Amid LA Wildfire Devastation, Restaurants Are Among the First to Help

On Wednesday, January 8, chefs Greg Dulan and Kim Prince got a call from chef José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen. They were, at the time, tasked by the food relief nonprofit with feeding firefighters in the Altadena community, a historic African American neighborhood all but destroyed by the raging Eaton Fire just days after New Year’s. Prince, a longtime LA resident and founder of Hotville Chicken, and Dulan, a native of Crenshaw and owner of Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen in Inglewood, had 24 hours to prepare their Dulanville food truck — and to process.

Like so much that week, things quickly — and repeatedly — changed. Within a day, World Central Kitchen helped to mobilize a cohort of Los Angeles-based chefs to serve residents impacted by the fires. On that Wednesday, Dulan and Prince drove down Altadena’s Woodbury Avenue, past downed power lines, and into the eerie darkness, where houses still smoldered and ash permeated the air. Longtime residents, elders, and locals who’d lived in the neighborhood for years sought out Dulan and Prince’s menu of old-school, Southern-style comfort food: Plant-based jambalaya and vegan coleslaw, as well as fried chicken, cornbread muffins, hot collard greens, red beans and rice, and sticky ribs nourished a community in deep, unfathomable pain.

“These families have already experienced enough transition and displacement by losing their home,” Dulan told Eater. “Least we can offer is a stationed area where they can get meals that they are familiar with — a diet that they understand.”

Courtesy of World Central Kitchen

Courtesy of Greg Dulan and Kim Prince

On January 7, the Palisades, Hurst, and Eaton wildfires erupted in communities across Los Angeles, destroying 40,000 acres of homes, businesses, and storied communities in their path. Weeks later, the city is still reeling: Communities and neighborhoods have been flattened, favorite restaurants have been destroyed, historic locations are in ashes. Yet, in the midst of tragedy, chefs, restaurants, business owners, and organizations in and outside of the City of Angels have used every single day to feed and uplift the Los Angeles community. LA restaurants’ striking mobilization efforts during the wildfires are a reflection of the hospitality industry’s indisputable history of stepping up for communities during their most crucial times of need — climate disasters, global pandemics, and national tragedies among them.

“Restaurants are always the first ones to give back,” says chef Daniel Shemtob, who lost his own Pacific Palisades home in the fires. “During COVID, I watched LA suffer. All of our restaurants struggled; I was down 90 percent, and I had to close three restaurants, yet I and friends in the industry were out there giving free meals away. That’s the thing that’s so cool about our industry, and why support is so necessary — it creates the thread of the culture, because it’s local and it’s what we do for each other. It’s how we give hospitality, and that multiplies.”

Ryan Salm/World Central Kitchen

Ryan Salm/World Central Kitchen

Ryan Salm/World Central Kitchen

Ryan Salm/World Central Kitchen

José Andrés’s World Central Kitchen has served tens of thousands of meals to Angelenos amid wildfire recovery.

“When my parents and my grandparents first immigrated to Los Angeles, [Altadena] helped us find our footing in the United States,” says Harry Trinh, creative director of NYC’s Welcome to Chinatown. “Because of that community, I had the opportunity to pursue higher education and my world of design, and now I’m giving back.”

Trinh and his colleagues in New York took lessons from COVID-19 and applied them to the efforts to support his native LA: They coordinated the Sik Faan Fund (“Sik fa-an” 食飯 means “let’s eat” in Cantonese) for LA’s first responders and evacuees from small businesses — similar to the folks Dulan and Prince served in Altadena. “Los Angeles is such an important part of our national identity in the United States, and the people there are part of our community, too,” Trinh says. “It’s important for us to stand up and be there for them during their time of need.”

Since the fires began, Los Angeles has sustained an estimated $250 billion dollars in damage. Just five years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the city’s restaurant community, struggling to recover from previous disasters, is in a more precarious position than ever before.

“The crisis follows the global pandemic, economic uncertainty, rising costs, vandalism, unjust lawsuits,” says Regarding HER’s chief operating officer Niki Weber. The Los Angeles-based organization is particularly invested in supporting the needs of women of color, queer folks, immigrant-owned businesses, and other restaurants helmed by individuals from marginalized communities. “Service workers have truly been through it — up to 2024, they thought it was a disaster,” Weber says. “Now they have this layered on top of it, and it’s really proving to be insurmountable.” Eater LA reported on January 17 that, while many Los Angeles restaurants are open, diners aren’t coming in, leading to drastic drops in revenue.

These layered challenges are why Melanie McElroy felt compelled to get involved. The founder of Detroit’s Melway Burger pop-up implored a response to what she sees as national heartbreak. The owner shared a donation link through Instagram the weekend after the fires and identified three recipient organizations that aligned with the pop-up’s values: The Mutual Aid LA Network (MALAN) for its direct assistance to communities in need; the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), which supports farmworker fire brigades; and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), which is supplying incarcerated firefighter encampments. McElroy says supporters, some of whom had lived in or grown up in LA, came out in freezing cold weather this week to eat burgers at the pop-up’s winter residency inside a local brewery, where proceeds were split among the three relief organizations.

“Food is the only thing we all have in common and, despite living across the country from this crisis, it’s clear that we are all in this together,” McElroy wrote in an email to Eater. “The Melway is happy to give our Detroit neighbors the opportunity to show solidarity with the victims of these fires, and we hope businesses around the country will do the same.”

Courtesy of World Central Kitchen

Courtesy of World Central Kitchen

McElroy joins national relief efforts that prove smaller businesses can rally to support restaurants outside of their own cities; many food industry staff around the country have continued not only to contribute aid to LA’s restaurant scene, but also used their platforms to raise awareness about the crisis, long past when it feels like the media cycle has moved on from it. In Dallas, Burger Schmurger used a Sunday pop-up to fundraise for Altadena and Pasadena fire victims and the Pasadena Educational Foundation; in Las Vegas, Featherblade Craft Butchery donated 20 percent of a day’s proceeds to World Central Kitchen and collected non-perishable food, clothing, and household items for those who’d lost homes in the wildfires; and in late January, Brooklyn’s Archestratus Books + Foods hosted a fundraising bake sale to support relief efforts. In D.C., chefs Kat Petonito and Rochelle Cooper of the Duck and the Peach hosted a benefit dinner with local chefs in Mid-January and Moon Rabbit owner and Stop AAPI Hate co-founder, chef Kevin Tien, will host a benefit dinner to aid the victims of LA’s Koreatown and historical Altadena on February 9.

It’s demonstrative of the ongoing support that LA restaurants desperately need, according to Chris Shepherd, Houston chef and founder of the Southern Smoke Foundation. “The restaurant business has always been stressful, but when it’s not busy, it’s really stressful,” he says. “And then you get here with natural disasters, boy, come on: It’s almost unbearable. Our community is in need.”

The most immediate need is financial. Dulan reported serving thousands of meals within the first few days of the disaster, using his own personal funds to purchase food and equipment necessary to reach folks. While World Central Kitchen reimburses their food relief partners during disasters, chefs like Dulan often have to front costs and wait to be reimbursed, which, he says, adds to the stress of the situation.

But it also extends beyond money: Many food workers who support disaster relief efforts require care that addresses their mental health and wellness amid the action. The Southern Smoke Foundation, which helps provide year-round emergency relief to members of the restaurant service community, has partnered with Cal Lutheran to provide no-cost counseling to food and beverage workers impacted by the fires. Shepherd, who’s paid witness to the impact of such disasters as Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Beryl, and the Great Texas Freeze during his 20-plus year career in Houston, says these chefs need someone to talk to. Southern Smoke is currently allotting resources to support LA food workers’ mental health, and strategizing on how to best assist with the community’s steep financial needs in the coming months.

“The mental health care program has always been there to take care of folks, to give them a place to process this trauma, to have space to have difficult conversations and talk tough things through,” he says.

Federal and state-level failures contribute to the industry’s struggles, and restaurateurs are often left supporting themselves while they also support communities in need. Longtime restaurateurs like Mary Sue Milliken, who cofounded Border Grill in Las Vegas with her business partner, chef Susan Feigner, point out the need to push those in positions of power to support an industry and a city that are essential to American culture. “I’ve been telling people, you may not be in a position to part with dollars and cents, which is completely understandable, but make yourself heard,” Milliken says. “Make some noise, and engage with your lawmakers.”

Former Food & Wine restaurant editor and LA resident Khusbuh Shah reinforced the need for stronger industry support in her Substack Tap Is Fine, pointing out the hypocrisy of businesses like OpenTable and Resy not being at the forefront of relief efforts for the very restaurants that keep both platforms operational. Resy eventually pledged $200,000 to World Central Kitchen, and OpenTable launched a daylong social media fundraising initiative to support the California Restaurant Foundation. But Shah, an Eater contributor, argues that these efforts aren’t enough. “Rebuilding after a major natural disaster like this is a marathon and not a sprint,” she wrote. “And if we want to rebuild these communities, we need to ensure that there are restaurants and bakeries and coffee shops standing as well. These small businesses are the heart of these cities that we love and the place we call home.”

Ryan Salm/World Central Kitchen

The recovery continues in the heart of LA’s restaurant community. “It’s a great problem to have — a bunch of people want to help,” says Feigner, who, along with Milliken, was serving upwards of 2,000 hot meals at lunch and 1,000 meals at dinner at posts throughout LA during the height of the fires. “They want to come, they want to serve food. They want to make the connection with the people that are out of their homes and be able to give them a warm meal or a sandwich or a cup of coffee.”

Milliken is heading up a restaurant recovery fund for local, independent restaurants — not only those impacted by evacuations and smoke, but also restaurants whose sales dropped upwards of 50 percent following the wildfires. Weber’s organization, which Milliken helped found, continues to support women and vulnerable restaurants with limited representation or access to capital, especially those owned by immigrants and people of color. “It’s one of the hardest restaurant industries in the country, but also one of the most wonderful,” Milliken says. “We’ve long helped our community because it’s in our DNA — it’s ingrained. Now, we need that support from our community and our industry, and that help can come from every single action, big or small.”

Courtesy of World Central Kitchen

Courtesy of World Central Kitchen

For Shemtob, the owner of LA-based Snibbs footwear and the Lime Truck, those actions begin right in the kitchen. The husband and soon-to-be-father said that while the seven days following the initial wildfire outbreak were some of the hardest of his life, being near his food truck — and feeding survivors and first responders his food — was what made him crack a smile. He and his staff, with support from World Central Kitchen, took his food truck all over LA, serving communities in North Tarzana, Pasadena, and the Palisades, and offered free shoes to civilians impacted by the wildfires. “As soon as I got on my truck, we fed 500 people who were affected by the fires in 90 minutes,” he says. “I was hustling, giving back, and doing all the things that I love to do when it comes to food and hospitality. And I started to feel instantly better.”

“There’s nothing better than feeling useful when you’re surrounded by helplessness,” said Milliken. “If you can find a little light in the darkness, be able to hand someone a hot meal when you know it’s a firefighter who’s been working 24 hours and is halfway through their shift — there’s just not a better feeling.”