gathering

President Trump is scheduled to dine with tech executives from Apple, Meta, Google and OpenAI on Thursday night at a White House event in the newly renovated Rose Garden.

The gathering is the latest example of how the world’s most powerful tech leaders are forging stronger ties with Trump’s second administration.

There’s one high-profile tech executive who won’t be at the gathering: Tesla and xAI Chief Executive Elon Musk, who backed Trump but then feuded with the president after temporarily leading an effort to slash government spending.

Musk posted on X that he “was invited, but unfortunately could not attend” and a representative would show up on his behalf.

The Hill first reported that roughly two dozen tech and business leaders, including Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai and OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman, are on the invite list. The gathering is scheduled to take place after First Lady Melania Trump hosts an event for the new Artificial Intelligence Education task force.

“The president looks forward to welcoming top business, political, and tech leaders for this dinner and the many dinners to come on the new, beautiful Rose Garden patio,” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the Hill.

Meta declined to comment. Apple and xAI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ahead of the dinner, Microsoft and OpenAI announced ways the companies are supporting the White House’s efforts to expand AI literacy. As AI disrupts industries including entertainment and healthcare, workers have expressed anxiety about whether they will lose their jobs.

OpenAI said it’s working with businesses such as Walmart and John Deere to build a platform that will help employers find workers with AI skills. The San Francisco tech company, which also has a platform where people can learn about AI, plans to offer certifications so workers can showcase how much they know about the technology. OpenAI said it aims to to certify 10 million Americans by 2030.

Microsoft outlined several ways it’s trying to help students and workers learn more AI skills through its grants, partnerships and products, including offering a year of Microsoft 365 Personal — which includes the company’s AI assistant Copilot — free for all U.S. college students if they sign up before the end of October.

“AI is the defining technology of our time, and how we empower people to use it will shape our country’s future,” said Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella, who is also expected to attend the dinner, in a video. “That’s why we are so grateful to the President, First Lady and the entire administration for making it a national priority to prepare the next generation to harness AI’s power.”

Silicon Valley tech executives had a contentious relationship with Trump during his first term, sparring with the president over issues such as immigration.

They’ve struck a more friendly tone with the president during his second term as they push for a more hands-off approach to regulation while competing to dominate the artificial intelligence race.

In July, the Trump administration released an action plan that aimed to cut “red tape” so tech companies can quickly develop and deploy AI technology as they go head-to-head with firms in China and elsewhere. Trump tapped venture capitalist David Sacks, who is also expected to attend Thursday’s dinner, to guide the White House’s policy on AI and cryptocurrency.

As tech companies charge ahead, child safety and advocacy groups have raised concerns there aren’t enough guardrails in place to protect the mental health of young people as they spill their darkest thoughts to chatbots.

Trump has also publicly criticized many tech executives before striking deals with them. After Trump called for the resignation of Intel Chief Executive Lip-Bu Tan over alleged conflicts related to his reported investments in Chinese companies, tensions cooled after they met. Intel then announced in August that the U.S. government would take a roughly 10% stake in the semiconductor company.

Trump also struck an unusual deal with Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices that allows the companies to sell certain chips to China in exchange for giving the U.S. government a 15% cut of those sales.

This raised questions among politicians and legal experts about whether that agreement is legal. Nvidia previously said it would spend up to $500 billion over the next four years on AI infrastructure.

Other tech executives have shown support for building in the United States as they face the threat of tariffs from the Trump administration. They also donated to Trump’s inaugural fund after he won the presidential election and have been showing up at high-profile events.

Apple in August pledged to spend an additional $100 billion on domestic manufacturing, bringing its total U.S. investment commitment to $600 billion after Trump criticized the company for expanding iPhone manufacturing in India.

OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank announced this year that they planned to invest a total of $500 billion in U.S. AI infrastructure over the next four years.

The fight to save Dulan’s on Crenshaw … Jenn Harris’ immersion into Nobu Los Angeles vibes … the post-fire rebirth of Altadena’s Bernee as Betsy … plus a new restaurant with no-tip, no-fee, no-surprises menu pricing and more. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

Saving L.A. soul food

Greg Dulan inside Dulan’s on Crenshaw.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

On May 26, 1978, at 4:45 a.m., Adolf Dulan took out a black marker and yellow legal pad. The future “king of soul food,” who a few years later would open the Southern food mecca Aunt Kizzy’s Back Porch, noted the date and time in the upper right-hand corner and wrote across the top sheet in capital letters: “GREG.”

Then, itemizing each point in Roman numerals and underlining key words twice, the late social worker-turned-entrepreneur, who started out with an Orange Julius franchise and had at that point opened his first independent restaurant, Hamburger City, wrote instructions to his eldest son, Greg Dulan, on running a business.

One of Adolf Dulan’s five guidelines: “Find out [the] cost of each item you sell and how much profit it brings in — determine if you need to drop or add items to be sold.”

At the bottom of the second sheet of paper, taped to the first sheet to form a scroll-like document, Adolf Dulan wrote this directive to his son: “If you are ever going to be a business man, this will be your bible to use … [for] ‘making the nut.’ ”

One piece of advice the elder Dulan didn’t pass on to his son: Don’t let a parking lot deal take you down.

Earlier this week Greg Dulan, who in 1992 opened his own successful soul food restaurant, Dulan’s on Crenshaw — years before his father started Dulan’s Soul Food Kitchen — posted a call on social media for help from the community.

“I bought some adjacent real estate with the goal of building parking for the restaurant and a culinary kitchen for training and workforce development,” he said on a video collaboration with radio station KJLH. “The real estate portion is dragging down the restaurant. The restaurant is doing great but the overall business is in trouble and maybe won’t survive unless I get some kind of support.”

On a fundraising page put up by the nonprofit civic and public arts organization Destination Crenshaw, the situation for the restaurant, which reopened early last year after a two-year renovation, was presented as dire: “With foreclosure looming on September 6,” read the plea, “time is measured in days, not weeks.”

During a phone interview on Friday afternoon, however, Greg Dulan wanted to make one thing clear: “I’m going to be here.” There’s no way, he insisted, that he’s giving up on his restaurant without a fight.

“It’s more of a real estate issue than a restaurant issue,” he said. “The remodel took longer than I expected, and it went over budget. It ate up a lot of my reserve capital.”

Dulan’s on Crenshaw, on a busy section of Los Angeles’ Crenshaw corridor, which has become denser with redevelopment and the building of the Metro K line. After a two-year renovation, the restaurant, which has been a fixture for more than 30 years, reopened early last year.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

Redevelopment along the Crenshaw corridor, which prompted Dulan’s renovation, also put pressure on the restaurant. “We lost a lot of parking,” Dulan said. “The density on Crenshaw has been increased.”

He added valet parking to help relieve the pressure but hasn’t had the money to build a proper parking lot for the restaurant. Earlier this year, however, he started using the production kitchen on one of the two lots he bought to prepare heat-and-serve meals for Vallarta supermarket’s Hyde Park location and hopes to expand that operation.

The problem is that he took out a hard-money loan to fund the business and now a big balloon payment is due. “Sept. 6,” he said, “is the deadline for me to satisfy my loan obligation or refinance.” He’s hoping to avoid selling the two parcels he bought or even the land with the restaurant itself, but if he is forced to sell he says he would find a way to keep the restaurant going.

“I can run a successful restaurant,” Dulan said over the phone, “but real estate development is a whole different animal.”

Since the word went out that Dulan’s was in trouble, many people have responded with offers to help the restaurant, a soul food fixture for more than 30 years. “We’re getting calls from a lot of celebrities and people from the community,” he said. “Revenue is up 40% at the restaurant.”

Whether these offers will lead to a solution for Dulan’s money troubles is still uncertain, but for Los Angeles soul food lovers, the remodel has been a success. Dulan’s refurbished patio area has become a popular gathering spot for family parties, political events and even yoga classes. And his fried chicken is still some of the best in the city.

Fried chicken, meat loaf and more soul food favorites at Dulan’s on Crenshaw.

(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)

“I had no idea that that my little soul food restaurant would go viral,” Dulan said of the community response, “but apparently we built up a lot of goodwill that I underestimated.”

Vibes and miso cod at Nobu Los Angeles

A view of the sushi bar and main dining room at Nobu Los Angeles on La Cienega Boulevard.

(Catherine Dzilenski / For The Times)

Nobu Los Angeles, “which opened in 2008, several years after its more famous Malibu cousin,” writes columnist Jenn Harris, “is somewhat of a hidden gem on a stretch of La Cienega Boulevard, where black cars once swarmed its valet stand and reservations were elusive. Now … weeknight dinner reservations are procured with ease.” Though it “still vibrates with a current of money, celebrity and those who seek it,” Nobu L.A., Harris says, “suffers from the aesthetic malaise of an Asian-themed chain restaurant in the mid-2000s … The menu, for the most part, is … past its prime even if everyone (this writer included) still loves the black cod with miso.”

With a new chef at the helm of Nobu Los Angeles and a Netflix documentary on founder Nobu Matsuhisa released this summer, Harris tries to determine the value of the younger restaurant, up the road from the original Matsuhisa, which after nearly 40 years, she writes, has “exemplary” nigiri. Can Nobu L.A. “continue to thrive on vibes”?

Post-fire rebirth

At the newly reopened and renamed Betsy in Altadena (formerly Bernee), owner Tyler Wells, in a wide-brimmed hat, huddles with his staff at the bar overlooking the hearth.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

I was one of the few who was able to eat at the ambitious Altadena restaurant Bernee in the single month it was open before the Eaton fire destroyed much of the neighborhood around it. The restaurant, which was saved from the flames, was one of the spots that had been attracting diners from all over Los Angeles to the neighborhood. After the fire, chef Tyler Wells — who lost his home and was in the process of separating from his wife and restaurant partner, Ashley — thought he might leave the state and start over. But as Food’s Stephanie Brejo writes, Wells was drawn back to Altadena and is reopening the restaurant this weekend with a new name, Betsy, in honor of his late mother. Breijo’s story has all the details of Wells’ post-fire journey.

Chef-owner Justin Pichetrungsi’s doodles of new dishes for the renovated Anajak Thai Cuisine, left, and dishes served before the restaurant’s extensive remodel.

(Stephanie Breijo and Mariah Tauger / Los Angeles Times

)

And if you missed it, Breijo also talked with Anajak Thai‘s Justin Pichetrungsi last week about the two-month renovation of his family’s restaurant, which has reopened. “The hardest part of the business is the organization part, not the innovation,” he told Breijo. “Innovation is so fun…. But with all the behind-the-scenes stuff, people never saw how broken [the restaurant] was in order to make the show go on.” I can’t wait to check out the new show.

‘Instant-izing’ food

Customers shop and eat in the dining area at CU Ramyun Library convenience store in Hongdae, Seoul. Ramyun packets are ranked in terms of spiciness levels from “mild” to “very hot & hell.”

(Tina Hsu / For The Times)

Imagine “nearly every conceivable dish” … “turned into a packaged meal,” even “fried rice that you squeeze out of a tube,” writes Times Seoul correspondent Max Kim. “These have turned convenience stores into a $25-billion industry in South Korea and those food products are churned out at a staggering pace: up to 70 new food items hit the shelves each week, effectively offering a live feed of South Korean tastes.”

“In South Korea’s food retail market,” convenience store critic Chae Da-in tells Kim, “you go extinct if you’re not quick to change.”

Cooling down

The refreshing Mexican drink suero with lime and sparkling water.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

For these sweltering days, contributor Carolynn Carreño wrote about the refreshing Mexican water cocktail suero. It’s made with lime, sparkling water and lots of ice, then served in a salt-rimmed glass. She also includes two other cooling drink recipes, including IPA-Lada Michelada from the much-missed Whittier restaurant Colonia Publica and Salty Angeleno Micheladas, developed in our Times Test Kitchen using our own L.A. Times Salty Angeleno blend developed in collaboration with Burlap & Barrel. Salty Angeleno and our other spice blends, California Heat and L.A. Asada, are available online at Burlap & Barrel.

In the kitchen

Martin Draluck prepares sweet potato chili in the Times Test Kitchen.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Black Pot Supper Club chef and founder Martin Draluck, who was featured in the Netflix documentary series “High on the Hog” on Black food traditions, came to the Times Test Kitchen recently for our “Chef That!” video series. Watch him make sweet potato chili with a secret ingredient — a tab of Abuelita chocolate. As deputy food editor Betty Hallock writes, it “gives the chili a mole-reminiscent richness.” The vegetarian chili, she adds, “comes together in under an hour. Find the recipe here.

And if you missed last week’s “Chef That!” episode, you can watch Adrian Forte, the cookbook author of “Yawd” and chef at Sam Jordan’s modern Caribbean restaurant Lucia, make easy fried plantains with Scotch Bonnet aioli. Get the 30-minute recipe here.

Early bird tickets

VIP tickets (allowing early entry) to The Times’ Food Bowl Night Market, presented by Square, are already sold out for the Saturday-night session taking place Oct. 11 at City Market Social House in downtown L.A. But Friday-night VIP tickets are still available and for early birds, there is a “date night deal” with two general admission tickets available for $199, a savings of about 20%. More than 40 restaurants are participating, including Holbox, Baroo, the Brothers Sushi, OyBar, Heritage Barbecue, Crudo e Nudo, Hummingbird Ceviche House, Rossoblu, Perilla LA, Evil Cooks, Villa’s Tacos, Holy Basil and Luv2Eat Thai Bistro. Check lafoodbowl.com for tickets and info.

Also …

A recent latte art throwdown at Picaresca Barra de Café in Boyle Heights.

(Julie Wolfson / For The Times)

• Latte art “throwdowns, special menus, omakases, pop-ups, speakeasies and out-of-the-box events are part of L.A.’s growing underground coffee scene,” writes contributor Julie Wolfson in her guide to 9 places to check out IYKYK coffee events. Kumquat, Be Bright, York Manor Market, the Pasadena branch of Woon, Mandarin and Picaresca Barra de Café are some of places that host the events. Of course, if you don’t want to wait for a special event to immerse yourself in coffee geekdom, Jack Benchakul is almost always pouring and, as restaurant critic Bill Addison described a while back, talking water alkalinity at Endorffeine in Chinatown.
• “The American beverage firm Keurig Dr Pepper,” reports the business section’s Caroline Petrow-Cohen, plans to buy JDE Peet’s, the European parent company of California’s gourmet coffee trailblazer, Peet’s Coffee, in an all-cash transaction worth about $18 billion.” Note that JDE Peet’s also owns Stumptown.
• Cracker Barrel is keeping its old-time logo after a new design elicited an uproar, reports Dee-Ann Durbin.
• Durbin also breaks down the rise of Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte business, by the numbers.
• And here’s a restaurant model to watch: San Francisco’s soon-to-open 14-seat counter spot La Cigale from chef-owner Joseph Magidow is instituting all-inclusive pricing with no additional tax, tip or service fees. “When the bill arrives, there will be no surprises,” reports the San Francisco Chronicle’s Elena Kadvany. “The price on the set menu — $140 — is exactly what diners pay.”

The feel of an Italian festa in Altadena, the South Bay’s “time capsule” Japanese food scene, delivery drones, a tasting menu hidden in a parking lot, more downtown L.A. closures, a Basque restaurant’s last days. Plus, recycle or reuse? And a bar that celebrates burlesque and red Solo cups. I’m Laurie Ochoa, general manager of L.A. Times Food, with this week’s Tasting Notes.

Good food, good wine, good neighbors

The happy, chaotic scene outside Good Neighbor Bar and West Altadena Wine + Spirits with families enjoying Triple Beam Pizza, one of the rotating vendors appearing during the shop and bar’s summer pop-up series.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

When I first started going to Italy for summer vacations with my late husband, Jonathan Gold, and the extended friends and family of chef Nancy Silverton, we’d get to know different areas of Umbria and Tuscany through festas or sagras, local gatherings centered around a specific regional dish or ingredient — maybe cinghiale (wild boar), porcini mushrooms, summer truffles or various pastas such as strozzapreti (which is being celebrated this week in the Umbrian town of Paciano). These are kid-friendly, come-as-you-are parties, typically on a soccer field or town square with long tables, local wine poured into plastic cups and food often served by volunteer cooks pitching in to help raise money for a good cause.

Until recently, the closest I’d come to experiencing that sagra spirit in Los Angeles was the run of summer movie nights that Leo Bulgarini used to host outside his Altadena gelateria and restaurant Bulgarini Gelato Vino Cucina. He and his crew piled plates with pasta and salad before sunset signaled the start of the movie, often an Italian comedy or melodrama, projected onto an outdoor wall or a large, jerry-rigged screen. People would bring their kids and dogs, meet up with neighbors and settle into camping chairs or benches with their wine or cups of gelato once the movie began.

Bulgarini’s restaurant, which escaped the flames of the Eaton fire in January, has yet to reopen because of smoke damage and the loss of so much of the neighborhood around his shop — not to mention the fact that he, his wife and their son lost their home in the blaze.

But two other Altadena business owners have joined forces with local restaurants to create one of the most welcoming neighborhood gatherings with the soul of an Italian sagra.

As senior food editor Danielle Dorsey wrote in the guide she and Stephanie Breijo put together on the 21 best new bars in Los Angeles, a summer pop-up series has emerged outside Good Neighbor, “the first cocktail bar to open in Altadena in 40 years,” and West Altadena Wine + Spirits, both opened last year by Randy Clement and April Langford, the couple behind Everson Royce Bar in the Arts District, Silverlake Wine and the former Pasadena wine shop Everson Royce.

On Tuesday nights, Brisa Lopez Salazar’s Casa pop-up serves tacos with a different handmade tortilla each week — maybe white heirloom corn with beet juice or masa infused with turmeric or activated charcoal. On Thursdays, Triple Beam Pizza shows up; Fridays there are oysters, poke bowls and lobster rolls from Shucks Oyster Co.; Saturdays you can get smash burgers from For the Win and, new to the line-up, Altadena’s recently reopened Miya Thai restaurant is serving on Sundays.

Triple Beam’s heirloom tomato pizza served at the summer outdoor pop-up series hosted by Good Neighbor Bar and West Altadena Wine + Spirits.

(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)

Two weeks ago, an Instagram post from Triple Beam about its newest heirloom tomato pizza drew me to the outdoor space just outside the Altadena burn zone. I found the patio packed, sagra-style, with groups of families and friends from the neighborhood and beyond. Kids chased each other in and around a wood-chip-bedded play area fitted with reclaimed tree stumps; more freshly sawed stumps were repurposed as stools and tables around the outdoor space. Dogs sat on laps or at customers’ feet. A roving Good Neighbor barkeep took cocktail orders at the picnic tables. And on the side of the building, at a takeout-style window, a West Altadena Wine merchant was selling glasses and flights of wine.

Almost as soon as I arrived, I reconnected with a friend I hadn’t seen in years as well as a family from my daughter’s old high school. The San Gabriel mountains in the near distance turned pink and purple during sunset, framed by a U-Haul sign as we ate our pizza, which arrived with all colors and shapes of tomato. With it, we sipped Sébastien Bobinet and Émeline Calvez’s Piak blanc de noir from clear plastic cups. It was a perfect summer evening, made poignant with a stop on the way out at the wall-sized map created by Highland Park production designer Noel McCarthy marking the more than 9,000 homes and businesses destroyed or damaged in the fire, and the places where people died. The map, as writer Marah Eakin reported in April, has helped people visualize the shocking extent of the fire’s devastation, even as Good Neighbor’s summer gatherings have brought people together, a reminder of why so many want to rebuild this community.

The map Noel McCarthy made displaying the extent of damage in Altadena from the Eaton fire. It is installed outside the parking lot and patio area of the Good Neighbor Bar and West Altadena Wine + Spirits.

(Marcus Ubungen / For The Times)

Japanese food ‘made the Japanese way’

The D-Combo at Fukagawa in Gardena.

(Rob Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

Food’s summer intern Lauren Ng is headed back to school soon, but before she left to resume her studies at New York University, the Torrance native finished a project examining the “time capsule” nature of Japanese food in the South Bay. The area is “home to the biggest suburban Japanese community in the United States,” thanks in no small part to three of Japan’s biggest automakers — Toyota, Honda and Nissan — establishing their U.S. headquarters in the region during the 1960s. The car companies are now gone, but many of the restaurants remain, with a new generation of South Bay places opened in recent years. Ng visited many of them and wrote a guide to 18 of the best Japanese restaurants and food producers in the South Bay.

A loss for Chinatown

Yue Wa Market owner Amy Tran holds up dragon fruit and cherimoya at her Chinatown market in 2019.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

In 2019, when former Times columnist Frank Shyong reported on the changes in Chinatown that contributed to the closure of Ai Hoa Market and G and G Market, he wrote that one of the few places left to buy affordable fruits and vegetables in the neighborhood was Amy Tran’s Yue Wa Market. Now, as columnist Jenn Harris wrote this week, Tran and her family will close Yue Wa next month after 18 years serving Chinatown. A spate of robberies, slow pandemic recovery, ICE raids and the forces of gentrification contributed to the family’s decision.

“I don’t feel ready to let go of the store, but there’s not much I can do to bring more people in,” Tran told Harris. “Business was booming and a lot of people used to come around, but now there is no foot traffic and a lot of people have moved away from Chinatown.”

More downtown losses: It was only a couple of weeks ago that I was at downtown L.A.’s Tokyo Fried Chicken, where, I must admit, the dining room was sparsely populated but four-wheeled robot carts were kept busy with takeout deliveries. Yet as Karla Marie Sanford reported this week, after owners Elaine and Kouji Yamanashi announced they were closing the restaurant Aug. 10, customers suddenly showed up and waited in an hours-long line for one last chance to eat the chicken known for its super-crisp skin and soy sauce-ginger marinade. It was a brief return to the restaurant’s days in its original Monterey Park location where lines for a table were constant.

The downtown location had the bad luck to open just before the pandemic and never had a chance to reach its full potential. Elaine Yamanashi told Sanford that she and her chef husband hope at some point to find a new location for Tokyo Fried Chicken. “We’re taking this time, not off,” she said, “but to reflect.”

Angel City Brewery.

(Sam Samders)

Meanwhile, Angel City Brewery, founded in 1997 by Michael Bowe then acquired in 2012 by Boston Beer — a year after the company established its downtown brewpub location notable for its distinctive neon signage that acted as a welcome to the Arts District — announced that it will close next April when the building’s lease is up.

“The brand no longer lines up with our long-term growth strategy,” said a Boston Beer spokesperson, adding that the company plans to focus on its “core national brands,” which include Samuel Adams.

And LA Cha Cha Chá in the Arts District, with its lush, tropical rooftop, is also set to close sometime this fall according to co-owner Alejandro Marín.

End of the Basque road

In addition to prime rib at the Glendora Continental, which is being put up for sale, French Basque dishes like slow-braised lamb in a Burgundy demi-glace, pickled tongue and escargots à la bourguignonne are on the menu, along with crab cakes and salads.

(Catherine Dzilenski / For The Times)

There wasn’t an empty seat at Glendora Continental when contributor Jean Trinh stopped into the 45-year-old restaurant on Route 66, “a reminder,” she writes, “of fading connections to the Basque diaspora in California.” Now that the owners have put the restaurant up for sale, its days are numbered so regular customers have been showing up for live music and the Continental’s “mix of Basque, French and American food,” including lamb shank, prime rib, pickled tongue and escargots à la bourguignonne. “I would say it’s Basque with a sprinkle of American,” co-owner Antoinette Sabarots told Trinh, “or vice versa.”

Yes, restaurants are still opening

Oy Bar chef-owner Jeff Strauss, left, with sous chef Esteban Palacios at Vey, the tandem outdoor bar.

(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)

Despite all the closure news, as Stephanie Breijo reports, good restaurants keep opening in Los Angeles, including Baby Bistro from chef Miles Thompson and his sommelier business partner, Andy Schwartz. They call it an “Angeleno bistro,” with inspiration from Japanese, Korean, Italian, Mexican, French and more cuisines. “I think the food is really defined by the cultures of Los Angeles,” Thompson told Breijo. “If you already eat at any of the regional or international restaurants in this city, you’ll find inspiring foods that go into this menu.”

And chef Jeff Strauss, of the Highland Park deli Jeff’s Table and OyBar in Studio City, has set up a weekend-only six-course tasting menu spot called Vey in the back parking lot of OyBar. As Strauss described it to Breijo, he thinks of it as “a casual, rolling omakase.”

Another hidden spot is Evan Funke’s new Bar Avoja (slang for “hell yeah”), a Hollywood cocktail lounge accessed through the dining room of the chef’s Mother Wolf restaurant. In addition to drinks, Roman street food is on the menu. Meanwhile, the chef’s namesake Beverly Hills restaurant, Funke, is temporarily closed due to a fire in the kitchen’s exhaust system on Tuesday. As Breijo reported, no one was hurt and there was minimal damage.

Also, Hong Kong’s Hi Bake chain has opened a pet-friendly branch in Beverly Hills serving “banana rolls, thousand-layer cakes, meat floss rolls and egg tarts. And San Francisco’s Boichik Bagels, which opened in Los Feliz earlier this year, is now serving at downtown L.A.’s landmark Bradbury Building.

Burlesque and red Solo cups

Uncle Ollie’s Penthouse owner Brian Houck in the “backvan” at his downtown Los Angeles bar.

(Roger Kisby / For The Times)

Former L.A. Weekly nightlife columnist and Los Angeles magazine editor Lena Lecaro writes about Uncle Ollie’s Penthouse, a new downtown L.A. bar with “wild, color-saturated decor, potent cocktails served in red Solo cups and a soundtrack that inspires stomping the floor with pals or singing along with strangers.”

”I can’t remember the last time I felt so connected to my hometown as an L.A. native,” musician Taleen Kali told Lecaro. “I also love that you get to keep your own party cup all night — it’s a total vibe, plus it’s less wasteful and more sustainable.”

Noodles easier to make than you think

Mei Lin, chef and proprietor of 88 Club chef in Beverly Hills, right, makes mung bean noodles in the Times Test Kitchen. Left, the finished spicy mung bean noodles.

(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)

When Mei Lin, chef and proprietor of 88 Club in Beverly Hills and former “Top Chef” and “Tournament of Champions” winner, demonstrated her spicy mung bean noodle recipe in the Times Test Kitchen for our “Chef That!” video series, we all wanted to try making the noodles. It’s a lot easier and fun to do than most of us thought. You start with a startchy base that thickens into jelly in a bowl. After you unmold the gelatinous blob, you scrape a grater over the mound, forming the noodles. Then it’s just a matter of seasoning the noodles with chile, peanuts and herbs.

Mark the dates

The Times’ Food Bowl Night Market, this year presented by Square, is taking place Oct. 10 and 11 at City Market Social House downtown. Among the participating restaurants announced so far are Holbox, Baroo, the Brothers Sushi, OyBar, Heritage Barbecue, Crudo e Nudo, Hummingbird Ceviche House, Rossoblu, Perilla LA, Evil Cooks and Holy Basil. VIP tickets that allow early entry always go fast. Check lafoodbowl.com for tickets and info.

And at this year’s LA Chef Conference on Oct. 6, an all-day event taking place at Redbird and Vibiana in downtown L.A., I’ll be on a panel with Roy Choi, Nancy Silverton, Ludo Lefebvre and Evan Kleiman talking about the legacy of Jonathan Gold. Find information on tickets and other events at the conference here.

Also …

(Los Angeles Times photo illustration; Photo by Nick Agro/For The Times)

Authorities in both Egypt and Libya have stopped activists seeking to break Israel’s blockade on Gaza, protest organisers have said, with reports of more detentions and deportations taking place.

“Forty participants of the Global March to Gaza have had their passports taken at a checkpoint on the way out of Cairo,” the organisers of the Global March to Gaza said in a statement on Friday.

“They are being held in the heat and not allowed to move,” they continued, adding that another “15 are being held at hotels”.

The activists are from France, Spain, Canada, Turkiye and the United Kingdom, it said, adding, “We are a peaceful movement and we are complying with Egyptian law.”

The group urged embassies to help secure their release so they could complete their voyage.

Activists arrived in Egypt this week for the Global March to Gaza, a grassroots initiative aiming to pressure Israel to allow the delivery of aid and humanitarian supplies to Gaza’s starving population.

Organisers said that participants from 80 countries were set to begin their march towards Egypt’s Rafah crossing with Gaza, with about 4,000 activists expected to take part.

The overland protest was to coincide with other solidarity efforts, including a boat carrying aid and activists that was intercepted by the Israeli military earlier this week as it attempted to reach Gaza.

Detentions and deportations

According to plans outlined by organisers, participants were to travel by bus to El Arish, a city in the heavily securitised Sinai Peninsula, before walking the final 50km (30 miles) to Rafah. Protesters intended to camp near the border before returning to Cairo on June 19.

However, Egyptian police stopped several groups of foreign nationals en route, forcing vehicles to pull over roughly 30km (20 miles) from Ismailia, just outside the Sinai. Activists said police ordered passengers with non-Egyptian passports to disembark, blocking their passage to Rafah.

Paul Murphy, an independent Irish member of parliament, who has travelled to Egypt to take part, said in a post on X, “We have had our passports confiscated and are being detained. It seems Egyptian authorities have decided to crack down on the Great March To Gaza.”

Mo, a member of the protest march from the Netherlands, said that his group had headed in taxis to Ismailia, but that at a checkpoint near the city foreigners were told to hand over their passports, with only Egyptians allowed through. He also described riot police who came to clear the road of protesters.

Now back in Cairo, Mo and the group from the Netherlands are deciding what to do next.

“We are trying to regroup,” he told Al Jazeera. “A lot of our group is splintered, some have been beaten up by the police… so they’re coming back battered and bruised and broken.”

“It seems like the Egyptian authorities are determined to stop us from reaching anywhere near the border.”

Security sources told the Reuters news agency that at least 88 individuals had been detained or deported from Cairo airport and other locations across the country.

Three airport sources told Reuters that at least 73 foreign nationals were deported on a flight to Istanbul for violating entry protocols, with about 100 more still awaiting deportation at the airport.

Officials at Cairo International Airport said new directives were issued to airlines requiring all passengers travelling to Egypt between June 12 and 16 to hold confirmed return tickets, Reuters reported.

Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has said that any visits to the Rafah border area must be coordinated in advance with Egyptian embassies or official bodies, citing security concerns in the Sinai.

Organisers of the march maintain they coordinated the trip with authorities and called on the government to release those detained.

Convoy blocked in Libya

Separately, a land convoy known as “Soumoud”, which had departed Tunisia carrying activists from Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania, was stopped on Friday morning at the entrance to Sirte, a city in Libya under the control of forces loyal to military commander Khalifa Haftar.

“The caravan was barred from passing through at the entrance to the city of Sirte,” Tunisian organiser Wael Naouar said in a video posted on Facebook.

Naouar said the convoy needs Egyptian authorisation to reach Gaza but had received mixed messages from local security officials. “Some told us we could cross in a few hours. Others insisted that ‘Egypt has denied [passage] and therefore you will not pass,’” he said.

On Wednesday, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz ordered the military to block demonstrators from entering Gaza from Egypt, claiming people involved were “jihadist protesters”.

“I expect the Egyptian authorities to prevent them from reaching the Egypt-Israel border and not allow them to carry out provocations and try to enter Gaza,” he added.

It comes as Israel continues its relentless air strikes on Gaza, while severely restricting the flow of aid, including food, water, and medical supplies, as humanitarian experts warn that the enclave could fall into full-scale famine unless Israel lifts the blockade.