Nyesha Arrington’s Love Letter to Los Angeles Food

When a chef returns home, something shifts. The food stops being just fuel or even art—it becomes autobiography. For Nyesha Arrington, whose latest episode of Plateworthy takes her through Los Angeles, that homecoming tastes like champurrado doughnuts dusted with cinnamon sugar, like the grease from a fried chicken sandwich dripping down your chin on a Santa Monica boardwalk, and like collard greens layered into lasagna sheets at a new South Central hotspot that’s changing how people think about the neighborhood.

It’s the third and final California stop on her tour, and you can feel the weight of it—not the melancholy kind, but the kind that comes when you’re standing in the places that made you.

What Makes Highland Park’s Santa Canela a Pastry Destination

Arrington begins where many LA mornings should: at Santa Canela, where pastry chef Ellen Ramos is doing something quietly revolutionary with Mexican-American pastry traditions. The champurrado doughnuts aren’t just doughnuts filled with the traditional chocolate-corn drink—they’re a conversation between two cultures on a plate. Ramos layers fresh masa into the dough itself, creating a subtle corn whisper that most pastries miss entirely. It’s the kind of detail that separates a good pastry from one you’ll think about for weeks.

Then there are the conchas. Burnt-vanilla cream filling sounds like a dare, until you taste it—that caramelized edge cutting through vanilla richness, housed in the iconic seashell-shaped bread that’s been feeding Los Angeles for generations. And the LA-shaped churros? It’s the kind of charming regionalism that feels increasingly rare in our homogenized food landscape. Ramos understands that pastry isn’t just about technique; it’s about place, about honoring where you come from while pushing forward.

How Josiah Citrin’s Casual Spot Became a Must-Visit

Arrington’s mentor, chef Josiah Citrin, built his empire on fine dining precision. But Augie’s on Main—a casual spot on Santa Monica’s waterfront strip—proves that mastery translates across registers. A fried dirty chicken sandwich doesn’t sound complicated. But execution matters enormously here. The breading’s texture, the brine’s timing, the architectural integrity of the bread under hot juices—these are choices Citrin has spent decades perfecting.

It’s the kind of meal that’s perfect for the moment: after a bike ride with her dog Bleu Ginger along Main Street, before heading to the beach. LA food culture thrives on these casual transitions between neighborhoods and coastlines, between the serious and the playful.

Why Somerville Represents South Central’s Food Renaissance

But the heart of this episode belongs to Somerville, the South Central restaurant and jazz lounge where co-founders Issa Rae, Ajay Relan, and Yonnie Hangos have created something that transcends the typical celebrity-chef vanity project. Culinary director Geter Atienza is the real draw here—someone whose vision marries technique with deep cultural knowledge.

The collard green lasagna is the perfect example of this philosophy. Taking a vegetable with roots in African-American Southern cuisine and reimagining it through an Italian pasta format could feel gimmicky. Instead, it reads as honest. Atienza builds the dish with house-made spinach pasta sheets—each one rolled by hand, each one a statement that vegetables deserve the same craftsmanship as protein. The collard greens aren’t an afterthought; they’re the foundation, the depth, the reason you came.

Paired with fried chicken sandwiches topped with caviar (a flex, certainly, but a delicious one) and braised short ribs, the meal becomes something larger than just food. It’s about what happens when genuine investment meets genuine talent in a neighborhood that’s historically been overlooked by food media. Somerville isn’t a savior narrative—it’s a celebration spot, a place where people come to eat, listen to jazz, and participate in a cultural moment.

The Broader Shift in Celebrity-Led Food Spaces

What’s noteworthy about Arrington’s visit isn’t just that she’s exploring LA—it’s how she’s exploring it. Rather than parachuting in as an expert critiquing from above, she’s moving through these spaces as a peer, as someone who cares about process and intention. She’s sitting down with Atienza to watch collard greens transform into lasagna. She’s photographing Ramos’s hands working masa. This approach mirrors a larger shift in food television, away from spectacle and toward genuine curiosity.

The LA food scene has always been fragmented—fine dining in West Hollywood, casual excellence in unlikely neighborhoods, food truck culture, the endless pursuit of authenticity in a city built on artifice. Arrington’s episode suggests that what ties these threads together isn’t geography or prestige, but rather chefs and cooks who understand that food is a form of thinking, not just earning.

As we head into summer, her message feels especially resonant: the best meals often happen close to home, in places we might have overlooked, made by people who actually care about the neighborhood they’re feeding.