We Are Where We Eat - The Women Who Make LA Delicious
- The Crawford, 474 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena
Restaurants are central to our lives—they’re where we laugh, where we celebrate, where we have serious conversations, where we share intimate secrets. Behind each of these special places are the people who dreamed them up and made them come to life.
Women are behind every element of some of your favorite restaurants, from business and creative decisions to cooking on the line. Join LAist host Julia Paskin as she goes behind the scenes with some of the women running kitchens across Los Angeles. They’ll share their stories, what inspires them, and what challenges still remain for women in the restaurant industry.
We’ll have something tasty for everyone to try as well, from Guerrilla Tacos before the show and Flouring LA after.
SPECIAL GUESTS
Danielle Duran-Zecca (she/her), Amiga Amore
Antonia Lofaso (she/her), Dama, Scopa
Lien Ta (she/her), All Day Baby
We Are Where We Eat is a new live event series in partnership with The James Beard Foundation that will go behind the scenes of some of L.A.’s favorite restaurants with the city’s most-celebrated chefs and owners to find out more about how they’re making it all work.
This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit calhum.org.
This project is supported, in part, by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Department of Arts and Culture.
This event is part of Culinary Connections, a live event series focused on all the ways food connects us.
ABOUT THE JAMES BEARD FOUNDATION
The James Beard Foundation is a nonprofit organization that works to create a more equitable and sustainable future for the culinary industry and broader food system—what we call Good Food for Good®. For over 30 years, the Foundation has highlighted the centrality of food in our daily lives, celebrating and supporting the people behind America’s food culture through the annual James Beard Awards, industry and community-focused programs, advocacy initiatives, events across the country, and more. jamesbeard.org @beardfoundation
ABOUT DANIELLE DURAN-ZECCA
California-born Chef Danielle knew from a young age that she wanted to be a chef. She was raised in an environment emphasizing the rich variety of Mexican food. After graduation from high school, she attended California’s Le Cordon Bleu School of Culinary Arts where she focused on classic French cuisine and graduated with honors. After working with some of the best California chefs, including Walter Manzke, Neal Fraser, and Sang Yoon, Chef Danielle moved to New York City, where she worked at Le Bernardin, followed by the Modern, where she was quickly promoted to sous chef. While at the Modern, she was offered the opportunity to be the Chef de Cuisine at Vespa, a restaurant on New York City’s upper east side, where under her leadership and creativity, Vespa was recognized as the best neighborhood restaurant. Given an opportunity she couldn’t refuse, Chef Danielle left Vespa to be Sous Chef at the highly acclaimed Le Coucou, the recipient of the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant in 2017. While cooking in New York, Chef Danielle competed in two Food Network cooking shows: “Kitchen Casino” in which she took first place and “Beat Bobby Flay” where she was inches away from “Slaying the Flay”. Chef Danielle is now back home and more eager than ever to cook the food that comforts her, combining her appreciation for organic and sustainable ingredients with the technique and expertise she has learned along the way. Her style of cooking is “MexItalian” which subtly combines the Mexican food influences of her heritage, with her Italian husband’s heritage. They created a pop up called Amiga Amore, which was featured at the James Beard House in February 2019, and in May 2023 it became an actual restaurant.
Over the past year Amiga Amore has achieved many accolades including write ups in LA times, Eater LA, Thrillist, The Beet, Pop Sugar, What Now, and most recently Forbes. It was also named Best New Restaurant in InfatuationLA and Time Out magazine. Chef Danielle’s and husband restaurant will showcase her unique cuisine, “MexItalian” which combines exceptional quality ingredients, many made from scratch, with Italian and Mexican influences.
She was recently nominated for James Beard Emerging Chef.
ABOUT ANTONIA LOFASO
Chef Antonia Lofaso’s cuisine is an invitation to explore the depths of her interior world. Her food elicits a curiosity that developed from stepping outside the suburbs of Long Island, and into the culturally diverse landscape of Los Angeles.
Her belief that cavatelli and carnitas can co-exist seamlessly on the same menu conveys a sensibility, which is constantly evolving. But what remains in all of her dishes is a singular vision towards the future that longingly remembers the past.
Inspired by her Italian-American heritage, Lofaso opened Scopa – Italian Roots in 2013, which was immediately well received. Lofaso’s interpretation of old-school Italian is hailed as one of the most compelling restaurants for Italian cooking in Los Angeles. Patrons describe Scopa as an essential neighborhood staple where Lofaso consistently serves food that is inviting, authentic, and undeniably satiating.
Lofaso apprenticed under culinary legends and absorbed their sophisticated techniques, but she was not afraid to take extraordinary risks to honor her instincts. She rose quickly through the ranks at Wolfgang Puck’s Spago, and went on to transform various high-profile kitchens of Los Angeles, while working closely with many high-profile celebrities.
In 2011, Lofaso partnered with Sal Aurora and Mario Guddemi to debut Black Market Liquor Bar in Studio City. In Black Market and the business partnerships she formed, Lofaso found a home. This collaboration would foster the creative freedom Lofaso longed for. Black Market is not constrained by one definitive direction and that is the intention. A course might begin with dill potato chips and shishito peppers, followed by a lobster roll, Korean wings, and a succession of meatballs. What anchors this bold array of flavors, is Antonia.
Throughout her career, Lofaso has measured her success by her innate ability to understand her audience, while staying true to her own personality. Her memorable performance on Top Chef: Chicago and Top Chef: All Stars celebrated her individuality outside the kitchen, and her talents continue to shine in front of the camera as a judge on CNBC’s Restaurant Startup, and recurring roles on The Food Network’s Cutthroat Kitchen, Man vs. Child, and ABC’s Real O’neals.
In 2012, Lofaso joined with Penguin to release The Busy Mom’s Cookbook: 100 Recipes for Quick, Delicious, Home-cooked Meals, which also tells the story of the challenges she overcame while studying at the elite French Culinary Institute, and simultaneously raising her daughter, Xea.
Lofaso insists that the drive behind all of her accomplishments comes from the heart of the kitchen, and it is through this vein that she continues to have a firm finger on the pulse. She is revolutionizing her industry’s aesthetic by redesigning chef wear for style and functionality, through her brand Chefletics.
What matters to Lofaso is staying true to your vision with this intention she is launching Antonia Lofaso Catering, which will convey a more tailored approach to providing clients with a distinctly personal experience.
ABOUT LIEN TA
Lien Ta is the co-owner of All Day Baby, a feel-good restaurant with the soul of a diner. Located in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, it was open for just three and a half months before the mandated closure on March 16, 2020 in response to the novel coronavirus. Today, with over 60 employees furloughed, it is open for takeout and delivery with a small team and limited hours. Her first restaurant was a fun little restaurant in Koreatown called Here’s Looking At You, also co-owned by Chef Jonathan Whitener. A “Restaurant of the Year” by Food & Wine Magazine in 2017, HLAY was revered as a toast to the fantastically-diverse landscape of Southern California. The impact of COVID-19 forced its indefinite closure on July 12, 2020, on the eve of the restaurant's fourth anniversary. As a small business owner affected by the pandemic, Lien was recently featured, alongside LA Mayor Eric Garcetti, in a video aired at the Democratic National Convention. She is the subject of "Becoming a Restaurateur," a Simon & Schuster publication by author Patric Kuh. She was a fellowship recipient of the James Beard Foundation’s inaugural class of the Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Program in 2017. She is a founding member & committee lead of RE:Her, a charitable organization for women-owned restaurants in Los Angeles. It launched its inaugural food festival, 10 Days RE:Her, on Jan. 21, 2021. She was previously a Manager & Culinary Liaison at Animal & Son of a Gun restaurants. Before working in hospitality, she was a food, fashion & lifestyle writer and entertainment editor for eight years.
ABOUT JULIA PASKIN
I think of myself as a reverse engineer when it comes to the experiences of Southern Californians. I work to understand and highlight stories from often unheard voices and work backwards to demonstrate how and why that experience is possible. From immigration, law enforcement, to homelessness, to the environment, how do laws and policies impact our lives? And what social, political, and environmental forces inform our experiences? What solutions work and who do they serve?
I grew up in an old New York City tenement, raised by a working-class, single mom (shout out to Mama Paskin). I came to California to study at CalArts and in search of lower rents (the misguided irony!) so issues of economic equity and the arts are both close to my heart. I came to journalism after working in the performing arts and then social justice and political organizing.
While I may have left NYC fleeing an unlivable economy, I stayed here after falling in love with Greater Los Angeles and all that our diverse communities have to offer. I have now spent nearly half my life here and have made an art of defending LA from anyone who dares to talk trash-- because anyone who doesn’t have anything nice to say about our town, just doesn’t know enough about it.
Julia is the host of All Things Considered on weekdays on LAist 89.3 and The L.A. Report podcast.
ACCOMMODATIONS
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