Cindy Carcamo

In the back kitchen of Chapter One, a neighborhood gastropub in downtown Santa Ana, the restaurant’s chief busser and utility worker, Alfonso Lira, is in constant motion. He takes out the trash. He cleans a prep station. He refills a […]

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,

During his 25 years at the Original Pantry Cafe, Alejandro Ortiz worked his way from cleaner to prep cook and, most recently, server. Often, he pulled night shifts and double shifts. He worked so much, he missed the birth of

SOMIS  —  Thousands of Hass avocados littered the soil in Sergio Acevedo’s orchard Saturday in this community northeast of Camarillo. The Mountain fire had scorched some of the fruit, leaving it shriveled or in ashes. But the ferocious winds that