People who live in neighborhoods like South Central Los Angeles don't always
have a lot of options when they're going out to eat, because it's kind of a food
desert. It's typically just fast food or things you get hit the corner store:
chips, snacks, sodas. Chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson collaborated on a new
restaurant called LocaL where they aim to give inexpensive health for menu
options in neighborhoods that need it the most.
What they've done is really a new sort of unheard of concept where you have
this very inexpensive quick service and yet also chef-driven restaurant in areas
that have not received attention from chefs in the past.
We're heading to LocaL right now and I can't wait to try the different options.
"Hi, how are you today?" I'm good, I'm Lucas, what's your name? "I'm Kaitlyn."
Hi Kaitlin, nice to meet you. Looks like you have a lot of really good looking things
here. "Yeah so everything is really popular, it's all you know based on what
you like and what you prefer."
So maybe I could try, maybe I'll get a bowl, I'll try burger, maybe I'll try like a
little bit of everything, is that cool? "Yeah for sure, these two are my favorite
burgers." Those are yours? Okay great.
So why don't we — you said the messy beef chili bowl right? Ok so let's try that.
"Do you want turkey or beef, sir?" Let's try turkey.
Yeah let's get a cheeseburger.
Let's do this to a french toast,
the egg in a hole, let's try the beef and onion gravy, and
let's get a flat bread. "So your total's going to be $22.89."
How long've you been working here? "I've been working here since it opened."
What do you like about it? "The people, I love being in my community,
the food is great.
I eat here every day. We don't have anything like this over here at all, and they also
brought a healthy option, and they brought something that we just don't have over
here, so it's like the best of both worlds. So it's really cool to be here."
This neighborhood hasn't seen especially a lot of chef-driven restaurants, do
you think that's something that the neighborhood is embracing? Do you think
that's something that the neighborhood wants? "I think it's really
more of a question of why haven't we seen this before?
I think there comes this assumption that people don't want this,
and what we found is people want this, and they need this, and they need it at a price
that's affordable. I think with Daniel and Roy, what we've seen is two
people who are using their abilities,
what they're good at, to implement some kind of change, like to literally
give a finger to the system,
you know, in their way, and help people.
They're actually creating a living wage for people on staff,
you know, and that helps to bring back a neighborhood, 'cause now you have money
flowing and they have more money flowing in the immediate community. We start
here with this idea and you're looking at health, and changing, creating
opportunity financially, it only helps but to bring other businesses in.
Hopefully those other business that come in have the same mind state of
being a part of the neighborhood.
At the end of the day it's a choice, and all anybody wants in any situation in
anywhere in the world is a choice.
So hopefully we're providing good choices for people. A lot of
times your force fed bad food. I give it up to the two chefs having a similar idea."
Absolutely. "And I give it up to the people here.
I give it up to the neighborhood, I give it up to all the customers, and literally it's
not just one person, one idea.
It's literally a bunch of people coming together."
Thank you very much, appreciate it. "Thank you."
Looks delicious.
So why don't we just start digging in.
Since breakfast is the first meal of the day and this is the only breakfast item
we got...
I think I'm gonna have myself a little piece of french toast right here.
That's pretty decadent.
That's pretty sweet, absolutely bathed in this maple tasting syrup, but it tastes
real good. I like it a lot.
I would eat it for breakfast. I like and I think maybe there are some of you like
me out there,
you get a bowl of pasta that's really good, whatever kind of sauce or
deliciousness is leftover you just want to grab a piece of bread from the center of the table,
and sop it up.
That is this. So you just get a big old scoop full of beef and onion
gravy,
you can see the little pepper flakes in there, it's everything you wanted to be.
It's like if your mom made a roast and whatever the drippings were, it's just an
intense beef flavor with the onions and the peppers as well, except for you get a
whole cup of it.
I'm sort of in heaven with eating stuff like this. And it's two bucks!
We've got a burger, every place needs a burger.
That's a good burger. I think what sets this apart, because it's got a really
interesting relish on it. It's got this green onion, this scallion relish.
It's nice to have a sour, nice to have an acid flavor to counterbalance fatty and
salty and in this case that's exactly what it does and it really
sort of completes the flavor profile of the burger. Big messy chili bowl, weighs a
hundred pounds.
This looks very tasty. A lot of people I think will maybe crucify me for getting
turkey chili instead of beef chili. I gotta say though I like turkey chili!
I couldn't eat say an entire thing of this if it were just beef turkey. It's
lighter, it retains the flavors of the spices I think equally well, and it's
just a lighter meat that I feel like I can eat more of.
Remember when I said breakfast is the first meal of the day?
Breakfast is the first meal of the day and this is the only breakfast item we
got.
I lied, it's the middle meal today so here is a breakfast sandwich.
You know what this reminds me of? So this, you can see the different layers here.
This reminds me of like the tamago sushi you get.
It's just that kind of like dense cube of egg in this case it's not sweet its
salty and you've got this machaca beef.
Now what machaca beef is it is a reconstituted beef, but it's
like a pulled beef.
You've had a pulled pork sandwich, this is pulled beef.
This is great, this is a great breakfast sandwich.
You know a lot of what LocaL is trying to do is to say, you know what, a lot of
places have a lot of fast food stuff that's bad stuff, that bad-for-you stuff
that's mass-produced, and we're going to do riffs on at least some of the menu
items and produce better tasting and healthier and in a lot of cases less
expensive versions. I like that a lot.
Hey, I really hope you enjoyed this episode of Dining on a Dime from LocaL
in Watts in South LA.
If you'd like to watch more, please click here.