The Brief

LAist goes big on local elections. For the past few years, we’ve made our coverage more expansive and voter-centric with each cycle, even for the most obscure down-ballot races. It’s paid off in a big way, bringing in record-breaking digital traffic, memberships, donations and a growing reputation as Southern California’s best and most comprehensive local voter resource.

In the lead-up to the November 2024 election, we tried something new: bringing these voter resources directly to classrooms in the form of a workshop.

LAist piloted this workshop to help community members better understand how to research the local races on their ballot. We conducted it for more than 200 students in October, and the feedback was incredibly encouraging: Not only did participants tell us the workshops made them more prepared to vote in local races, but they also overwhelmingly said they were more likely to vote too.

The wheels in our heads have been turning ever since. What more can we do with these workshops in upcoming elections? And what can they do not just to engage people around elections, but also provide more local civic education in general?

We'll dig deeper into these questions below. But first, here’s a closer look at what we did.

A presentation slide from LAist's local ballot research workshops.

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Courtesy Philip Goodrich

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UCLA

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The workshop: Understanding your local ballot

We designed a workshop that was an interactive, 90-minute session about how to research your ballot. We intentionally steered away from the presidential race everybody was talking about and instead focused in on the other 99% of the ballot that was all about local offices.

This was a natural fit with LAist’s work. Our core election product, Voter Game Plan, is meant to help people filling out their ballots who are seeking information about candidates running for local offices — info that in some cases can be nearly nonexistent elsewhere (think local judges, for example).

This workshop would extend that service further, helping people who weren’t even sure what the local offices were, let alone how to decide who to vote for. What do some of these local offices even do? How do you figure out who these candidates are and what they stand for? How would a local ballot measure affect your day-to-day life?

Here’s how the runthrough typically went:

1. Icebreaker: This was a quick fill-in-the-blank prompt: “Filling out my ballot makes me feel [blank] because [blank].” That let us know what the vibes were: Did people feel excited about voting? Anxious? Indifferent? And it helped us calibrate the tone of the rest of the session.
2. Mini-presentation: A quick 10-minute overview of why local offices matter to your day-to-day life.
3. Here's your ballot. What questions do you have? We gave everyone a sample ballot with one race on it, exactly as it appeared on the actual ballot — no context, just names and titles. Participants took 10 minutes to write down all the questions they would want to know in order to figure out how to make a decision.
4. Research! Gathering in small groups, people used whatever device they had on hand — a phone, a laptop or just talking with their neighbors — to figure out the answers to their questions.
5. Discuss. We regrouped to talk about what everyone found. How easy or hard was it to figure out the answers to their questions? What information was available and what wasn't? Then our team went through the questions we heard most often and how we as journalists went about figuring out the answers (many of which end up in our local voter guides).
6. Repeat. We did the exercise a second time, giving everyone a local ballot measure to decipher, research and discuss. People found this to be a notably different experience. This time there was a concrete outcome at stake, rather than vague possibilities of what a candidate might or might not do if elected into office.

We set up sessions at five locations in the lead-up to the November election, all scheduled in October 2024:

• East L.A. College, a community college.
• Cal State Los Angeles, a state college (one in-person session and one virtual).
• My Friend's Place, a local organization serving unhoused youth.
• University of Southern California, a private university.
• Otis College, a small private arts college.

Most of these sessions were arranged through preexisting relationships we had with faculty or staff members through LAist’s years of engagement work.

This workshop doesn’t have to be limited to schools, but classrooms were a natural environment to try this out. Faculty wanted to find ways to engage students with the election, and we wanted to better understand what younger voters — especially those who weren’t already in LAist’s existing audience — needed to make their decisions.

We tried these sessions in front of groups of all sizes — the largest one had about 180 students, while the smallest had just seven — all with different levels of familiarity and interest in local elections.

What participants told us

The overall feedback we heard from participants told us something really exciting — not only did the workshop help students feel more prepared to vote, but it also made them more willing to vote.

We heard this feedback in two ways: verbally during the sessions themselves, and through an anonymous online survey we distributed after the fact.

Out of about 225 students who participated in the workshops, 49 filled out the survey.

We asked everyone to rate how prepared they felt about voting before the workshop, on a scale of 1 to 5 — 1 being not at all prepared and 5 being very prepared. On average, students gave a rating of 2.3.

We asked them to rate their preparedness again after the workshop. The average jumped to 3.9.

In another question, we asked people to tell us whether they agreed with the following statement: "After this workshop, I am now more likely to vote in the Nov. 5 election."

Of the group, 42 out of 49 respondents — 85.7%  —  said they agreed or strongly agreed. Six were neutral. One strongly disagreed, although they wrote in comments elsewhere they were already planning to vote.

In open-ended responses, most of the participants described the workshop as informative and helpful. One mentioned it “made me comfortable in asking questions and allowing myself to not feel embarrassed about being confused”  — something we definitely aimed for.

The verbal feedback we heard during the session was encouraging too:

• Two students said they felt “better” after the workshop because they had a stronger idea of what one of the (very confusing!) ballot measures meant.
• One student who initially said he felt disconnected from the election because the presidential pick wouldn’t affect him either way later said he felt more interested in researching local measures.
• At My Friend’s Place, an organization that serves unhoused youth, attendees learned about Measure A, a county measure to raise the sales taxes to fund homeless services and affordable housing. Most told us they had never heard of the measure before, and one participant asked mid-presentation how to vote on it.

What we learned about LAist's election coverage

Not all feedback was glowing, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t valuable. In fact, the other comments we heard were incredibly useful — and highlighted more information gaps for our coverage to help fill. Here are a few of our takeaways:

• We need to help people feel less anxious about elections. Many told us the election made them anxious — how do you know if you’re making the “right” choice? The workshop itself didn’t do much to ease that anxiety. What else can we newsrooms do to address that? One possibility: Look for clearer ways to follow the people we elect and their actions in office, so that people can better understand the outcomes of their choices and build on that understanding with each election cycle. (This is something LAist is actively working on!)
• We should do what we can to make the research easier. One student said she felt disheartened by how much work it took to research just one race on a local ballot, especially for those without a college education. What more can we do as a newsroom to make the process easier for people, especially across different education backgrounds?
• Don’t skimp on the basics. During a discussion of one ballot initiative on whether to overhaul rent control laws in California, students asked questions like, “What’s rent control?” and “How do landlords price their apartments, anyway?” These questions led to great discussions and helped us realize there was a lot more groundwork we needed to lay for the average voter before discussing the ballot measure at play.
• People are interested in local issues. That doesn’t mean they’ll seek out the information. The most productive, engaging sessions we had were the ones in which attendance was mandatory for participants. Compared to those who voluntarily came to the workshop, mandatory participants were much less likely to be regular news readers or follow the big issues we discussed. Yet the mandatory sessions had more active conversations and more curiosity from participants about the underlying issues they were being asked to vote on. News organizations have a major opportunity to engage with these community members who are less likely to follow our work. We can provide directly helpful information, get them closer to the local issues that affect their lives and perhaps even convert them to future supporters — if journalists can find more ways to get in front of them.

LAist's Brianna Lee conducts a local ballot research workshop at Otis College in October 2024.

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David Rodriguez

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LAist

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Bridging local news and civic education: What’s next?

We talk a lot about journalism as essential to civic engagement — getting people involved with their communities, fostering dialogue, holding officials accountable and empowering residents to vote.

The workshops showed us that there’s also a lot of room for journalism to do more in local civic education  —  helping people understand how local governments work, unpacking the basics of local issues like rent, and drawing clearer connections between actions like voting and the policies that shape our day-to-day lives.

LAist is thinking hard about ways we can use workshops to bring some of our other reporting closer to communities.

What about a workshop about building new housing in L.A.? A local civics workshop for high schoolers? What about ballot research workshops for specific groups, such as seniors, new citizens or formerly incarcerated voters?

We're actively exploring all these possibilities — and more.

• If you’re a local newsroom, educator or civic organization that wants to chat about anything similar you’re doing or thinking about, I’m always happy to talk! Email: blee@scpr.org.
• Does your organization want to financially support our work, which better equips voters to make decisions and become more engaged with issues in their communities? Email: grants@scpr.org.
• Empower more community-focused reporting by becoming an LAist member today at LAist.com/give.

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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Courtesy of John Pryor

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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.