Home is where the restaurant is: Long Beach's MEHKO moment has arrived

Brad Thomas has been up since 6 a.m. on a Sunday — farmer's market first, then prep. By 2 p.m., he's back at the craftsman on 7th and Cherry, the home of his business partner, Clay Wood. The tablecloths go down. The gold cutlery comes out. By 6 p.m., the first of two seatings will fill the living room and front yard — 32 people across the night, all for a six-course dinner at $69 a head: hanger steak, crispy frites, a rotating dessert spread, much of it prepared over open flame in the backyard of the old craftsman.

This is Steak Freaks, and it is exactly the kind of food business that Long Beach just made legal.

Earlier this month, Long Beach became the 19th jurisdiction in California to authorize Micro-Enterprise Home Kitchen Operations — or MEHKOs — joining Riverside County and L.A. County and a growing statewide movement reshaping who can afford to start a food business.

What makes Long Beach different is that it's allowing renters to run these businesses from their homes. (Wood's house, for example, is a rental). In a city where 60% of residents rent and more than half of those renters are cost-burdened, these home kitchens aren't just a creative outlet. For many, they're an economic lifeline. And for those who find success, the program's own limits may push them toward the next step faster than they planned.

Guests dig into the hanger steak frites course during a Sunday dinner at Steak Freaks in Long Beach. The supper club seats 32 people across two seatings and has sold out every dinner since opening.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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Who's behind them

Prior to AB 626, the informal economy long existed in immigrant communities where neighbors sold plates, fed the block and cooked for whoever showed up. That changed in 2018 when the bill passed and gave it a legal pathway and a social media following.

A screenshot from CookConnect, the COOK Alliance's map of permitted MEHKO operators across California, shows the concentration of home kitchen businesses across Los Angeles and Riverside counties.

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CookConnect/COOK Alliance

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According to the COOK Alliance, the nonprofit at the forefront of MEHKO adoption statewide, 79% of operators are people of color and 70% are women. The home-based model removes barriers that have historically kept certain communities out of the food business — no need for a commercial kitchen, massive upfront capital, or to be in two places at once.

Geraldine Gonzales works the wok at Lomo Fuego, where lomo saltado is cooked over an open flame in the backyard.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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It’s worked for Heidi Randolph, who didn't set out to run a restaurant. A couple of years ago, she was selling plates of Peruvian food to soccer players at Lakewood parks on weekends.

I visited Lomo Fuego in March and found families pulling up chairs, her brother working the wok over open flame and her mother pitching in between shifts at her day job. It's started with a handwritten chalkboard and a MEHKO permit posted to a bulletin board that Randolph had to find herself after the city told her it was impossible. What's changed since then tells you everything about both the promise and the limits of the program.

The hanger steak frites at Steak Freaks are finished tableside with a kitchen torch. The six-course dinner runs $69 a head out of a rental home in Long Beach.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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Brad Thomas of Steak Freaks came to it differently. A pastry chef who spent years alongside teams trained by Thomas Keller, Nancy Silverton, and Josiah Citrin, he moved to Long Beach from Texas three years ago and started leaving anonymous pastry deliveries on doorsteps across the city — Lover Boy Provisions, with a flirty note attached.

That's how he met Clay Wood, who owns Clayonfirst pottery studio in the East Village Arts District. When Long Beach passed its MEHKO ordinance, Steak Freaks was born. Every dinner has sold out.

The Steak Freaks menu and a welcome note from collaborating poet Vic Hurtado of Vessel Poetics, set out before service at the Long Beach supper club.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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The landlord question

The council's vote this past April came down to one sticking point: should operators who rent be required to notify their landlord? Councilmember Tunua Thrash-Ntuk, who pushed the motion forward, believed that notification should be voluntary. The COOK Alliance's Roya Bagheri backed that position for a practical reason — even informal landlord approval can evaporate once paperwork gets involved.

Wood's situation says it plainly: his landlord is a former neighbor who follows Steak Freaks on Instagram. No formal conversation has happened. "I make pottery here," Wood said, "and the stuff I do for my pottery business is way crazier than a couple of steaks in the backyard."

The ceiling

When I revisited Lomo Fuego recently, a sign outside announced scaled-back hours — two days a week, down from four. After a neighbor complained, the county health inspector paid a visit and told Randolph she was approaching the annual revenue cap of $110,442 in gross annual sales (a figure adjusted every year for inflation by the California Department of Public Health).

To stay under the cap, she’s opening only on weekends for the near future.

Heidi Randolph with her mother Fritz and brother Luis at Lomo Fuego, the Peruvian restaurant she runs out of her Lakewood home. Randolph is now scouting restaurant locations and pursuing an additional permit to sell at farmers markets.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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Randolph took the health department visit as a sign to move forward. She's actively scouting restaurant locations, and her daughter left her job at a local restaurant to cook alongside her full-time.

Randolph didn't see any of this coming — from the park to the backyard to her daughter cooking beside her, her mother finally getting a day off. The program did exactly what it was supposed to do. She just needs a bigger kitchen now.

"I hope in the future," she said, "people can say — this still tastes like food from home."