The center hearth at Maydan Market, where restaurants in the food hall share the flames they use to cook their dishes.
(
Courtesy Kort Havens
/
Maydan Market
)
Topline:
LA's newest food hall is Maydan Market in West Adams, and it has big ambitions: it hopes to reinvent the way L.A. restaurants do business, even as it pays homage to founder Rose Previte's travels across the world, drawing inspiration from the souqs of the Middle East, and the night markets of Mexico and Seoul.
Why it matters: Restaurants provide a window onto the culture of a place. And in L.A., they have long served as a connector for the different communities who call this place home. But in recent years this landscape has become fragmented. Over 150 restaurants and food institutions the City of Angeles have shut their doors, for reasons ranging from the pandemic to the Hollywood strikes to the consumers shift toward food deliveries and the high cost of ... well, everything.
What's different about Maydan Market? Previte says this food hall has found a way to share resources, right down to the flames used to cook their food — that's the giant copper-covered hearth at the center of the space.
Read on ... for more about this new space, and what I ate when I was there.
Listen
• 0:43
How LA's newest food hall is serving up a fresh business model
As you walk into Maydan Market in West Adams, your eyes immediately catch the giant copper-covered hearth at the center of the space. Those flames are the heart of L.A.’s newest food hall, providing the heat and smoky flavor for several of the restaurants housed within.
“ Here, the idea is anybody that wants to cook on the fire, can,” said Rose Previte, founder of Maydan Market. “It's sort of the equivalent of our well.”
Rose Previte, founder of Maydan Market, LA's newest food hall, which is also home two one of her two restaurants, here and in Washington, D.C., both named Maydan.
(
Yusra Farzan
/
LAist
)
Maydan Market has big ambitions. It hopes to reinvent the way L.A. restaurants do business, even as it pays homage to Previte's travels across the world — inspired by the souqs of the Middle East, the night markets of Mexico and Seoul. It also houses the second location of Previte’s flagship Washington, D.C., restaurant, Maydan.
“America just got sidetracked and like usual, did something a little off track and made the market a food court in a mall,” she told LAist. “I'm trying to bring us back to the OG way of doing this.”
Why Maydan matters
Restaurants provide a window onto the culture of a place. And in L.A., they've long served as a connector for the different communities who call the city home.
Maydan Market
Location: 4301 W. Jefferson Blvd., in the West Adams neighborhood of Los Angeles Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. But note that hours vary at different food stalls. Closed Mondays.
But, in recent years, this landscape has become fragmented.
The COVID-19 pandemic followed by the Hollywood strikes have led to the shut down of food institutions across the region — over 150 in the City of Angels alone. These shutdowns come as the result of consumers shifting to food deliveries and the high cost of running a restaurant — produce, rent, labor ... it’s all adding up.
Enter Maydan Market, where all the restaurants share resources.
Breads bake up on the walls of a common, circular oven located at the heart of the marketplace.
(
Courtesy Ashley Randall
/
Maydan Market
)
“ We share labor, we share a lot of the things that break businesses, utilities in California are crazy expensive,” Previte said. “This way, possibly we all might be able to do just a little bit better by helping each other.”
In a city like Los Angeles, where you'd have to brave traffic to get to your destination and then drive some more looking for parking, Maydan Market offers a microcosm of the many cultures that call Los Angeles home — all in one place.
Previte grew up in a small town of about 3,000 in Ohio. Neighbors, she said, would stop by unannounced with vegetables from their garden that would be quickly cooked into dinner. This, Previte said, was reminiscent of her later travels to Syrian villages on the Turkish-Syria border on a “kebab research trip.”
“ I went to multiple villages where there was a shared oven,” she said. “As Americans we take for granted that everyone just has large appliances to bake.”
By sharing resources, Previte said, she hopes Maydan Market will offer a different business model for running a restaurant, “ where it's not so competitive” — but there's still plenty of room for success.
Deau Arpapornnopparat is chef and owner at the Thai barbecue restaurant Yhing Yhang BBQ, located within Maydan Market.
(
Yusra Farzan
/
LAist
)
Deau Arpapornnopparat is chef and owner at the Thai barbecue restaurant Yhing Yhang BBQ, inside Maydan Market. Running a restaurant is hard work, he said, and often newcomers do not find the support they need to navigate challenges. Maydan Market is an “amazing” chance for restaurant owners to share the space, including the kitchens, the fire and even table, chairs and cutlery, he said.
”Everyone in L.A. should come and take a look and then experience for yourself,” Arpapornnopparat said.
Why it's L.A.'s newest 'central square'
“I didn’t think twice,” chef Alfonso “Poncho” Martinez of Lugya’h by Poncho’s Tlayudas, also located inside Maydan Market. Martinez ran the Oaxacan street food pop up in South Los Angeles for nearly 10 years known as Poncho’s Tlayudas, which has now evolved into a permanent fixture within Maydan Market.
“Without fire, you can’t live,” Martinez told me while standing by the hearth watching as staff carefully prepare giant, thin tortillas folding them atop the smoldering heat.
Alfonso “Poncho” Martinez of Lugya’h by Poncho’s Tlayudas, where the tortillas are fresh — and enormous.
(
Yusra Farzan
/
LAist
)
And that fire is the heart of the “maydan” or the center town square. Previte picked up the term from hertravels to Ukraine but the word “maydan” also appears in the Arabic, Farsi and Hindi languages.
In Kyiv, the center square was known as Independence or Freedom Square, but everyone called it “maydan.”
“And it was so powerful there because people came there to mourn a national catastrophe. They came to celebrate something and they also came to rebel,” Previte said. “And I want all those feelings to exist in my restaurants all of the time.”
Maydan Market, she said, is her “resistance” as immigration enforcement ramps up under the Trump administration.
“We're really proud of what L.A. is and all the communities that have made a home here and if we can do one little part in preserving that and protecting it, then we're doing our job,” Previte said. “Between my two cities, D.C. and LA, it's two of the hardest cities right now for the immigrant communities that support us and make us survive every day that open the doors of this restaurant every day.”
Here’s a closer look at the restaurant concepts you will find inside the marketplace — and a few of the things I ate on my recent visit there:
Maydan
The mushroom kebab dish of LAist Reporter Yusra Farzan's dreams alongside the grilled halloumi topped with dukkah.
(
Yusra Farzan
/
LAist
)
Possibly the best dish I have had all year was at the Middle Eastern restaurant here, Maydan. The oyster mushrooms kebab was coated in a spicy zhoug sauce and then cooked over the central flames, perfectly charred and served on a bed of Kurdish tahini (the sesame flavor nutty and really coming through) and shatta sauce. Halloumi is typically a cheese I tend to pass over — blame the copious amounts I ate as a child growing up in the Middle East — but I couldn’t pass up the chance to wrap a few bites topped with Egyptian peanut dukkah on tone flatbread (similar to laffa). It was a sweet, soft, spicy flavor bomb. These dishes were served as part of the tawle experience ($95 per person). Tawle meaning table in Arabic is a communal dining experience where dips, appetizers and a main are brought to the table in a set menu so conversation can flow and community can be built.
Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 5 to 11 p.m.
Lugya'h by Poncho's Tlayudas
The tlayuda is smoky, earthy comes and brimming with Oaxacan cheese.
(
Courtesy Kort Havens
/
Maydan Market
)
Lugya’h by Poncho's Tlayudas specializes in Oaxacan cuisine. I had never had a tlayuda before and was pleasantly surprised by how large the tortillas were — almost the size of my face! As I picked up the tasajo version ($25) — thin flank steak served alongside a large tortilla with black beans and quesillo cheese — Martinez quickly stopped me. The dish has lard and seeing my headscarf, he rightfully guessed I don’t eat pork. Quickly, he whipped up a mushroom version sans the pork fat. Smoky, earthy and brimming with Oaxacan cheese, definitely a dish I will be going back for.
Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 5 to 10 p.m.
Yhing Yhang BBQ
Cooked until golden, with specks of dark brown, the chicken wings ($10) from Yhing Yhang BBQ, from chef Deau Arpapornnopparat of Holy Basil, appear unassuming. But after one bite I was transported to night markets in Asia. Seasoned with hints of lemongrass and cumin, the chicken wings come paired with a basil leaf hot sauce. The star, however, was the chef's take on a chili paste with an umami shrimp punch. Since this was a marketplace and a melding of cultures, I may have put that chili paste on every dish I had that evening (after I sampled them for the story of course!).
Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 5 to 10 p.m.
Maléna by Tamales Elena
Pozole ($27), a hearty Mexican stew, is the star of the show at this coastal Afro-Mexican restaurant. However, they all came with a pork base so my colleague Joshua Letona, who joined me on assignment, offered to do a taste test. After neatly piling the stew with jalapeno slices, crumbling cheese and squeezing lime, he dug in. “Pretty damn good,” he said. Enough said.
Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Club 104
This space will offer a rotating residency to different chefs from across Los Angeles. Currently, Chef Mel of Melnificent Wingz is serving wings and Southern food, such as buttermilk biscuits and macaroni and cheese.
Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Sook
Previte’s Middle Eastern market will offer grab and go lunch options such as a wrap or a salad. Patrons can also shop for products such as Lebanese olive oil, Palestinian za’atar, Kurdish tahini and even skin care products.
Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Compass Rose
Another of Previte’s offerings, Compass Rose is a coffee and cocktail bar serving Georgian Khachapuri or cheese bread, breakfast sandwiches and pastries.
Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.
