Latest news with #Alder&Sage
Los Angeles Times
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Mimosas to bacon, stuffed olives or shrimp. Check out our list of L.A.'s Best 32 Weekend Brunch Spots
Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter. It's Sunday, May 4. I'm your host, Andrew J. Campa. Here's what you need to know: With Mother's Day a week away, it's a good time to preview suitable spots for celebrating mom. The Los Angeles Times' Food Team has, of course, aided the cause with its recommendations. They picked their 32 Best Weekend Brunch Spots in Los Angeles. They include old favorites such as tart and bubbly mimosas, tasty Bloody Marys and bountiful Benedicts. But there are other delights, from seafood towers to stacked sandwiches and caviar service. The locales range from breakfast nooks in Long Beach, to drinks in Pasadena and savory treats along the way on the Westside and in Inglewood. Of course, you don't need a special occasion to enjoy brunch, just an appetite, a little sense of adventure and an appreciation of quality. So, here's a sumptuous preview from that list. Of course, check out the entire article for all the details. Alder & Sage (Long Beach) Our Danielle Dorsey selected this Kerstin Kansteiner Retro Row cafe, which buzzes with locals picking up daily pistachio-rose cold brews. Others settle in for a few hours of remote work on the sandy wraparound patio. On weekends, the Streamline-style building is packed for brunch, with the restaurant serving as a popular stop before or after visiting nearby thrift stores or the beach. The brunch menu skews seasonal with soyrizo hash, French toast bedecked with apple compote and rosemary maple syrup, and quiche threaded with mushrooms and leeks. Cocktails encompass soju Bloody Marys, micheladas, a couple of low-ABV spritzes and mimosas that you can order with a flight of three juices, plus wine by the glass and bottle. A handful of nonalcoholic options are available, including a convincing mojito mocktail. Pez Coastal Kitchen (Pasadena) The brunch menu at Bret Thompson and Lucy Thompson-Ramirez's Pasadena restaurant is a celebration of seafood, with a grand chilled tower, ceviche, oysters and caviar that impressed my colleague Jenn Harris. There's a whole fried fish, and you can opt for smoked salmon on your eggs Benedict biscuit or avocado toast. The bar slings spritzes, build-your-own mimosas and a handful of brunch-appropriate cocktails. But Thompson has managed to create a menu that also will appeal to the diner looking for French toast or a breakfast sandwich. Harris believes in starting brunch with the bacon flight, a wooden plank of four slabs of bacon rubbed with various flavorings. Recently there was apple-cinnamon bacon, an apricot mustard variety and chipotle honey. The French toast fingers are more of a meal than the name might suggest, with tiles of perfect French toast that are crisp around all the edges and soft and tender in the middle. The dish is scattered with toasted walnuts and slices of sweet, jammy banana and a drizzle of salted caramel sauce. There should be at least one order on every table. Saltie Girl (West Hollywood) Seafood lovers, climb aboard, says my colleague Stephanie Breijo. Ever since docking in West Hollywood, the Boston-founded, seafood-slinging Saltie Girl has served some of L.A.'s best and most indulgent shellfish towers, lobster rolls and sea-tinged pastas, sandwiches and toasts — in addition to a tinned-fish list that's roughly 150 options long. But brunch is an especially good time to set sail, with dishes such as Eggs & Eggs, where caviar and crème fraîche top silken scrambled eggs; meaty hunks of fried lobster complement a fluffy-interiored waffle with spicy maple syrup and sweet corn butter; and the Benedicts can involve caviar, smoked salmon or lobster. But one item worth launching a thousand ships isn't seafood-focused at all: Don't miss the cinnamon roll sweet buns — made by Ben Sidell's SweetBoy bakery — which receive a tableside pour of a thick sweet-salty toffee syrup that will have your whole brunch party licking the mini cake stand clean. Please check out the entire list here. Trump administration policies and reactions Crime, courts and policing Los Angeles fires and recovery Education and testing More big stories Get unlimited access to the Los Angeles Times. Subscribe here. Column One is The Times' home for narrative and long-form journalism. Here's a great piece from this past week: Two men lay in a dark street in Pomona. The gunshot wounds made clear how they died. Their tattoos offered clues about how they lived: Swastikas. Lightning bolts. Iron crosses. The words 'Blood and Honor' and 'Death Squad.' The slain men were part of a white supremacist gang called Public Enemy Number 1, or PEN1. Prosecutors say they were killed in 2022 by members of their own crew, acting on orders from the Aryan Brotherhood, a syndicate with vast influence over white inmates in California prisons. More great reads How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Going out Staying in Get wrapped up in tantalizing stories about dating, relationships and marriage. She was tired of working too many hours, of battling chronic illness and running ultramarathons. She couldn't find love in New York, so why would Los Angeles be any different? Then one day, she went paddleboarding for first the time in Laguna Beach and found an unexpected neighbor, a 40-ton gray whale. The visit was a religious experience. Coming back to the shore, she gained new perspective and happened to run into James, an uncomplicated big guy who ran a bike shop. Would she fall for this other gentle giant, or is the perfect man her white whale? Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team Andrew J. Campa, reporterCheck our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
Los Angeles Times
20-03-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Hate doing dishes? This restaurant dishwasher cleans 500 a shift and says it's her therapy
For most it's a grind having to wash an assembly line of pots and pans first thing in the morning. For Sophia Velador, who helms the dish pit at the breakfast and lunch spot Alder & Sage in Long Beach, it's therapeutic. A sink overflowing with unwashed dishes marks the start of her workday. It's how she's made a living for the last 10 years. She wouldn't have it any other way. Velador, 40, rides three separate buses to Long Beach's Bluff Heights neighborhood from the home she shares with her mother in Santa Ana, journeying for more than an hour to get to her job as Alder & Sage's head dishwasher. Sometimes former colleagues who have moved on to other restaurants try to poach her for their new establishments. 'No thank you,' she tells them. 'I'm fine where I am.' To outsiders, the job of a dishwasher is the bottom rung in a restaurant, a gross, difficult and ultimately undesirable job. But it's arguably the most important role at a dining establishment. Without a dishwasher, the dish pit would grind to a halt and so would the restaurant. Dishwashing is often mistaken for an easy entry job in a restaurant. But it's fast-paced, hard work that requires an understanding of all functioning parts in the restaurant — from the processes to the machinery, says Kerstin Kansteiner, owner of Alder & Sage. 'Nobody talks about these unsung heroes,' Kansteiner says. 'Dishwashers are often overlooked, but we should all understand they work with the front of house and back of house and manage to juggle every single person on the team — from chef to server to guest.' Back-of-house workers like Velador are foundational to the restaurant industry. But they seldom receive the accolades usually reserved for chefs or owners. To find out what one of these less visible jobs demands, we followed Velador on a recent Thursday as she worked a shift. Clad in black, hair pulled up in a dark bandanna and lips stained bright red with lipstick, Velador looks like a modern, Chicana version of Rosie the Riveter. The wire earbuds over her neck bounce as she briskly walks to catch her first bus of the day at the corner of Euclid Street and West Katella Avenue in Anaheim. The stop is a few blocks from the home of her father, who has Parkinson's disease. She spends two nights a week caring for him. She tidies up his place and spends time with him. Velador's shift starts at 9 a.m. and she wants to leave ample time to get to work. On the bus, she mostly keeps to herself and listens to music. Others do the same. One man dozes off. Another listens to a loud show without earbuds. The bus rumbles past strip malls, apartment buildings and walled-off condominium complexes. It's not until she gets on her second bus that she chats with the woman she calls her 'bus friend,' Zhanette Kazanzeva, who has just wrapped up a graveyard shift manning the front desk at a nearby hotel. Kazanzeva often walks with Velador to her third bus of the morning. Sometimes Velador wishes she had a car and didn't have to contend with riding a bus to work and back, which sucks up three hours of her day. But then she thinks better of it. She used to have a car, but it always seemed to break down. Parking in Long Beach is rough and the parking tickets piled up. She's grateful that her boss, Kansteiner, works around her bus schedule. Velador likely could land a job closer to home and save herself the long commute. But she remains loyal to Kansteiner because she says she feels valued at Alder & Sage. Velador, one of four dishwashers at Alder & Sage, started working with Kansteiner at Berlin Bistro 10 years ago until the restaurant closed in 2022. During the pandemic, Velador didn't work. Still, the Berlin crew offered her a cut of the tips. 'They didn't have to do that,' she says. 'That says a lot.' Velador steps off the bus into dense fog. During the seven-minute walk to the restaurant, the fog dissipates. She steps into Alder & Sage, an airy and light-filled neighborhood restaurant at Cherry Avenue and 4th Street, along Long Beach's Retro Row corridor. The restaurant serves locally roasted coffee and small-producer wines with its farm-to-fork breakfast, lunch and brunch. Velador hangs up her bag, takes off her jacket and ties on a black, rubbery apron. She takes out the trash, then checks the fluid in the commercial dishwashing machine with a test strip to make sure there's enough sanitizer. 'We're good,' she says to herself. Velador hangs up a portable speaker and turns it on. Hall & Oates' 'You Make My Dreams' blasts into the dish pit. She heads to the prep line and grabs a handful of dirty utensils and washes them off before setting them inside the industrial dishwasher, which mixes just the right amount of chemicals to sanitize it all. Seconds later, she turns on the faucet in the water pit and hoses off a pot that looks to be a third her size. The water splashes onto her and some of the floor. The chef comes by to say hello and hands Velador a bowl lined with some leftover potato peels. 'Thank you!' he yells out. Velador spends most of her day standing in front of the dish pit, set against the corner of the restaurant. She scrubs all manner of kitchenware: trays, pans, cooking sheets, plates, skillets. She arranges it all carefully into plastic crates. Sometimes it's like a game of Tetris to fit as much of it into the dishwasher as she can. Velador closes the latch and lets the dishwasher run. She mops the water off the floor. Velador looks down on an assembly line of dishes: a stainless steel mixing bowl, a blender pitcher, a whisk, dishes, pans and more. During a typical shift, she says, she washes at least 500 dishes. Most would get bored with the job. 'I feel like it's therapy for me,' she says. 'It's very satisfying.' Velador doesn't wear gloves. She doesn't care for them because they make it difficult to handle the dishes and can make her accidentally drop dishware. She wears gloves only when she uses degreasers, which can be corrosive but are necessary to really clean out an especially soiled pot or pan. When the dishwashing machine finishes, the pans, plates, glasses and flatware are especially hot. Some dishwashers report experiencing pain in their hands or even arthritis after a long time on the job. That's not the case for Velador. A while back, her feet started hurting. The pain eased after she started wearing orthopedic insoles. Now, she wears three insoles. She buys her shoes one size larger to make them all fit. Velador has a front-row seat to food waste. Some plates are cleared off by the time they reach her. But at times, when the restaurant is especially busy, she sees plates with plenty of leftover food. A half-eaten quiche. A sliver of a burger. Lettuce from a barely touched salad. 'It's sad,' she says. 'I see it more than I would like.' Velador grew up in a working-class family. She graduated from high school but never had the desire to pursue college. She didn't see the point of paying so much to sit in a classroom to learn. Her first job out of high school was at a Spirit Halloween store. Since then, she's labored at clothing stores, warehouses and call centers. She says she felt like a 'workhorse' in all those jobs except for the one she has now. Initially, she says, washing dishes was difficult, but she got used to it. 'It's the first job I've had where I didn't feel like it's hard, hard labor or pressure,' she says. 'Plus, my co-workers are fantastic people.' She started in the summer of 2015 at Berlin Bistro and just stayed. Velador makes $17.50 an hour plus a portion of the servers' tips, which amount to about $50 every couple of weeks. It's typical for a dishwasher to see the position as entry to jobs as a busser, prep cook and then line cook. Kansteiner has tried offering her all those jobs. Velador turned them down. Kansteiner says it's unusual for someone to stay on as a dishwasher for a decade. Still, she says, she's learned to respect Velador's decision. 'Ten years is incredible in my eyes,' she says. 'Sophia is a huge part of our work family. I have never experienced her in a bad mood, and she sets the tone in the kitchen as well.' At the end of Velador's shift she is wet and dirty. But she says there is a tangible result to all her work: clean cookware. Velador clocks out for the day and heads out to catch her bus. It'll take her more than an hour to get home. At times, Kansteiner says, she'll find Velador in the dining room bussing tables to help because she knows the restaurant's staff is overwhelmed. Nobody has to ask her to help, Kansteiner says. Velador just does it. Velador says she'd be happy to wash dishes for the next 10 years. She doesn't aspire to do more. Velador says she believes society may think she doesn't 'have much to show' for her life because she doesn't have a car, own a house or have a desire to get married and have children. She sees it differently. 'I'm happy,' she says. 'My family and friends who love and support me make me happy. I'm blessed. Waking up makes me happy, even on my bad days.'
