The Brief

Maria Mendez walks her little white dog, named Peluche, on a wide dirt path in the city of South Gate’s newest park.

“Me gusta mucho el parque porque tenemos este sembradío de aguacates, limones y venimos a hacer ejercicio en las mañanas,” she said. She loves it for the avocado and citrus trees, and because she can exercise in the mornings, she said.

The park has sycamores and oaks too, a small wetland, a playground and throughout, winding walking paths. Mendez said she and Peluche come here most days. It’s convenient because the park is right next door to the mobile home park for seniors where she lives.

South Gate resident Maria Mendez and her dog, Peluche, walk the paths of the Urban Orchard every day.

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This park, though, is in a bit of an odd location.

“If you look around, you'll see you are in between the 710 Freeway and the L.A. River,” said Steve Costley, the city of South Gate’s director of Parks and Recreation. “Not a natural space to think, ‘Hey, let's go plant a park.’”

The park is called the Urban Orchard — 7 acres of renovated city-owned land sandwiched between the freeway and the river. To get there, you have to wind through industrial businesses. The din of the freeway is constant.

But under the new trees and next to the engineered creek and wetland, there’s the sound of birds and water.

Urban Orchard Park officially opened this summer — a brand new green space for the city and Southeast L.A. as a whole. Two other newly renovated parks also opened this year in South Gate.

So how did the small city do it?

A need for more green

South Gate is home to about 100,000 people, 95% of whom identify as Latino, according to census data. The average household income is less than $75,000 a year. And city residents have some of the least access to nearby nature — just 3% of the city’s land is made up of parks, one-fifth the national average, according to data analyzed by the nonprofit Trust for Public Land .

“We're one of the very high-needs cities in all of L.A. County that doesn't have enough park space,” Costley said. 

Lower income communities of color across the region and the country have disproportionately less access to green space than wealthier, whiter communities.

The constructed wetland at Urban Orchard Park is fed by stormwater from the L.A. River and helps filtrate and clean that water to irrigate the park.

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The new Urban Orchard Park in South Gate is sandwiched between the 710 Freeway and L.A. River.

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“Parks are what we love. Parks are what I think people need. I think parks make a city into a community,” Costley said.

Parks can also boost life expectancy , improve air quality and cool neighborhoods as climate change makes heat waves worse . The Urban Orchard will go even further, helping to address food insecurity as well.

Though the city is still working out the details, a grove of 200 citrus trees, along with vegetable beds and an avocado orchard, will be a source of fresh produce for seniors living in the mobile home park next door.

Dayana Molina, community organizer with the nonprofit Trust for Public Land, which helped fund and design the new Urban Orchard Park.

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“We were really trying to address and bring the vision of the community through this process,” said Dayana Molina, a community organizer with the Trust for Public Land, which helped design and fund the new park. “So we heard about food insecurity. We heard about not enough shade.”

Not only is the Urban Orchard adding green space where it’s badly needed, but it will also recycle stormwater. The 1-acre constructed wetland cleans runoff from the L.A. River and stores water in a large reservoir the city built under the citrus orchard, providing 70% of the park’s irrigation.

Any overflow will return to the river channel, cleaner than before. Eventually, the hope is that native fish can be introduced to the park’s wetland and streams.

“This is not just a South Gate park, it's really a regional project that is bringing benefits to the whole region,” Molina said.

Residents — and wildlife — are already benefiting.

Dale De Julio, a retired truck driver who lives next door to the Urban Orchard, now walks there every day and loves to observe the birds.

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Retired truck driver Dale De Julio lives in the mobile home park next door to the new Urban Orchard. He remembers when the land was an empty dirt lot. He never used to go for walks near his home. Now, De Julio walks the park every day.

“ This has given me an incentive to get out and walk around,” De Julio said. “I need that now that I'm retired.”

He said after years of driving trucks all over the country, seeing countless sights but never having the time to stop and appreciate them, the park is a place he can finally do that.

Just the other day, he said, he even saw a blue heron, a bird he’d never seen in the area before.

How to build a new park

Limited space, expensive land, historic pollution, lack of funding, permitting, other red tape — there are many obstacles to building a new park in Southern California.

The Urban Orchard was no exception, and the process was not cheap or quick. The park ultimately cost more than $31 million and took more than 10 years to complete.

The funding all came through state, county and federal grants, as well as private donors. The project came to fruition via multiple partnerships between the city and the private and nonprofit sectors.

“ South Gate is not a rich community. We don't generate that much revenue on our own, so we're very reliant on partnerships,” said Vice Mayor Joshua Barron.

UCLA research has found that public-private partnerships are essential to the success of greening projects such as the Urban Orchard.

“This really requires, as the proverbial saying goes, a village,” said UCLA professor Jon Christensen, who led that research and studies equitable access to green space.

The Urban Orchard, he added, “is a real testament to the dedication and persistence and creativity that is required to build new parks in Los Angeles.”

That creativity included cobbling together funding from a variety of sources, including $3 million from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, nearly $8 million from the State Water Resources Control Board, more than $4 million from the state’s Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, nearly $7 million from local Measure W funds, $5 million from Caltrans, Proposition 68 funds, more than $700,000 from the Conservation Corps of Long Beach, and private donations.

Joy Chancellor, 19, of South L.A. plants lettuce in one of the vegetable gardens at the Urban Orchard in South Gate. She's a corpsmember with the Long Beach Conservation Corps, which will maintain the park for its first three years while training young people in environmental jobs.

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The first three years of maintenance will be carried out by the Long Beach Conservation Corps, training young people from the area in environmental jobs. The city will have to find a way to pick up the maintenance tab after that.

“It was not a smooth process. It never is when we have complicated pieces of land adjacent to the L.A. River,” said Nola Eaglin Talmage, the Trust for Public Land’s Parks for People program director. “We've got all kinds of different public funding streams, all with different timelines, all with different requirements.”

Eaglin Talmage said a new county motion brought by Supervisor Lindsey Horvath could help streamline the process. And state efforts such as Proposition 4 are also essential to making these types of efforts possible, especially as federal funds for environmental projects dry up under the Trump administration.

“The passing of Prop. 4 is one of the reasons why we'll be able to continue to build green space in Los Angeles,” Eaglin Talmage said.

A bigger reform idea

Places to sit and enjoy nature in the new Urban Orchard Park in South Gate.

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South Gate Vice Mayor Barron said there’s another way for small cities to have an easier time building projects that benefit the public — updating outdated tax revenue laws.

“Last year, our residents and businesses paid over $80 million in property taxes, but yet the city of South Gate was only allocated about $5 million of that,” Barron said.

Currently, South Gate receives just 6.14% of property tax revenue collected within the city — a percentage set in 1978 through Proposition 13. After Proposition 13, the state created a formula to divide that tax among counties, cities, schools and special districts, with each city’s share based on its pre-1978 property tax base – a formula that still governs allocations today and mostly benefits wealthier cities with higher property values. That hurts cities like his, Barron said.

Only the state legislature can update that formula, something Barron is pushing for.

“One of the things that I really wish that we could look at is helping cities like South Gate, like Bell, like Cudahy, Maywood — the Southeast L.A. region — be a little bit more self-sustainable,” Barron said.

“All we're asking,” he added, “is to be able to be self-sustainable and not have to always rely on grant money to be able to get projects off the ground.”

I am standing in front of a homespun food cart on a dusty side street next to a strip mall in Rowland Heights, the sun beating down from high up, watching as the proprietor makes circles with a millet and mung bean batter on a big round griddle.

“We got everything from China,” says Cong cong Li, referring to that heavy duty piece of cookware, with two gas-powered burners running underneath. Way back in the day, Li says, people used wood fire to make the street snack she's making now.

Yu Ji Stone Mill Chinese Crepes, selling $10 made-to-order street snack in Rowland Heights.

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She cracks a couple of eggs over the thin, now crispy layer of batter, which Li says they grind with a stone mill themselves at home. Then a sprinkle of black sesames. Next come the scallions. Then the deep-fried dumpling skin. Li finishes my order off with the requisite sweet bean sauce.

She scoops the scalding hot Chinese crepe right off the griddle into a bag – so fresh it burns to the touch – just like the very first time I had jianbing guozi.

The first bite

It isn’t everyday I get to see this traditional Chinese snack made right in front of me. In fact, the first – and last – time was some 20 years ago when I was leaving Beijing.

Literally, leaving after spending months in the country. To mark the occasion, I decided to take a series of public buses to the airport, an idea that quickly became less cute when I got off at the final stop – and the airport was nowhere in sight.

I dragged my luggage and sheepishly followed the handful of people also hauling bags on a long, long trek to close that last stretch, the sun beating down from high up.

That was when I spotted a homemade food cart selling a kind of a wrap I'd never had before on the side of the road.

Hungry, tired and feeling more than a little lost, I watched as the proprietor made circles with the batter, cracked eggs over it, then drowned it in sauces and herbs.

One bite – a mouthful of soft, crispy, earthy flavors – was all it took. I am no foodie but it was the best food I had ever had in my life.

Ever since, I have been searching for that same taste in the San Gabriel Valley.

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Crepe-making, Chinese street food style, in Rowland Heights

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The SGV crepe cart

Li and her husband have operated their Yu Ji Stone Mill Chinese Crepes cart near the intersection of Jellick Avenue and Colima Road in Rowland Heights for more than two years, working daily from 11 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Before, Li said they were making Chinese crepes at different night markets and festivals around the San Gabriel Valley. Eventually, they struck out on their own for a simple reason.

“We have to feed our family,” Li says, laughing, in Mandarin.

The crepe, jianbing guozi (煎饼果子) in Chinese, is a common street food in the couple’s hometown of Shandong Province. The traditional breakfast snack is said to hail from the city of Tianjin, a little further north. An exact date isn’t known; many sources cite the year 1933 as the first time it was mentioned in a newspaper, but its existence most likely predated that reference by centuries.

Li says jianbing guozi is common now in many areas across China – customized according to local taste – and of course the snack inevitably travelled well beyond the country.

Cong cong Li at the Chinese crepe food cart she and her husband started in Rowland Heights.

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The search

I didn’t learn its Chinese name until several years after I returned to L.A. and that knowledge set me off on a quest of sorts. The San Gabriel Valley, I figured, has got to have it, right?

It wasn’t one of those epic, exhaustive, obsessive searches , but I always did keep an eye out. Internet searches turned up nothing for many years, and friends also drew blanks.

But by the late 2000s, I noticed the snack creeping up in reviews at this or that restaurant. Now it’s found in many more places. There’s even an entire shop, Me + Crêpe , dedicated to that single dish in Pasadena. Last time I had it was at Tai Chi Cuisine in Irvine, recommended by a Chinese foodie. It was great, but the decorum of being served at a restaurant was ... different.

The discovery

The finished product.

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Fast forward to a week ago. I spotted on Instagram a food cart with a big griddle, tossing me back to that fuzzy, serendipitous day in Beijing. I had to go check it out.

And on this weekday early afternoon in Rowland Heights, the vibe is right — pure street food culture. Customers drive up or dash from their parked cars to put in an order – some biting into the steaming hot wrap right away. When their stand first opened, Li says the majority of their customers were Chinese. Now it's more evened out, as word spreads.

Which is how Angel Cueva found the spot, driving from Whittier after seeing a video on social spotlighting the operation.

“ I don't know, maybe just the cart, the preparation, just looked like it had a lot of good stuff in it, Cueva says. “ When I seen this, I was like, I got to try this.”

Cueva was on the go and said he’d eat it in his car. He texted me later to say he loved the crepe. I took that message to Li.

She says when her family first came to the U.S. more than a decade ago, it was impossible to find authentic jianbing – the way it was made in their hometown. That prompted her husband to come up with a recipe, which he taught Li.

“While supporting our family, we want to promote Chinese food culture,” Li says. “The delicacy has hundreds of years of history. It’s a testament to the wisdom of our ancestors.”

A list of ingredients for the Chinese crepes sold at Yu Ji Stone Mill Chinese Crepes in Rowland Heights.

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Imagine a vegetable with the hype of a limited edition sneaker drop, but with nature controlling the supply chain.

That would be the wild pine mushroom (in Korean, songi beoseot), which grows only beneath red pine trees that are more than 20 years old, requiring precise soil, humidity and temperature conditions. Their brief harvest window — a few weeks each September and October — and restricted growing areas create a scarcity that makes them legendary among foragers and chefs.

The prized funghi adds a floral, woodsy character that’s highly sought after in Korean cuisine; in the same way Europeans go crazy for black truffles, these mushrooms have been a luxury status symbol in Korea for centuries.

Traditional Korean home-style cooking

I learned about this legendary wild pine mushroom, and Jook Hyang , a restaurant in Koreatown that’s currently serving them, from a TikTok video. I was curious, and decided to visit.

The restaurant is located a few blocks from the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Vermont Avenue, ground zero for all things happening in K-town.

Driving into the back parking lot off the small block of Menlo Avenue, you'll be greeted by a uniformed security guard who will wave you into one of many free parking spots. Yes, you read that right: a free enclosed parking lot in Koreatown, a true unicorn in Los Angeles.

Making your way up a small flight of stairs to the entrance, you'll find a modest dining space that genuinely feels like a Korean grandmother's house — minimally decorated with a few booth seats and tables with vinyl backing in the center. Small shelves display boxed Lebubus for sale next to rows of large ginseng roots preserved in Costco-branded Kirkland Signature vodka bottles (a method to protect their freshness, I learned later) and a small refrigerator of homemade kimchis. I definitely felt like I was in the right place.

Peak K-Town energy: multigenerational lunch rush, hot soups flying out of the kitchen, and the low hum of chatter.

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As I took my seat, a slow, steady stream of customers — mostly Korean septuagenarians and above — began to pour in. They looked as if they'd been coming here for years — always a good sign.

The pine mushroom experience

Pine mushrooms have been prized in Korea, and elsewhere in Asia, for at least 600 years, when they were treasured gifts among the aristocracy. Today, they arrive during Chuseok, Korea's major harvest festival, a three-day holiday that brings families together to honor ancestors, share feasts and tend to ancestral graves — making these rare mushrooms part of a significant cultural moment.

Despite their significance in Korea, these mushrooms aren't geographically exclusive to the country. They’re also found at high altitudes in the U.S. and Europe, though their short harvest season makes them challenging to farm commercially.

What was ordered

The restaurant had a special section of the menu dedicated to songi beoseot, with dishes priced accordingly, from $30 to as much as $90.

There was everything from minimalist porridge to opulent samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup with abalone) and galbi jjim (braised short ribs). I opted for the galbi jjim with abalone, a luxurious take on the classic that arrives sizzling in a black stone pot, crowned with thick mushroom slices and surrounded by a parade of banchan — kimchi, pickled radish, seasoned spinach and cilantro salads.

The short ribs were braised until they nearly collapsed under a spoon, with their glossy soy-based sauce infused with the delicate, almost blossom-like scent of wild mushrooms. After all the lead-up, I have to confess that while I was highly impressed with the dish — the briny sweetness of the abalone playing beautifully against the earthy richness of the beef — I found the mushroom taste quite subtle. The other components took center stage, while the mushroom played second fiddle, making it difficult to savor.

Galbi jjim served with wild pine mushrooms rolling in hot and hearty, with enough banchan to make you rethink your fridge at home.

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Wild pine murshrooms dressed to impress with bright red gochujang sauce and sesame seeds and ganjang gejang—the raw crab that ruins you for all future lunches.

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I also couldn't resist ordering a plate of the glistening soy-marinated raw crab, which you eat with your hands using a supplied plastic glove. Full disclosure: this wasn’t a dish that came with the mushrooms, but I’d been dying to try them once I saw they were on the menu. However, they did arrive with a complimentary platter of raw-sliced mushrooms dressed with red gochujang sauce and sesame seeds. The crabs are savory and just lightly funky in all the right ways — hearty yet restrained, indulgent but not heavy.

A rare Los Angeles miracle: a K-Town restaurant with its own parking — clearly marked, lion-guarded, and blessed by the traffic gods.

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I may have come for the mushrooms, but I stayed for the cultural immersion. What strikes me most about Jook Hyang isn't just the rare mushrooms or the improbable free parking — it's the quiet preservation of something increasingly hard to find in K-town's polished dining scene. This is a place where generational knowledge lives on, both in the kitchen and among loyal regulars. I arrived as an outsider, chasing a TikTok tip about scarce fungi, but left with a deeper appreciation for how traditional Korean home cooking serves as a bridge between cultures.

If you're tempted to go, don't wait — the pine mushroom season is fleeting. That said, the homemade kimchi, comforting soups and that soy-marinated raw crab are all reasons to return year-round.