Ramona Gardens offers non-traditional restaurant experience

March 23, 2011 By 1 Comment


Ramona Gardens is not a place many Angelenos would happen upon. Encased by freeways, railroad tracks and the University of Southern California’s hospital, it is difficult to get to. The streets are wide and many of the buildings are empty, with paint chipping off their brick walls. A large apartment complex sprawls across one block, clothesline strung in front of every door. Power lines frame the buildings.

There are no grocery stores, no farmers markets and no community gardens. Ramona Gardens is a food desert, an urban area where people don’t have ready access to healthy foods.

The nearest restaurants are south of the 10 freeway, about a mile away. Many residents don’t have cars and, even if they were to make the trek, they can’t afford restaurant prices.

Ramona Gardens is one of the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The median family income is less than half that of the national average, and 37 percent of the residents live below the poverty line.

But once a week, restaurants come to town.

In a little grassy area just south of the apartment complex, a bevy of food vendors gather every Saturday morning. They set up collapsible tables and chairs, pitch tents and fire up grills. They sell pupusas, meat, veggies, fruit, funnel cake, sopas and quesadillas. People all over Ramona Gardens come.

“They’re like restaurants without walls,” said Jeanette Castro, who grew up in Ramona Gardens. For many, said Castro, this market is the one time a week where the neighborhood can eat food they didn’t prepare themselves.

Like most of the residents, the food vendors are Mexican immigrants. Teotu Reyes moved from Puebla, Mexico, seven years ago. She started selling food at the markets a couple of months ago to help pay the rent when her family couldn’t find work.

“There aren’t any jobs right now,” Reyes said. None of her family is legal, and work is hard to come by. “We don’t know how to read. We don’t know how to do another job. We’re country people, and that’s what we know how to do.”

So Reyes came to work at the market. She sells traditional Mexican food, just like she did when she lived in Puebla. She still wears the blue-plaid apron she brought with her from Mexico.

Now Reyes has regular customers. Many of the regulars are quenching a little homesickness; they love that they can order their favorite from back home, said Reyes.

“There are restaurants down there,” said Reyes, waving to the south, “but who can afford them?”

At her booth, as with many of the vendors, you can get a full meal for around $2 to $4.

“You can tell they’re all really grateful,” said Reyes. “You can tell they like coming here, ordering food, and sitting down to eat.”

Reyes comes at 5 a.m. with everything to build her booth: two plywood tables, a tent, coolers and cooking things. It takes her over an hour to set it up. By 7 a.m., the market is already swarming with customers.

The vendors aren’t there legally. They used to rent spaces in a parking lot for $5 a piece. They changed the venue to avoid paying the fee, and suddenly all types of businesses moved in – make-up, plants, new and used clothes, toys, shoes and produce. Now the scene resembles a hybrid between a garage sale, Mexican mercado and a Saturday market.

Some bring things from their own homes to sell. Others are business owners with merchandise. Few may have stolen merchandise, such as a card table with dozens of used watches in neat rows.

While Ramona Gardens is not in South Los Angeles, residents must go there to get to restaurants or grocery stores. And once there, they will find significantly fewer options than more affluent communities in Los Angeles.

In South L.A., there is one restaurant for every 1,910 people, verse West L.A. that has one restaurant for every 542, according to the Community Health Council, a think tank in South Los Angeles. What’s more, 1 in 4 South L.A. restaurants are fast food, compared to one in ten in the West.

Not having restaurants is hard on a community. Restaurants create a space for civic society to grow.

Gloria Lopez, a fictitious name to protect her identity as an undocumented person, comes to the market and sells barbecue chicken. But she can’t make it every Saturday. Though she depends on the market for income, sometimes she doesn’t have enough money the following week to buy the chicken.

Those weeks, she said, are devastating. She can barely feed her family.

But in a small way, this market is stimulating the Ramona Garden’s economy. It provides a place for commerce to happen.

“I don’t know what we’d do if we couldn’t come here,” said Lopez.

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The Food Truck of Ramona Gardens

March 16, 2011 By 3 Comments


Jeanette Castro is going to graduate college this spring. Most people from Ramona Gardens don’t.

“They usually end up in jail or, I don’t know, something bad,” said Castro. “It sucks.”

Ramona Gardens is one of the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. The median family income is less than half that of the national average, and 37 percent of the residents live below the poverty line. There are no restaurants, no farmers markets and no community gardens. The nearest grocery store is a 20-minute drive away, an insurmountable distance to many of the residents who don’t have access to a car. Ramona Gardens is a food desert.

If residents can’t find a way to get to the supermarket, their options are limited. The only store is Nico’s Market, a corner convenience store that provides a limited selection of produce, meat and packaged goods. But everything costs more than it would at a grocery store, and the food is often past its expiration date.

“It’s expensive and it’s not worth it,” said Castro. She stood in front of the produce cooler at Nico’s. The cooler has about a dozen different fruits and vegetables and is only partial stocked. “It’s empty. Like, sometimes if you want to buy tomatoes, they’re no tomatoes. Because they’re all with holes or practically black. So you have no options really.”

Ramona Gardens sits just north of the 10 freeway and east of downtown. Many of the buildings are empty, paint chipping from years of neglect. Few cars pass. It is common to see parents on bikes with small children gripping their back, standing on pegs jutting out of the back tire. Ninety percent of the residents speak English as a second language, and more than 90 percent are Hispanic.

“It’s dangerous here, there’re many gangs, many people drink and use drugs,” said Castro. Crime levels are high. According to some residents, police didn’t even patrol the area until 10 years ago.
Even though Nico’s is overpriced, there is constantly a long line at the checkout counter.

“Sometimes people don’t have options,” said Nora Maya, Castro’s mother. “They don’t have a car, they have kids.”

Beyond Nico’s there is one other option for food. Everyday, a truck parks down the block. The old, dilapidated pickup has crates of produce and snacks, everything priced considerably less than at Nico’s. A group of men sit throughout the day.

Castro says the food is not only cheaper, it’s also better. For example, the truck sells strawberries for a dollar, while at the store they’re $2.99. “And they’re still good,” said Castro. “It’s not rotten like at the corner store. This isn’t even a store and they’ve got better quality. And that’s why people come to him.”

The truck has parked in the same spot every day for the last 22 years. In that time, Jose Rodriguez, who owns and runs the truck, has developed a relationship with the community. It allows him to offer something else Nico’s doesn’t: credit. image

Rodriguez sells food to people, regardless if they have money with them. He keeps his records in a black and white notebook, which is falling apart at the seams. Every page is dedicated to a different family, with long columns that show amounts borrowed and repaid.

“When you need to go to the store, it’s a struggle of money,” said Castro. “Here, you can get what you need without the money, which is a good thing, and pay him later.”

There is no specific credit limit, but people don’t need to settle their accounts in order to get more food. Some pages show a balance that steadily climbs up, owing the truck more and more, but Rodriguez doesn’t cut them off.

“If we can help someone and still run our business, we will,” said Rodriguez.

Rodriguez and his son get their produce every morning from the LA Market Warehouse downtown. He says he is able to charge so little because he doesn’t need to pay for rent, only a vending permit. In a survey conducted by the city about mobile vendors, Rodriguez says his truck was rated the cheapest and he got the highest grade in quality.

In 22 years of operation, Rodriguez says there hasn’t been another option for people to buy food. Long ago, there was a second market next to Nico’s, but Nico’s put them out of business by charging less. When the second market went under, Nico’s prices skyrocketed. “Between over here [at the truck] and over there [at the market], everyone would prefer to go over here,” said Castro.

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