe, is a marked improvement since before the mayor took office and she will not be satisfied until street homelessness is ended.”

But the newer county-run copycat program, called Pathway Home, appears to be connecting people with services and permanent housing more quickly — suggesting there are ways the city program could continue to improve.

How LA’s program has improved, and where it still lags

Inside Safe is supposed to be an alternative to the aggressive, law enforcement-heavy sweeps ramping up since the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled cities are free to ban camping even if they have no shelters. More than a dozen California cities already have passed new anti-camping ordinances or updated existing ordinances to make them more punitive.

Mayor Bass publicly eschewed that strategy, and as of July, police had made no arrests during Inside Safe operations, according to the city. Even so, a report by Human Rights Watch earlier this year accused LA of not doing enough to protect the rights of its unhoused residents.

Bass launched Inside Safe in December 2022. Seven months later, CalMatters reported that fewer than 6% of the people who moved into Inside Safe hotels later went into permanent housing. People living in the hotels weren’t getting the help they needed accessing everything from medical care to mental health and addiction services — something Bass acknowledged at the time was a problem.

“It was a little chaotic when it first started,” said Maceri.

Tents line the streets of the Skid Row neighborhood of Los Angeles on Oct. 8, 2024.

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Carlin Stiehl

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There has been improvement since then, but challenges remain. To date, Inside Safe has cleared 67 encampments and moved 3,254 people into hotels — nearly 23% of whom have gone on to permanent housing.

That improvement from 6% to 23% is “great,” said Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez, who has hosted more than two dozen Inside Safe operations in his district. “But it’s obviously not where anybody wants to see it. At the end of the day, interim is interim and permanent is permanent. We want to see folks permanently housed.”

As of July, more people had returned to homelessness from Inside Safe than were permanently housed at the time — 819 compared to 650.

Getting medical and mental health care, addiction treatment and other resources inside the hotels is still an issue, as service providers continue to struggle with staffing shortages, Maceri said. But it’s gotten “a little bit easier.” The county now sets up resource fairs at the hotels. The mayor appointed Dr. Etsemaye Agonafer as the city’s first deputy mayor of homelessness and community health, tasked with coordinating those services. The mayor also brought in USC and UCLA’s street medicine teams to provide services at the hotels.

It’s still not enough, said Tescia Uribe, chief program officer for the nonprofit PATH, which operates three Inside Safe and three Pathway Home hotels. They have clients with severe mental health and addiction issues who need intensive care.

“We are absolutely not set up for that,” Uribe said.

In some cases, living in a hotel room behind a closed door actually allows people’s problems — such as domestic violence between a couple living together, or substance use — to escalate into a crisis, because staff don’t see what’s happening in time to intervene, she said.

Cost is another huge obstacle for the program: The hotel rooms cost the city an average of $121 per night, and it’s unclear for how long the city will be willing and able to keep paying that. The city bought one hotel in an effort to mitigate those expenses, and is looking into buying additional sites.

“The challenge ahead is about what is the next step?” said Councilmember Nithya Raman.

‘Ready to go:’ One woman’s experience with Inside Safe

When 51-year-old Shameka Foster moved from her tent on Skid Row into an Inside Safe hotel in October 2023, she was happy to be off the street.

A chef who makes vegan meats and cheeses from scratch, and who also works at a Skid Row nonprofit helping other unhoused people, Foster thought she’d be in a hotel for three to six months before she found permanent housing. Instead, she’s been in the program a year.

“(I’m) just ready to go,” she said. “Been ready, but I feel like it’s time now, like it’s past time.”

Shameka Foster outside the Los Angeles Community Action Network offices near where she used to pitch a tent in the Skid Row neighborhood of Los Angeles on Oct. 8, 2024.

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Foster’s time in the hotel hasn’t always been easy. She’s had multiple bad or humiliating experiences — such as when a staff member walked into her room while she was changing, when the nurse in the hotel wouldn’t give her her blood pressure medication, or when she got food poisoning from a breakfast served, she said. There’s a long list of rules that she sometimes chafes under: Guests aren’t allowed, for example, and residents can’t get fresh toilet paper rolls after 2 p.m., she said. Foster doesn’t know how to access the counseling she wants to help her process the stress and trauma of everything she’s been through in the past few years.

“I’ve been going through it and shedding a lot of tears,” Foster said, “getting angry and stuff, and sick, humiliated, and just treated like I wasn’t a human.”

Her journey into housing has been frustrating, too. Whenever Foster had a question, such as how to apply or what next steps she should take, her case managers never knew the answer, she said. It took six months for her even to be matched with a housing navigator who had more expertise, she said.

Eventually, she took matters into her own hands, applied for an apartment in a newly constructed building, pestered the manager with emails and showed up at the building’s ribbon cutting.

Management at the building told her she should be able to move in by the end of the month. But she’s trying not to get her hopes up.

A tale of two encampment programs

Eight months after the city of LA launched Inside Safe, LA County kicked off its copycat program, dubbed Pathway Home. The approach was basically the same: Clear encampments throughout LA County, move the occupants into hotels, and then move them from there into permanent housing.

But the county learned from the city’s challenges. Before the county removes an encampment through Pathway Home, it makes sure it has enough rental subsidies for every camp occupant who is expected to need one. As a result, people are getting housed faster.

The nonprofit The People Concern runs two city hotels and one county hotel. People stay at the city hotels an average of 240 days, according to Maceri. At the county hotel, it’s just 99 days.

Nonprofit PATH, which operates three city and three county hotels, sees a similar disparity. And people in the county program also are more likely to get permanent housing. Just 36% of those who moved out of PATH’s city-sponsored hotels went into permanent housing, compared to 63% of those who moved out of the county-sponsored hotels, according to the nonprofit.

The county’s program is smaller than the city’s. Pathway Home has moved 145 people into permanent housing so far, while Inside Safe has moved 741.

It’s also easier for residents in the county hotels to access resources such as mental health care because the county is the one running those programs, according to Maceri and Uribe. When the county clears an encampment through Pathway Home, everything from animal control to the department of mental health has staff on site, Uribe said. That’s incredibly helpful, she said, because people are connected with those services from the beginning.

“The county, definitely, they bring the resources,” Uribe said. “It is very different.”

Some cities have said no to those resources. City councils in West Covina and Norwalk both voted down the county’s proposals to open Pathway Home hotels there, after a backlash from the community.

But the program made a big difference in Signal Hill, a tiny city of fewer than 12,000 people near Long Beach. In March, LA County helped Signal Hill move about 45 people from encampments directly into permanent housing.

As a result, the city achieved the elusive white whale status of “functional zero,” which means it has the ability to quickly find housing for anyone who becomes homeless.

“Immediately after the operation we had zero, literally zero, because everyone we knew was housed, including people living in cars,” said Signal Hill City Manager Carlo Tomaino. “That was literally everybody.”

The city had started trying to move people indoors a year earlier, and its outreach team had developed relationships with everyone living on the street, Tomaino said. But Signal Hill, which has no homeless shelters of its own, wouldn’t have been able to house everyone without the county’s resources.

The city has kept its functional zero status since then.

One couple falls through the cracks; someone else gets housing

LA County launched its Pathway Home program in August 2023 by clearing an encampment known as The Dead End along a cul-de-sac in unincorporated Lennox, near the airport. The operation moved 59 people indoors.

On a recent Tuesday more than a year later, that stretch of road was empty — no tents in sight.

But nearby, a handful of people had pitched tents under the 405 Freeway overpass. Perched on a milk crate on a hill above those tents, 52-year-old Jennifer Marzette ate Burger King for lunch with her partner, Enrique Beltran, as cars whizzed by.

The couple lived at The Dead End encampment off and on for about eight years. But when county workers came to move the camp’s residents into a hotel, Marzette and Beltran were told they weren’t on the list, Marzette said. She speculates they probably weren’t at their tent when staff first came by to collect names.

Jennifer Marzette and her partner Enrique Beltran kiss each other while in a cove under the 405 freeway in Inglewood on Oct. 8, 2024.

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So they’re still sleeping on the street, now a few blocks away from their former camp. They’ve been trying to get into housing or a shelter program together, but have had multiple false starts. They got a housing voucher, but it expired in January, before they could find an apartment that would take it, Marzette said.

In February or March, they were told they could move into a “family room” at Exodus Recovery’s “Safe Landing” shelter, she said. But they were two hours late to their appointment (the complexities of life on the street sometimes make it hard to get to places on time, Marzette said) and lost the spot. Then, earlier this month, a caseworker said they would get a room at a local hotel. That fell through, Marzette said, and she suspects it’s because they found out she was arrested for domestic violence and jailed briefly in December, over what she says was a misunderstanding during an argument with Beltran.

“I was crying the other day,” she said, as she recounted all of the missed opportunities for someone to help her. “I felt like…that’s just how it goes.”

Chris Felts had a much different experience. He was homeless for two decades, sleeping on sidewalks and in parks, or in doorways when it rained. The 68-year-old had tried several times to get into housing, but it always took so long that he got discouraged and gave up. In February, the county moved him into a hotel in Santa Monica through Pathway Home. Then, in June, he got his very own studio apartment, subsidized with a rental voucher.

Now, he’s re-learning how to live indoors. He’s practicing his cooking and trying to take care of his health by walking between 5,000 and 7,500 steps a day in his neighborhood.

But the best part, Felts said, is finally having privacy.

“I have a chance to just be by myself,” he said. “When you’re homeless you don’t really have that opportunity. There’s always going to be people around.”

A group of employees at the Los Angeles region’s homelessness authority says hundreds of frontline workers will face layoffs as L.A. County transitions funding away from the agency.

Staffers from the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA, wrote an open letter to the county Board of Supervisors this week, demanding that no county-funded workers be displaced.

Its members say the transition would hit workers and unhoused clients harder than county officials have acknowledged.

“ A lot of the workers are in this because we care and we want to help our fellow neighbors and don't want to see see all kinds of people homeless on the street,” Jacqueline Beltran, a LAHSA employee who signed the letter, told LAist.

County officials said they are committed to “clearing pathways to employment” for county-funded LAHSA workers within the new Department of Homeless Services and Housing.

“We are continuing to explore all available options,” new department director Sarah Mahin said in a statement.

Mahin said funding and staffing will be finalized in the FY 2026-2027 Measure A spending plan for the fiscal year that ends in 2027. The county released a draft of that plan last month. 

County authorities have said they would fully integrate the services performed by LAHSA into the new Department of Homeless Services and Housing by next July.

The transition

In April, the county Board of Supervisors voted to pull more than $300 million from LAHSA and create a new county homelessness department to administer the funds.

That motion also directed county agencies to consult with Service Employees International Union 721, which represents county-funded LAHSA employees, to try to keep them employed — or prioritize them for transition into the new department’s workforce.

But the LAHSA Workers Coalition said that’s not happening.

The group demands in its letter that the county halt all staffing reductions at LAHSA and argues the county has a legal obligation to protect the workers. The group is made up of employees represented by SEIU 721, but the union’s leaders did not cosign the letter.

The union did not immediately respond to LAist’s questions about it Thursday.

In February, an L.A. County report said the agency had 900 staff positions and nearly 200 vacancies. More than half of the positions were funded by L.A. County, according to the report.

LAHSA reported last month that it employed 686 people.

Demands

Last year, county voters approved the Measure A sales tax to fund homeless services and affordable housing. The ordinance says that contracts funded with Measure A revenue "must not result in displacement of public employees.”

In the letter, the coalition argues the county is out of compliance with that requirement and is urging the board to discuss the matter at its next meeting.

Mahin said Measure A does not prevent the county from restructuring programs but instead “protects public employees from being displaced by outside service providers funded through Measure A.”

The county is facing a deficit of more than $300 million in funding for homeless services, Mahin said, adding that it must make “difficult but necessary decisions about how we invest our limited resources.”

The workers coalition is demanding that existing LAHSA employees be transferred directly to the new department, instead of having to reapply.

They’re also asking the board for a full public disclosure of staffing cuts related to the transition.

In addition to the Board of Supervisors, the coalition sent the letter to several other county and state oversight entities, including the county office of the inspector general, the civil grand jury, the state auditor and the attorney general.

When Terri Huerta called local winemakers about a problem with a meandering vine at Mission San Gabriel in the city of San Gabriel, she thought she'd get gardening help. Instead, she sparked a revival of L.A.'s oldest wine.

Mission San Gabriel's 250-year-old grapevine, one of the oldest living vines in California, continues to produce grapes for the Angelica wine revival.

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Brandon Killman

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LAist

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The vine in question isn't your typical grapevine. It's a 250-year-old beast with a trunk so massive two people can't wrap their arms around it. Because it served as the source for cuttings that spread throughout California's early vineyards, it’s now known as the Mother Vine.

For centuries, it just sprawled across the mission courtyard like some ancient, living pergola that refuses to quit, with no one taking any notice of the grapes flourishing each season.

But now, thanks to a group of determined local winemakers, that fruit is being transformed into Angelica, a sweet wine fortified with brandy that Franciscan missionaries made there in the 1700s — making it the city’s oldest wine.

A limited edition batch was launched Nov. 28 by the Angeleno Wine Company. There are fewer than 200 bottles for sale, and at $75, it's not cheap. But break that down by the vine's age, and you're paying 30 cents per year of history.

How it started

The collaboration began in 2020 when Huerta, director of mission development at Mission San Gabriel, reached out to the Los Angeles Vintners Association looking for help to manage the grapevine.

The association — a partnership among three L.A. wineries: Angeleno Wine Company, Byron Blatty Wines and Cavalletti Vineyards — sent winemakers Mark Blatty, Patrick Kelly, Jasper Dickson and Amy Luftig to assess the situation. They found something bigger than a courtyard cleanup project. They found grapes. A lot of them.

"The vine was full of fruit, and I told them it was just a nuisance every year," Huerta recalls. "They asked, 'What are you going to do with all this fruit?' and I said, 'I really don't know.'”

That's when the group offered to help take it off Huerta’s hands.

Grapes from Mission San Gabriel's 250-year-old grapevine used in the Angelica wine revival.

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Wine history

Although the Napa Valley now reigns supreme as the region’s wine industry, L.A. once was the center for the entire state. Mission San Gabriel’s vine was planted by Franciscan friars after the establishment of the mission in 1775 to make sacramental wine to be used during mass. DNA analysis has since revealed its forebears: It's a hybrid of Spanish Listán Prieto grapes and native California Vitis girdiana.

This vine’s cuttings helped launch the many vineyards that began to crop up around the newly founded grape fields, which became numerous. By 1850, L.A. boasted over 100 vineyards. If you look carefully, even today, the city of L.A.’s seal has a bunch of grapes hanging at the top.

The official seal of the city of Los Angeles.

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Courtesy city of Los Angeles

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The wines were popular with fortune seekers headed north to the Gold Rush. The industry flourished until 1883, when an outbreak of Pierce's Disease destroyed thousands of acres of vines across SoCal. Urban sprawl replaced vineyards with housing through the mid-20th century.

Today, almost nothing remains of L.A. 's once-dominant wine industry — with the exception of the Mother Vine and a handful of its descendants scattered across the city.

Across from Union Station a direct descendant is still growing over tourist and vendor heads. It’s a 200-year-old vine at Olvera Street's Avila Adobe, the oldest standing residence in the city of L.A.

Storing up the grapes

The winemakers started picking the fruit at the Mission in 2020. But it wasn’t enough to make a substantial batch of wine, so the grapes were stored. For the past five years, the winemakers, joined with volunteers, have harvested the fruit each season, carefully packing it away.

In the meantime, they began to dig into mission records for mentions of grapes and winemaking. One day they came across a document from the 1800s, which outlined a recipe for Angelica, a fortified wine made from grape juice and brandy.

"Angelica is said to be made by mixing one gallon of grape brandy with three of grape juice, fresh from the press," it said. "It is a thick, sweet and strong drink, yet of very delicate flavor."

The fortification wasn't just about taste — it was a necessity. In an era before refrigeration, adding brandy preserved the wine, allowing it to survive California's heat and long journeys between missions.

Two of the winemakers, Dickson and Luftig, were especially interested. They’d been making wine from grapes grown locally in the SoCal region since 2018 at their winery Angeleno Wine Company, which produces everything on-site near Chinatown.

They became intrigued by the idea of recreating Angelica. Following the historical recipe, they pressed fresh Mission grapes and fortified the juice with brandy before fermentation. Then they used the solera system — a traditional Spanish method that blends wines across multiple vintages — aging the wine in oak barrels for years.

Initially, they made limited batches solely for the company’s wine club members, which quickly sold out.

This year’s Angelica is the group’s third batch but the first to go on sale to the public. It includes grapes that have been harvested from 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

The wine pours a pale cherry color and has a syrup-like consistency. The brandy comes through right away, caramel and warm spices with refreshing acidity cutting through the sweetness. It's thick, decadent and undeniably strong — a small glass (or two) is all that’s needed after a warm holiday meal.

The harvest

Harvesting the grapes doesn't look like the romantic wine country fantasy you see in magazines.

Instead of long rows of vines with grapes easily accessed, harvesters have to pick the fruit from below the canopy.

"Everyone has to bring ladders because we're picking like this," Dickson says, gesturing upward in the Mission’s courtyard. "We're literally placing ladders on ancient monks' tombstones to reach the fruit above the graves."

This year the harvest happened in October.

Volunteers harvest grapes at Mission San Gabriel for the Angelica wine revival project.

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Amy Luftig

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Angeleno Wine Co.

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John Pryor, a volunteer, has done multiple harvests. He describes it plainly: "You're not in a vineyard. You're in a garden at a Catholic church. The vines are trellised 12 feet high and go on for a hundred yards."

For his daughter, 27 year-old Meg Pryor, seeing the massive trunk drove home what "old" actually means.

"Whenever we're there, I'm thinking, 'People were doing this a century ago, two centuries ago,'" she said.

John and Meg Pryor help harvest grapes from Mission San Gabriel's historic grapevine for the Angelica wine revival project.

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Courtesy of John Pryor

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Understanding who most of those workers were centuries ago means confronting some difficult issues. Huerta of Mission San Gabriel acknowledges the mission system relied on Indigenous labor, and the vine's hybrid nature suggests native plant knowledge may have contributed to its development.

But she doesn't shy away from the complexity.

"You can't tell Mission history without including all the parts," she says. "You can't tell one story without telling another story. Winemaking has always been a part of L.A. history. The grapes were brought by the Franciscans. They didn't just start here in California. They started in Mexico, so its complexity makes it interesting, but it also makes it controversial."

Going forward, Angeleno Wine Company plans to release a limited batch of Angelica as a seasonal offering each year, as long as the Mother Vine continues to produce fruit.

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for Texas to use a new congressional map that could help Republicans win five more U.S. House seats in the 2026 midterm election.

The decision released Thursday boosts the GOP's chances of preserving its slim majority in the House of Representatives amid an unprecedented gerrymandering fight launched by President Donald Trump, who has been pushing Texas and other GOP-led states to redraw their congressional districts to benefit Republicans.

The high court's unsigned order follows Texas' emergency request for the justices to pause a three-judge panel's ruling blocking the state's recently redrawn map.

After holding a nine-day hearing in October, that panel found challengers of the new map are likely to prove in a trial that the map violates the Constitution by discriminating against voters based on race.

In its majority opinion, authored by a Trump nominee, the panel cited a letter from the Department of Justice and multiple public statements by key Republican state lawmakers that suggested their map drawer manipulated the racial demographics of voting districts to eliminate existing districts where Black and Latino voters together make up the majority. For the next year's midterms, the panel ordered Texas to keep using the congressional districts the state's GOP-controlled legislature drew in 2021.

But in Texas' filing to the Supreme Court, the state claimed the lawmakers were not motivated by race and were focused instead on drawing new districts that are more likely to elect Republicans.

In November, after the panel blocked the new map, Justice Samuel Alito allowed Texas to temporarily reinstate it while the Supreme Court reviewed the state's emergency request.

The mid-decade redistricting plan Texas Republicans passed in August sparked a counter response by Democratic leaders in California, where voters in a special election in November approved a new congressional map that could help Democrats gain five additional House seats. A court hearing for a legal challenge to that map is set for Dec. 15.

The rest of the redistricting landscape remains unsettled as well. Lawsuits are challenging new gerrymanders in places like Missouri, where there is also a contested referendum effort. And other states, including Florida, Indiana and Virginia, may also pursue new districts prior to the midterms.

Last week, a federal court ruled to allow North Carolina's midterm election to be held under a recently redrawn map that could give Republicans an additional seat.

Another wave of congressional redistricting may be coming soon depending on what — and when — the Supreme Court decides in a voting rights case about Louisiana's congressional map. After the court held a rare rehearing for that case in October, some states are watching for a potential earlier-than-usual ruling that may allow Republican-led states to draw more GOP-friendly districts in time for the 2026 midterms.

Edited by Benjamin Swasey
Copyright 2025 NPR

Growing up in Whittier, tamales have always been part of who I am — whether from local bakeries like La Moderna, where my mother always orders the day after Thanksgiving, or our annual tamalada with family friends, where we churn out hundreds in slightly drunken assembly-line fashion.

Over the years, I've explored beyond the traditional Mexican versions: El Salvadoran styles from What's That You're Cooking in Orange County to the Chinese lo mai gai found at dim sum spots across the city. My pursuit of new tamal variations is relentless, especially this time of year.

So when I heard about a $27 lamb neck tamal in Venice, I had to know: could an elevated, chef-driven approach ever justify that price? Since a few other restaurants are also recreating the humble dish with a high-end approach, I decided to go and try them.

What I discovered was that these aren't replacements for traditional tamales — they're explorations of what happens when fine dining ambition meets this centuries-old form.

Si! Mon (Venice)

Si! Mon opened in 2023 in the former James Beach space, a collaboration between chef José Olmedo Carles Rojas and restaurateurs Louie and Netty Ryan, known for Venice-adjacent mainstays Hatchet Hall and Menotti's Coffee Stop. Si! Mon offers Carles Rojas' take on Panamanian fine dining, drawing on Panama's melting pot of Chinese, French, Spanish, African and Caribbean influences.

For the holidays, Carles Rojas is offering a $27 lamb neck tamal — a clear departure from the Mexican versions most Angelenos know. And while the price might cause some sticker shock, it’s worth considering what goes into it and how much food there is.

Wrapped in a banana leaf, the tamal uses a lighter, softer masa enriched with the lamb neck’s braising liquid. Rojas pulls the meat, tosses it with sofrito until it takes on a sauce-like consistency, then adds Indian-style quick-pickled dates for sweetness and olives for brine. Finally, the tamal is finished in Si! mon's wood-fired oven, adding subtle smokiness.

My verdict? After taking that first bite, I can tell you… it’s worth the splurge. One tamal is meant to be shared between two people, which partly explains the price point (though I had no problem finishing mine solo). I’ve had plenty of Central American tamales over the years — Salvadoran versions with their silky masa, Nicaraguan nacatamales loaded with vegetables and pork — but Carles’ take pulls out all the stops. This is a deluxe, bells-and-whistles vision: sweet, salty, and deeply savory all at once, comforting yet unlike anything I’ve tasted before.

Yes, it is a high price, but I’d say it reflects the time, technique and premium ingredients behind it.

KOMAL (South L.A.)

A Guatemalan-style chuchito tamal from KOMAL at Mercado de Paloma in South L.A.

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Frank WonHo

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Courtesy KOMAL

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KOMAL is L.A.'s first craft molino (mill), founded by Fátima Júarez and Conrado Rivera, former employees of Michelin-rated Holbox, who opened this masa-centric counter inside South L.A.'s Mercado La Paloma. The name is Nahuatl for "comal," the traditional flat griddle used to cook tortillas.

I wanted to try the chuchito ($11), a regular menu staple at KOMAL. Júarez refers to the dish as a gift — both for the unwrapping it requires and the labor of love behind it. Each one takes more than 22 hours to make, starting with nixtamalizing heirloom corn to create the masa. (Nixtamalization, an ancient Mesoamerican process, involves soaking and cooking corn in an alkaline solution to improve its flavor, texture, and nutrition).

The result is a fluffy steamed tamal filled with tender pork and crowned with roasted pepper and tomato sauce, pickled cabbage and vegetables, and crema. The dish honors her kitchen team, most of whom are from Guatemala, and it's KOMAL's way of putting their heritage front and center on the menu.

KOMAL’s strawberry tamal dulce comes bright red and crowned with pineapple and fruit compote.

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Frank WonHo

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Courtesy KOMAL

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Komal’s tamal verde at Mercado de Paloma comes stuffed with tender chicken and topped with zippy green salsa.

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Frank WonHo

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Courtesy KOMAL

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Beyond the chuchito, Júarez is offering three special tamales as holiday pick-ups for Christmas and New Year's: a deep, complex tamal rojo filled with sweet corn and squash calabacita, a vibrant tomatillo-based tamal verde filled with chicken, and a tamal de leche made with oranges and strawberry jam, a sweet version that hints at the pre-Hispanic tasting menu they're developing.

After the holidays, these tamales will transition to appearing exclusively at Komal's planned ancestral and ceremonial dinners in 2026 — making this a rare chance to try them before they become part of a more formal dining experience.

Available by the half-dozen ($45) or the dozen ($90), they can be ordered for pick-up at KOMAL on Tuesday, Dec. 23, or Tuesday, Dec. 30.

Campesino Café at The Ecology Center (San Juan Capistrano)

Aaron Zimmer, head chef of Campesino Café at The Ecology Center, works within a unique constraint: everything on his menu comes from the 28-acre regenerative organic farm surrounding the restaurant. That includes the corn he grows, dries, harvests and processes into masa for his tamales.

For the winter season, Zimmer is offering two versions that reflect what's abundant on the farm right now. The shelling bean and cheese tamal ($21) features beans from one of four varieties they grow on-site — shelling beans are harvested before they're thoroughly dried, prized for their creamy texture and delicate, earthy flavor. The cooked-down beans are incorporated into the fresh masa with cheese, then topped with chili con queso made with pickled giardiniera from their summer harvest.

Campesino Café’s tamal duo pairs winter squash in walnut mole with a shelling-bean-and-cheese tamal topped with chile con queso.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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The winter squash tamal ($21) features squash finished with a walnut mole sauce. The sweet, nutty texture, combined with the squash's sweet, earthy flavors and soft, fresh-tasting masa, creates a highly multidimensional bite.

Both are wrapped in masa and steamed in corn husks, then topped with whatever's available in the larder at any given moment, such as freshly grown cilantro or pickled onion.

It's a hyperlocal, intensely seasonal approach that makes each tamal a snapshot of what the farm is producing — versatile, sustainable, and entirely tied to the land it comes from.