Nick Gerda
is an accountability reporter who has covered local government in Southern California for more than a decade.
Published April 17, 2024 5:00 AM
Rhiannon Do in a YouTube video posted in August 2021 by the Steinberg Institute, a mental health policy advocacy group, where she was a legislative intern.
The backstory: Rhiannon Do is the 22-year-old daughter of O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do. LAist uncovered that he directed more than $13 million to a nonprofit that records show Rhiannon Do helped lead over the last two years. The vast majority of the money was directed outside of the public’s view and did not appear on public agendas. Andrew Do did not publicly disclose his family ties before awarding the funds.
What she said: In a brief email exchange with LAist, Rhiannon Do said her role was limited to mental health services and a different meals program from the one under scrutiny. She said she was not a director or officer of the overall nonprofit, and never had any role in its finances. She also says she no longer works for Viet America Society. The comments were her first public statements since LAist’s investigation began in November.
Records show otherwise: LAist has obtained nine different public records that show her in top-level leadership positions at the nonprofit during the timeframe under scrutiny, including president, officer and director. Some were signed by Rhiannon Do herself. In her replies to LAist, she didn’t explain those records after LAist asked about them.
Viet America Society’s lawyer cites “sloppiness” and negligence": There [were] a lot of things that were screwed up,” the nonprofit's attorney said when asked about the documents showing Rhiannon Do leading the group. “It doesn’t make them true,” he said. “It just makes them negligent.”
Do previously did not respond to LAist, but answered some questions by email early this month. She told LAist: “It has been amply shown that I was never an officer or director for VAS.”
She did not provide information showing that was the case.
Do did not answer follow-up questions asking how she explains those records.
Do is a second year law student at UC Irvine, and the daughter of O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do and Cheri Pham, the assistant presiding judge of O.C. Superior Court.
The responses to LAist — signed “Rhiannon Do” — were from an email address that, according to records LAist obtained from the county, Rhiannon Do used to communicate with county staff. In one of those emails, from February 2022, Rhiannon Do represented herself as Viet America Society’s executive director.
The funding being questioned by county staff was tied to COVID-relief funded meals earmarked for residents in need during the pandemic.
Rhiannon Do says her role was limited
Rhiannon Do said that at Viet America Society she worked on mental health services — and was not connected to millions in coronavirus relief dollars that her father directed to the group.
Catch up on the investigation
In November 2023, LAist began investigating how millions in public taxpayer dollars were spent. In total, LAist has uncovered over $13 million in public money that went to a little-known nonprofit that records state was led on and off by Rhiannon Do, the now 22-year-old daughter of O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do. Most of that money was directed to the group by Supervisor Do outside of the public’s view and never appeared on public meeting agendas. He did not publicly disclose his family ties.
Much of the known funding came from federal coronavirus relief money.
Since we started reporting, we’ve also uncovered the group is nearly two years overdue in completing a required audit into whether the meal funds were spent appropriately. A second required audit is 10-months overdue.
And we found the amount of taxpayer money directed to the nonprofit was much larger than initially known. It totals at least $13.5 million in county funding — tallied from government records obtained and published by LAist.
After our reporting, O.C. officials wrote demand letters to the nonprofit saying millions in funding were unaccounted for. They warned it could be forced to repay the funds.
And, last month, we found the nonprofit missed a deadline set by county officials to provide proof about how funding for meals were spent.
“I have worked for the past 3 years to help them stand up a mental health clinic, which was the first of its kind for the Vietnamese American community in Orange County,” she wrote.
The clinic — Warner Wellness Center — received authorizations for up to $3.1 million in county-funded subcontracts, which her father voted to fund without publicly disclosing his close family connection.
County records show Rhiannon Do signed $375,000 of those subcontracts as president of Viet America Society, which does business under the Warner Wellness name. Amid questions about her qualifications to lead a mental health clinic, Rhiannon Do’s father has pointed to her undergraduate internship working on mental health legislation at the Steinberg Institute as her experience.
As for her role at Viet America Society, Rhiannon Do wrote to LAist that she “was later hired to work on a proposal for the Elderly Nutrition Program, a food service program for seniors, which was completely unrelated to Covid and any Covid funding.”
“I was never involved in any of the Covid meal gap programs or have ever played any role in the back office or financial side of VAS,” she added.
Millions have gone unaccounted for
At Supervisor Do’s direction, Viet America Society has received more than $9 million from the county to feed needy residents, plus $1 million to build a Vietnam War memorial. He also joined votes to fund up to $3.1 million in mental health subcontracts for the group, all without disclosing his close family connection.
Supervisor Do has not responded to multiple interview requests from LAist over the past six months. In a November interview with another news outlet, he defended his decisions to award money to his daughter’s group without public disclosure, saying he wasn’t required to disclose his family connection.
At issue, as county officials warned in a series of letters in February: the group has failed to document what happened with the first year-and-a-half of meal funding it directly received from the county, totaling $2.7 million in 2021 and the first half of 2022.
County officials set mid-March deadlines for Viet America Society to provide long overdue proof of how that money was used. The nonprofit missed the first deadline, which covered funding for the first half of 2021.
Then, the day after the March 14 deadline, a lawyer for the group said it was working to provide the county what it’s looking for.
Nearly a month later, the group has not yet provided any more documents, according to county spokesperson Jennifer Ayari. She responded via email late last week to questions from LAist.
The county’s extended deadline for Viet America Society to submit overdue documents is now April 24 at 5 p.m., Ayari wrote.
Those documents include accounting records, a list of who received meals, the dates meals were delivered, delivery addresses and contact info for the people who received meals.
Bridgecreek Plaza strip mall, which has offices for Viet America Society and Warner Wellness in Huntington Beach.
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Brian Feinzimer
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LAist
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The timeframe for the meals funding that’s under scrutiny overlaps with Rhiannon Do representing herself as the nonprofit’s executive director, in the February 2022 email to a county executive.
What records show about Rhiannon Do's role
LAist has obtained nine different public records listing Rhiannon Do as one of the group’s top leaders, including instances of her signatures as VAS’s president on county-funded subcontracts. Among the records:
The nonprofit’s original public tax filing for 2022, which marked Rhiannon Do as the only officer and only director during calendar year 2022. It states it was signed under penalty of perjury in October 2023 by Peter Pham, the group’s founder.
October 2023 board meeting minutes for Viet America Society, which showed Rhiannon Do as one of the group’s three directors and officers, and participating in decisions at the meeting. They show her joining a vote with the two other directors — Peter Pham and Dinh Mai – in authorizing Pham and Mai to sign checks from the nonprofit’s bank account.
Rhiannon Do signed as Viet America Society’s president on two county-fundedsubcontracts for mental health outreach services, totaling $375,000.
In her recent email exchange with LAist, Rhiannon Do said she’s parted ways with Viet America Society.
“I am also no longer with VAS or the Warner Wellness Center,” she said, referring to the name the nonprofit has used for its mental health work.
She didn’t respond to a follow-up email asking why she left.
In February, Viet America Society was informed it would no longer be allowed to perform its county-funded mental health work. That work was funded through subcontracts with the Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community (OCAPICA) and the OC chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI OC).
Nonprofit attorney: ‘A lot of things that were screwed up’
In a phone interview with LAist this week, Sterling Scott Winchell, Viet America Society’s lawyer, told LAist that Rhiannon Do “was basically just a caseworker.” He attributed the paper trail showing otherwise to “sloppiness” and negligence.
“Contracts were written with the wrong name on them. She never held that title. Things happen,” Winchell said last week in his first interview with LAist.
“I can speculate for you,” he added. “There was a previous entity, and she may have been an officer in that before the funding started. But I don’t know why the contracts and so forth were drafted that way. I think it was just sloppiness."
He didn’t specify what that entity was. But Rhiannon Do and two other VAS leaders were listed as officers starting in mid 2021 for a private company — Behavioral Health Solutions — that operated under the Warner Wellness name before Viet America Society took on the name in late 2022, according to state and county registration records.
Many of the records showing Rhiannon Do in leadership at Viet America Society — including the subcontracts and directors meeting minutes — are dated many months after Behavioral Health Solutions informed the state in early January 2023 that it had shut down.
LAist asked Winchell about the paper trail showing Rhiannon Do in top leadership positions at the group, including president, vice president, director and officer.
“Yeah, I would agree with you. There [were] a lot of things that were screwed up. It doesn’t make them true, it just makes them negligent,” Winchell said.
Winchell was Supervisor Do’s appointee to the county ethics commission from 2018 to 2023. He told the county he was hired in late February to represent the nonprofit.
Winchell recently told the OC Register that the nonprofit has refiled its 2022 tax filing without Rhiannon Do’s name as an officer. An amended version of the filing, marked as received by the state Attorney General’s charity registry on March 25, no longer lists her as an officer. It has a note at the end stating it was amended to “Remove Rhiannon Do out” and that “She is not an officer of Viet America Society.”
Attorney also says answers will come in audit
Winchell said the county’s questions would be straightened out in an upcoming audit commissioned by the nonprofit. That audit was required under its county contract, and is nearly two years overdue.
In its demand letters in February, the county warned that it could make the nonprofit repay the money if it doesn’t prove what happened with it.
Winchell said the nonprofit and the county are working closely.
“We’re working together toward a common goal. Our success is their success. It’s not adversarial,” he said. “I understand that controversy gets clicks. But there’s no adversarial relationship between these parties. We’re working together."
“They fell behind on some administrative issues, so they hired me,” he added of the nonprofit.
Winchell said the audit will provide answers about how the money was spent.
Asked if all of the dollars provided to the group for meals went to providing meals, Winchell said: “That’s my understanding.”
“If it’s not the case, the audit will reveal that,” he continued. “My understanding is that all the money — whatever money’s been used, has gone to where it should go.”
Winchell said he thinks the audit will be completed by the end of June.
A county spokesperson confirmed Tuesday that the county is currently working with Viet America Society on compliance requirements.
In her emailed responses to LAist, Rhiannon Do said there was nothing improper about how Viet America Society’s funding was used.
The “insinuation that there was something untoward with the use of VAS funds is fabricated” and a “false narrative,” wrote Do.
In a follow-up email, she said she never “played any role in the back office or financial side of VAS.”
How to watchdog local government
One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention.
Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.
Libby Rainey
has been reporting on L.A.'s preparations for World Cup games this year.
Published May 1, 2026 5:00 AM
SoFi workers say they want premium pay for the World Cup and other major events and protections from their work being subcontracted. They've threatened to strike.
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Libby Rainey
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LAist
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Topline:
Workers at SoFi say they're worried that jobs that would typically go to union workers will instead go to subcontractors during the World Cup. It's one reason they're threatening to strike.
The background: Bartenders, cooks, dishwashers and servers represented by Unite Here Local 11 have staffed the major events held at the stadium since it opened — from the 2022 Super Bowl to Taylor Swift and Beyoncée concerts. That includes positions in suites, where fans can pay — and tip — top dollar for private rooms, food and drink.
What's happening for the World Cup? FIFA has hired another entity entirely to run its luxury program for World Cup fans. The company, called On Location, is FIFA's official "hospitality partner." Workers with Unite Here say they're worried On Location will bring on its own non-union workers for lucrative positions during the tournament.
What else are workers asking for? The union is pushing for double pay for mega-events like the World Cup, and protections against ICE.
Read on… for more on SoFi workers' ongoing union negotiations.
Spectators in L.A. this summer for the World Cup could pay up to $209,000 for a private suite for just one match, but union workers at SoFi Stadium are worried they'll miss out on the action.
Bartenders, cooks, dishwashers and servers represented by Unite Here Local 11 have staffed the events held at the stadium since it opened, from the 2022 Super Bowl and NFL games every fall to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé concerts. That includes positions in suites, where fans can pay top dollar for private rooms, food and drink.
But FIFA has brought in another entity entirely to run its luxury program for World Cup fans. The company, called On Location, is FIFA's official "hospitality partner," offering those that can afford it exclusive seating, special gifts and meals. Their packages can cost tens of thousands of dollars or more.
Luxury suites for fans attending the World Cup at SoFi Stadium cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
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FIFA
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https://fifaworldcup26.suites.fifa.com/
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Workers at SoFi say they're worried that FIFA's relationship with On Location means jobs that would typically go to union workers — and the wages and tips that go with them — will instead go to subcontractors without union protections. It's one reason they're threatening to strike when the World Cup comes to town.
"We have so many wonderful workers who've been here season after season," said Kay Blake, a bartender from Inglewood who works at SoFi Stadium. "I don't see why they would partner with someone else to bring an experience that we can bring ourselves."
Workers also want to be paid a higher rate that reflects the sky-high ticket prices for the eight World Cup matches at SoFi Stadium. They're asking for double pay for major events including the tournament — an arrangement that the food service workers at Dodger Stadium have for the World Series, according to Unite Here.
"We're trying to ensure that there is no disparity between the profits of the company as opposed to our labor," Blake said. "We don't want to be exploited."
How does the World Cup affect labor negotiations?
Unite Here Local 11 represents around 2,000 workers at SoFi, and they're currently negotiating a new contract with Legends Global, the company that runs the stadium's bars and food services. Their old contract expired last year.
The union is leveraging its role in the coming World Cup to push for higher wages, especially at mega-events. Its workers also want protections from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, after the agency's head said that ICE will play a key role in security for the tournament. Unite Here filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board, saying ICE's planned presence at the World Cup threatened the union's ability to collectively bargain.
But the battle over subcontracting could also lead workers to the picket line. The union says the use of subcontractors will determine who will benefit from the riches that FIFA brings to Inglewood.
"Subcontracting is supposed to be rare," Unite Here Local 11 co-president Kurt Petersen told LAist. "So in this contract, we're saying no more. It needs to end and especially needs to end at the World Cup because we want those jobs to be good jobs."
How common is subcontracting?
Petersen said the World Cup isn't the only event where jobs have been threatened. He said that union members lost out on more than 100,000 hours of work in 2025 that was instead given to subcontracted workers.
Kay Blake, the bartender, offered LAist an example: an external company paying to operate a suite or two for an event at SoFi.
"If you bring in a subcontractor, they're going to want to bring in their people," she said. "Let's say that this subcontractor usually buys one to two suites… We have a group of people called suite attendants, and so now there's one to two suites less from their workload."
Blake said that she and her co-workers are scheduled by seniority, and fewer suites could mean people work fewer hours. She also said more short-term workers at the stadium for the World Cup could dilute tips for the workers who are at SoFi year-round.
A spokesperson for Legends Global declined to comment on ongoing negotiations with Unite Here Local 11. A representative for Hollywood Park, the site of SoFi Stadium owned by Stanley Kroenke, deferred to Legends Global. FIFA also did not respond to emails requesting comment on the ongoing negotiations.
Luxury packages are the new normal
The dispute between SoFi workers and their employer comes as high ticket prices for the World Cup and 2028 Olympic Games face scrutiny and mega-event organizers emphasize luxury experiences for the very wealthy.
On Location is also the hospitality partner for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The company supplied the same service in Paris in 2024 — the first time the Olympics had such an official luxury service, according to the New York Times.
"The higher end can run well into the tens of thousands of euros: bespoke multiday all-inclusive packages that might include stays in five-star hotels, meals cooked by Michelin-starred chefs, seamless car service between venues and the best seats at the most in-demand events," a Times reporter described in the summer of 2024.
LAist reached out to On Location via email, requesting an interview on the services they provide and their workforce. The company didn't respond.
Isaac Martinez, a cook at SoFi Stadium who lives in Inglewood, said he's still waiting to learn what his schedule will be for the World Cup and he's worried about his hours.
Martinez told LAist that since World Cup prices are so high, he and his co-workers should get a slice of the pie.
"The people that are able to afford those tickets and those suites, they're not people like us," Martinez said through an interpreter. "They're not the people that are gonna make the food or make the experience."
The World Cup kicks off in Los Angeles on June 12 with the first U.S. men's match against Paraguay. If there's no resolution to negotiations, attendees could arrive to a picket line.
Erin Stone
covers climate and environmental issues in Southern California.
Published April 30, 2026 6:09 PM
The SoCal Gas Community Service Office in Porter Ranch. The company said its Angeles Link project would lower the amount of methane gas stored at the Aliso Canyon storage facility above the L.A. neighborhood, where the largest known methane leak in US history from the SoCal Gas facility occurred in 2015.
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Frederic J. Brown
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AFP/Getty Images
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Topline:
State regulators voted Thursday to stop Southern California Gas Co. from charging customers to help pay for planning miles of pipelines that would bring hydrogen gas to the L.A. Basin, effectively halting the effort.
The vote: . SoCal Gas had proposed a monthly increase of $0.35 on the average residential customer bill over the course of three years to help fund the effort. The commission unanimously rejected the request, saying the company had not proved any direct benefit to customers.
Why it matters: Hydrogen is a clean-burning fuel that experts say is likely a critical piece of the effort the cut planet-heating pollution. But it's expensive and largely untested.
Keep reading for more details.
State regulators voted Thursday to stop Southern California Gas Co. from charging customers to help pay for planning miles of pipelines that would bring hydrogen gas to the L.A. Basin.
The company says the project would reduce the region’s reliance on methane gas.
Southern California Gas estimates it would cost about $266 million to study and plan the project — called Angeles Link — and asked the state Public Utilities Commission to allow it to recover those costs through customer rates. The company had proposed a monthly increase of $0.35 on the average residential customer bill over the course of three years.
The commission unanimously rejected the request, saying the company had not proved any direct benefit to customers. The decision effectively halts the project for now, and comes amid a stall in federal funding for hydrogen projects under the Trump administration.
Local environmental groups involved in the community advisory process had also grown frustrated by negotiations that they said, in a letter to state regulators, “does not prioritize genuine community engagement.”
As global pollution levels continue to climb, the commission’s decision also highlights the growing challenge of transitioning to a cleaner energy supply amid rising utility bills and open questions about the safety and true environmental cost of largely untested technology.
Why hydrogen?
Hydrogen is a colorless gas that is considered "clean" because it doesn’t involve carbon, which — when burned to create energy — becomes carbon dioxide, a major planet-heating gas.
But it takes energy to produce hydrogen, and most hydrogen these days is created by burning fossil fuels. “Green” hydrogen is created by using clean energy sources like solar and wind to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.
SoCal Gas said the Angeles Link project would prioritize green hydrogen.
Most experts see green hydrogen as an important clean-burning fuel for hard-to-electrify industries, such as long-haul trucking and gas-fired power generation. The city of Los Angeles, for example, wants to retrofit its Scattergood Power Plant near El Segundo to burn hydrogen instead of methane gas to generate electricity.
There are many open questions about how safe the highly-combustible gas is for proposed uses and how much water it will require to make. At the same time, extracting and burning fossil fuels for electricity and fuel also takes water — a growing problem as climate change drives longer and hotter droughts.
Experts say, if done right, hydrogen can reduce that water intake and not have a major impact on water supplies.
SoCal Gas will now have to turn to shareholders or other sources of funding if the company wants to proceed. The company did not directly answer LAist’s questions about whether it would.
“We continue to believe that hydrogen—including clean renewable hydrogen—can help advance California’s energy and climate goals while supporting the long‑term affordability, security and reliability of energy service for customers,” SoCal Gas spokesperson Brian Haas wrote in an email to LAist.
Environmental groups celebrated the vote, while emphasizing they see green hydrogen playing a role in the state’s future.
“Residential customers should not subsidize speculative infrastructure for large industrial users,” said Michael Colvin, director of the California Energy Program at Environmental Defense Fund, in a statement.
“We look forward to working with regulators, utilities and large customers to build a credible, cost-effective strategy to cut climate pollution from sectors that are hardest to electrify,” the statement read.
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Destiny Torres
is LAist's general assignment reporter and brings you the top news you need for the day.
Published April 30, 2026 3:36 PM
Fans take photos beneath a mural depicting L.A. Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, created by artist Robert Vargas on the Miyako Hotel in Little Tokyo.
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Mario Tama
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Getty Images
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Topline:
Global events like the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics are sure to draw thousands of new visitors wanting to get to know Los Angeles. For those interested in exploring the region’s art, here are a few murals you won’t want to miss.
Why it matters: L.A. has been called the mural capital of the world, with its widespread collection of public art.
Read on … for a must-see list of the area’s murals.
Global events like the World Cup and the 2028 Olympics are sure to draw thousands of new visitors wanting to get to know Los Angeles.
L.A. has a lot to offer, including its vast and varied portfolio of public art. It’s even been referred to as the mural capital of the world. So if you want to explore some of the city’s art, here are a few murals you won’t want to miss.
Sports
“LA Rising” at the Miyako Hotel in Little Tokyo celebrates the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, depicting him in his two roles — hitter and pitcher. - Where to find it: 328 First St., Los Angeles
“Blue Heaven on Earth” is a love letter to the Dodgers, depicting both Shohei Ohtani and the late Fernando Venezuela. - Where to find it: 1647 Blake Ave., Los Angeles
A mural honoring Winter Olympics Gold Medalist Alysa Liu in Gardena.
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Jay L Clendenin
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Getty Images
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California native and Olympian Alysa Liu captured the world’s attention with her figure skating in the Winter Olympics. This mural in Gardena celebrates her win. - Where to find it: 15532 Crenshaw Blvd., Gardena
A mural of L.A. Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna can be found outside Hardcore Fitness L.A.
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Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag
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Los Angeles Times
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“City of Angels!” pays tribute to Lakers legend Kobe Bryant and his daughter, Gigi. - Where to find it: 400 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles
Music
Whitney Houston, Rihanna, Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse and Selena are memorialized on this Hollywood mural. - Where to find it: 7677 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles
“Jazz on the field” is an ode to Wrigley Field and the Dunbar Hotel in South L.A. and depicts jazz icons Louis Armstrong and Etta James, as well as Martin Luther King Jr. - Where to find it: 43rd St. and Grand Ave., Los Angeles
When Kendrick Lamar featured Tam’s Burgers in his “Not Like Us” music video, the burger spot in Compton commissioned a mural highlighting the rapper’s unforgettable single. - Where to find it: 1201 Rosecrans Ave, Compton
Historic to LA
A section of the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, designed by muralist Judy Baca, that showcases pivotal moments in Los Angeles History.
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Ashley Balderrama
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LAist
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“The Great Wall of Los Angeles” is one of the largest murals in the world, and it’s supposed to get bigger. The half-mile art piece depicts California’s rich history. - Where to find it: Along the L.A. River in the San Fernando Valley, on Coldwater Canyon Avenue between Burbank Boulevard and Oxnard Street.
“The Blessing of the Animals” at La Placita Olvera depicts the Catholic tradition of blessing one’s animals. - Where to find it: 115 Paseo De La Plaza, Los Angeles
“El Grito” depicts a scene that sparked Mexican independence from Spanish rule. - Where to find it: Placita de Dolores at 831 N. Alameda St., Los Angeles
Gab Chabrán
covers what's happening in food and culture for LAist.
Published April 30, 2026 3:28 PM
The lomo saltado burrito at Merka Saltao in Culver City, served with your choice of homemade sauce.
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Courtesy Merka Saltao
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Topline:
Alonso Franco and Ignacio Barrios, two lifelong friends from Lima, opened Merka Saltao in Culver City in August 2025, with a simple mission: to bring Peruvian food to everyday American diets through a fast-casual format built around lomo saltado — Peru's most iconic dish. Then a viral storm blew up.
Why it matters: Peruvian cuisine has long punched below its weight in the U.S. despite being one of the most complex and biodiverse food cultures in the world. Franco and Barrios are betting that accessibility — not exclusivity — is the key to changing that, offering bowls starting at $13.60 in a neighborhood where Erewhon and Cava are the competition.
Why now: A lomo saltado burrito on their menu sparked an online backlash from self-described Peruvian purists who accused the owners of "Mexicanizing" their heritage — igniting a broader debate about authenticity, fusion and who gets to define what a cuisine can become. The controversy, which spilled from Instagram onto Reddit, ultimately drove more customers through the door than any marketing campaign could have.
What's next: Franco says the restaurant is roughly breaking even and he has his eyes on a second location. For now, he's focused on making Merka Saltao a fixture in Culver City — one burrito, bowl or salad at a time.
When you take a bite of the lomo saltado burrito from Merka Saltao, a fast-casual Peruvian restaurant in Culver City, one of the first things you'll notice is the sauce.
The wok-fried chunks of steak, dressed in a soy-and-oyster sauce reduction spiked with vinegar, saturate the rice inside the tortilla, highlighting the sweet heat of ají amarillo mixed with the velvety texture of pinto beans.
It's a beautiful confluence of flavors. It is also, depending on who you ask, either a creative act of evolution or a betrayal of Peruvian culinary heritage.
Standing on business
The lomo saltado burrito at Merka Saltao wasn't exactly a calculated move. Lifelong friends Alonso Franco and Ignacio Barrios — who met in high school in Lima — came to Los Angeles to bring Peruvian food to the masses, first through a ghost kitchen concept they ran from 2021 to 2023. The burrito happened almost by accident: a member of their kitchen team brought in a tortilla one day, someone suggested wrapping the lomo saltado in it, they ate it, and within three days, it was on the menu.
Merka Saltao co-founders Ignacio Barrios, left, and Alonso Franco, right, inside their Culver City restaurant. The two lifelong friends from Lima opened the fast-casual brick-and-mortar location for their Peruvian concept in August 2025.
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The data from the ghost kitchen made the case for keeping it there. Franco and Barrios had launched with around 140 dishes — lomo saltado, ceviche, chicken dishes, the works. But the numbers kept pointing to the same thing: wherever lomo saltado appeared on the menu, in whatever form, burrito, bowl, salad, it was the winner.
(Ceviche, for all its cultural cachet, is raw fish with raw onion — a harder sell for a weekday lunch. Lomo saltado, Franco noted, is steak and fries — basically a hamburger.)
The backlash
The two friends made the leap to brick-and-mortar in August 2025, opening Merka Saltao in downtown Culver City. It's one of the more competitive dining corridors in L.A., the kind of block that can support a $16 wellness bowl and a craft beer bar in the same stretch, populated by Amazon employees on lunch breaks, families on weekend outings, and food-literate regulars who will absolutely have opinions about what goes in a burrito.
Those opinions arrived faster than Franco expected. Within the first week of opening, an influencer came in and posted about the restaurant — but instead of showing the full menu, the bowls, the chicha morada, the flexibility of the concept, they showed the burrito. Just the burrito.
Franco working the wok at Merka Saltao. The high-heat wok technique at the heart of lomo saltado traces its roots to Chinese immigrants in Peru
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Christopher Mortenson
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Courtesy Merka Saltao
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The comments turned quickly. "No! Peruvians don't eat burritos. ¿Qué car—o es eso?" — roughly, "what the hell is this?" — wrote one commenter. Another said "Burritos? We don't eat burritos in 🇵🇪”. Franco describes sitting at his computer reading the pile-on, feeling something between anger and devastation. "There was a moment where I probably even cried," he said, "thinking, I've made a mistake." But then he looked at the numbers. 30,000 had seen the post…. And half the comments were in his defense.
He took the conversation to Reddit, posting to r/FoodLosAngeles asking the community directly: am I wrong for this? The response was overwhelming — hundreds of comments, almost entirely in his favor, and a surge of new customers walking through the door shortly after.
Fusion by default
This is Los Angeles, where many of the dishes that define the Southern California diet were born precisely from cultures colliding. Roy Choi built an empire on Korean tacos. Al pastor traces its technique to Lebanese immigrants who brought the vertical spit. The California roll, invented by Japanese chefs in Los Angeles in the 1960s, introduced an entire country to sushi. None of these dishes destroyed the traditions they borrowed from. If anything, they expanded their audience. And the lomo saltado burrito isn't exactly a novel concept in Southern California to begin with — everyone from Pablitos Tacos in North Hollywood to Le Hut in Santa Ana, run by 2025 James Beard Award-nominated chef Daniel Castillo, has featured their own version. Even Disney's California Adventure got in on it, serving a lomo saltado burrito out of the Studio Catering Co. food truck as recently as last year.
The lomo saltado bowl and burrito at Merka Saltao in Culver City — two versions of the same dish that sparked an unlikely online debate about Peruvian culinary identity.
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Courtesy Merka Saltao
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Franco would also point out that lomo saltado itself — the dish the purists are so eager to protect — is a product of Chinese immigrants bringing the wok and soy sauce to Peru roughly 300 years ago. "Peruvian is by default fusion," he told me. "So we have all the right to wrap it up in a burrito." What the online critics were really doing, whether they knew it or not, was defending a dish that was itself once considered inauthentic — and doing so in the name of authenticity.
Where things stand
Since the backlash, Franco says business has been mostly steady — breaking even, which for a concept that requires high volume at a low price point, he considers a good sign. The controversy changed things in ways he didn't expect: people started coming in specifically because of the story, not just the food. He began putting himself front and center in the brand, regularly making videos on social media about what it's like to run the business, occasionally poking fun at himself and the whole debate. When we visited during the weekday lunch rush, there was a steady line of people waiting to order, many stopping to talk with Franco directly.
In a way, he's answered the authenticity question not with an argument but with a presence — showing up, telling the story, letting the food speak. "Honoring my food, if that requires pairing lomo saltado with a salad or wrapping it in a tortilla, I have no problem," he said. "I'm not being less authentic. We are evolving in Peru anytime. I have to be authentic on the individual flavor and then be flexible to reach more people to discover our flavors."
The burrito, it turns out, was never the point. It was just the door.
