Altadena is slowly ... very slowly ... reopening for business
- Share via
Altadena’s slow reawakening. Plus, mole 3,675 days old and counting, L.A.’s hardest reservation, Festival of Books cooks and lots of restaurant openings. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.
The goose is loose
Ever since the Eaton fire destroyed much of Altadena, I’ve been on the lookout for signs of recovery. I often drive up Lake Avenue where so many small businesses burned, leaving twisted steel frames and slumping walls.
This is a neighborhood I used to walk. It’s not far from my home in north Pasadena, and just two days before the Eaton and Palisades fires began I spent part of that Sunday afternoon enjoying an excellent cappuccino in the color-splashed back garden of Café de Leche‘s now-destroyed Altadena location. As I wrote in January, the fire came “at a particularly vulnerable moment for a food community that was in the midst of renewal” with “a fresh generation of small-business owners ... starting new businesses or reviving old ones.”
One of those businesses was Altadena Beverage & Market on Allen Avenue. It survived the flames but its owners, Kate and Adam Vourvoulis, lost their home in the fire. Week after week I would drive by the superette, looking for the plastic goose mascot that always signaled that the shop was open for business. Along Lake Avenue, I’ve been watching for activity at David Tewasart and Clarissa Chin‘s Thai restaurant Miya, where I loved the khao soi and crispy snapper, and at Leo Bulgarini‘s gelateria and Italian restaurant Bulgarini. These business owners also saw their homes burn while their restaurants survived.
But surviving the flames, as former Times reporter Cindy Carcamo wrote in late January, doesn’t mean the businesses can easily reopen.
“We’re not a winner at all in any of this,” Bulgarini told Carcamo. “You’ve lost your home so you’ve lost your sanctuary, and you really have lost your business right now because it’s not going to be around for a while.”
He estimated that with so many of customers displaced, his business, at least in its Altadena location, would be “pretty much dead for at least a year.”
And yet ... there are small signs of progress. Army Corps of Engineer teams have made headway in the debris cleanup, though many, many homes await their turn. And while the green Servpro vans that popped up for smoke and ash remediation are still a common sight, they’re not quite as ubiquitous. Most heartening, a few businesses have begun to open their doors.
Last month, Maggie Cortez‘s popular restaurant El Patron began serving its classic Mexican American dishes again.
I stopped by last Friday for fish tacos and found the sunlit restaurant busy at lunchtime. It was good to be among my neighbors. Yet there were two conflicting scenes out the picture glass windows lined with colorful papel picado banners. Through one window was greenery from a pocket park untouched by the flames, but across the street, on the block where the pizzeria Side Pie used to be, the fire’s wreckage revealed itself like an open wound.
Then, the very next day, I spotted something new when I was leaving Armen Market on Allen Avenue (owner Armen Gharibi managed to open quickly after the fire, with only a minor noticeable glitch one day when the credit card connection wasn’t working). The goose was loose. The plastic bird wasn’t in its frequent resting spot along the sidewalk across from Armen; it was perched on the wood bench outside Altadena Beverage & Market. I walked over and found the store up and running.
“We couldn’t have imagined how much would change and that it would take 100 days and so many tears and so much uncertainty to come back,” read the shop’s most recent Instagram post from this week announcing a May 3 reopening celebration. “We weren’t sure if we wanted to. We were scared. Our whole future was uncertain. But your support and words of encouragement pushed us forward.”
It’s true that some of the shelves and one of the refrigerator cases were nearly empty. No Maury’s bagels yet. But there was some tempting dishware from the shop’s still-closed sister business, Zinnie’s Table. When I asked if they would be getting any Bub & Grandma’s bread deliveries soon, they said they’d already started and had sold out for the day.
I’ll be back this weekend for bread and maybe some bagels. Plus, I’ve got my eye on a colorful confetti-patterned cutting board that could go well with my new kitchen cabinets. I know the goose will be waiting.
Mole 3,675 days old and counting
Is mole better aged and rich or young and tart? This was one of the questions we contemplated this week at the sold-out residency of Enrique Olvera‘s acclaimed Mexico City restaurant Pujol at his L.A. outpost Damian in the Arts District. Olvera is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Pujol, which, as Food’s Stephanie Breijo recently wrote, is closed in Mexico City until May 5 for a quick remodel of the restaurant’s terrace. (At Olvera’s taqueria Ditroit behind Damian, a more casual pop-up, Molino el Pujol, will run through Sunday, but know that there will probably be a long line.)
On the menu Tuesday night, the first of the nine-day dinner series that ends April 30, were several dishes from Pujol’s past, including an avocado flauta with shrimp, and skewered baby corn coated in a coffee mayonnaise flecked with chicatana ants. One of my favorite dishes of the night was pulpo en su tinta, with a blackened octopus tendril wrapped around a silky mash of incredibly flavorful ayacote beans.
But the plate everyone was waiting for was the mole madre, aged and maintained like a sourdough starter for more than 10 years — or 3,675 days and counting on Tuesday night. Our server told us that some 90 kilos of the mother mole was flown to L.A. from Mexico City. The inky-dark sauce had several layers of complexity, including a smoky backnote. In the center of the circle of mole madre was a smaller circle of burnt orange mole nuevo. Only about a week old, it was made with several fruits that gave the sauce an intriguing tartness.
No protein was served on the plate. Instead you took freshly made hoja santa tortillas and swiped it into the sauce scarpetta-style. It was hard to decide which I liked better. All I can tell you is that by the end of the course there was barely any sauce left on the plate.
Look who’s coming to the Festival of Books
This weekend marks the 30th anniversary of the L.A. Times Festival of Books. Come see us at our Food x Now Serving booth near the cooking stage on the campus of the University of Southern California. We’ve got a great line-up of cookbook and food authors coming to the booth, including memoirist Laurie Woolever (“Care and Feeding”) and Found Oyster chef Ari Kolender (“How to Cook the Finest Things in the Sea”). Some of the chefs on the cooking stage include Fat + Flour chef Nicole Rucker, Milk Bar’s Christina Tosi, Kogi’s Roy Choi and “Top Chef” star Brooke Williamson. Speaking of “Top Chef,” I’m interviewing the show’s head judge, Tom Colicchio, and host Kristen Kish onstage Saturday at 4:30 p.m. And senior editor of Food, Danielle Dorsey, is talking with Sarah Ahn (“Umma: A Korean Mom’s Kitchen Wisdom”), Michelle T. King (“Chop Fry Watch Learn: Fu Pei-mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food”) and Steve Hoffman (“A Season for That: Lost and Found in Southern France”) about their memoirs at 3 p.m. on Saturday. Check here for the full lineup of food-related book happenings at the festival.
Also ...
- From Jenn Harris: L.A.’s hardest reservation — a new Italian supper club from Pizzana‘s Daniele Uditi.
- From Stephanie Breijo: A conversation with Heritage Barbecue‘s Daniel Castillo about his new Le Hut Dinette and the mental struggles of maintaining success in the restaurant industry. Plus, lots of restaurant opening news, including 61 Hundred Bread, AttaGirl, Santa Canela bakery, a new Villa’s Tacos focused on seafood and handroll bar Sama.
- From Carolynn Carreño: The ultimate carrot cake recipe.
You’re reading Tasting Notes
Our L.A. Times restaurant experts share insights and off-the-cuff takes on where they’re eating right now.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
Eat your way across L.A.
Like what you're reading? Sign up to get it in your inbox every week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
Eat your way across L.A.
Get our weekly Tasting Notes newsletter for reviews, news and more.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
