Chef neal fraser biography of albert

[dropcap size=big]A[/dropcap]lbert Bañuelos got an email and phone call on Monday: the family of Jonathan Gold wanted him to help cater their patriarch's Friday morning funeral. The burial would take place one day before Gold's July 28 birthday; he would have turned 58.

Of the thousand-plus restaurants the legendary Los Angeles Times writer had reviewed in a 30-plus years career — that saw him reinvent the genre and become the first food critic to ever win the Pulitzer Prize — Bañuelos' Burritos La Palma would help alongside Kogi BBQ, Guerrilla Tacos, and Mariscos Jalisco to feed the friends and family of Gold.

“I already wanted to do something, but didn't know what,” Bañuelos said just after he parked his lonchera on Nelson Eddy Drive at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, half an hour before Gold's service. “So I was honored. It solidifies how much he believed in us. It really is an honor.”

The first customer was The Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

On the morning of Gold's funeral, Bañuelos left his Orange County home before dawn to pick up a food truck in Irvine. He then went to the Burritos La Palma location in El Monte to start to cook along with two employees. They prepped four types of burritos — a bean and cheese, a birria de res (Jonathan's favorite), chicharrón prensado (his son's favorite), and a con todo. The crew left for Hollywood Forever around 8 a.m.

This was going to be the first funeral they'd ever cater.

[dropcap size=big]T[/dropcap]he drive on the 10 to the 101 was “solemn, like a procession,” Bañuelos said. “It was surreal. Anytime we'd done something for Jonathan for one of his events, it was excitement. Today, everyone is a little off. This whole week.”

Bañuelos found out about Gold's death of pancreatic cancer from a worker while the two handled the dinner rush last Saturday. In 2015, Gold named La Palma one of his five favorite burritos in Los Angeles. Gol

There was a moment, chef Brandon Kida admits, when it was nice to finally have some "free time with absolutely no responsibility." It was the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Los Angeles, and Kida had been busy running buzzy restaurants, including Hinoki & The Bird in Century City. He was very close to opening "a California take on an izakaya" in Hollywood. Then everything just stopped.

After some respite and reflection, Kida knew he had to start pinching gyoza.

"I kind of fall back on childhood comforts," said Kida, a Japanese-American chef who grew up in L.A.'s Koreatown. "When things are going bad, people love comfort food. My comfort food was gyoza, dumplings. I remember sitting at the dinner table with my mom, and she would just show me how to make handmade gyoza: how to make the filling, how to fold the dumplings, how to cook the dumplings."

So suddenly, this past April, a chef who had been cooking for CAA agents and Hollywood superstars at his glamorous Century City restaurant was staying up well past midnight rolling dumplings at home. At first, Kida and his wife, Rachel, delivered gyoza to friends in exchange for donations. Then they went public as Go Go Gyoza, and the demand was so substantial that Kida hired some of his former employees and moved the operation to Hinoki & The Bird.

"As a chef, you have to stay strong," Kida said. "I don't think you have a choice. Either you buck up and are decisive, or you don't and you let a lot of people down. I had numerous employees that needed to get to work. I needed to do something that could bring in income for them and myself."

Go Go Gyoza has since made tens of thousands of frozen dumplings, most of which are stuffed with Kida's Kurobuta pork, chicken, or tofu-and-vegetable fillings. Kida is now selling close to 100 dozen cook-at-home dumplings each week between t