Green Cuisine Flourishing in NE Los Angeles: Part III

Seasonal Food/ Sustainable Practices

Chefs Michelle Wilton and Jennie Cook set up shop one neighborhood and a few years apart but each wanted to share her passion for seasonal, locally sourced food and sustainable practices within their communities of Eagle Rock and Glassell Park, respectively.

Seasonal Ingredients, "Slow Food" Preparation

At Wilton focuses on fresh, organic, seasonal ingredients purchased locally from farmers markets.  Wilton uses the “slow food” approach to preparation, which Slow Food USA defines as “…food that is good for [consumers], good for the people who grow it, and good for the planet.” Four Café isn’t meatless but offers vegan eaters plenty of healthy, tempting options.

Four Café’s owners are also committed to sustainability.  Eagle Rock resident Wilton and her husband Corey blogged about their remodel of a sterile Coldwell Banker office using reclaimed wood in the dining room and recycled appliances in the kitchen.  Wilton uses compostable dinnerware in the restaurant as well.

As stated on their site, “Four Café brings natural to your plate while keeping nature intact.”

Plant Based Parties

Through Jennie Cooks Catering, Cook recently launched which offers vegan and vegetarian cuisine for events and celebrations.  Cook notes that she gets “lots of calls for dinners and parties from people in Highland Park, especially,” and like Wilton, offers compostable dinnerware as well as her own china.  With advance notice, Cook, who composts “every scrap of food and paper” through the pilot compost program of the City of Los Angeles, can arrange a Zero-Waste event for clientele.

Higher Level of Food Awareness

Several years ago, Cook closed Double Dutch Diner, her popular comfort food restaurant in Culver City and moved her catering shop to Fletcher Drive in Glassell Park.  Cook and her family are long-time residents of Northeast Los Angeles and Cook confesses, “moving back to my neighborhood was heavenly because there is such a high level of food awareness here.”

Putting Down and Preserving Roots

Cook believes people are moving to Northeast Los Angeles because there’s “a sense of community here. People are more cooperative, more familial,” she said. “They share vegetables, they have family dinners, they start businesses that allow them to spend time with their children.” 

The community’s desire to combine tradition with healthy eating is confirmed by the popularity of the cooking, canning and preserving classes that Cook, an accredited Master Preserver, holds in the professional catering kitchen at her “Shoppe.”   Cook will most likely hold her next canning class in October but says that right now, she’s “stalking the farmer’s markets for tomatoes.  I’m obsessed with tomato sauce.”

Those who share Cook’s obsession with tomatoes--and good-for-you fare in general--but lack the time or energy to prepare healthy food, can have Cook deliver customized meals directly to their homes.  As with her catering company, Cook’s comfort cuisine is prepared with fresh, local, seasonal ingredients for an impressively reasonable price.

Building Community

Cook says that the primary goal through all her endeavors, which includes food advocacy and education in the LAUSD school system, is “to build community.   I don’t think I could have done that on the West side.”

“I’m aware,” Cook says of the Northeast L.A. neighborhoods, “that we have something really special here.”

For the first part of the "Green Cuisine" series, click .

For the second part, click .