Two Altadena restaurants bring light and comfort to a recovering community

ALTADENA, CA - JANUARY 02: Heritage pork chop with roasted squashes and winter greens at Betsy in Altadena, CA on Friday, Jan. 2, 2026. ((Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)) ((Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times))

Stand looking out from the wide intersection of East Mariposa Street and Lake Avenue for one potent, representative view of Altadena a year after the catastrophic Eaton fire. You see rows of businesses, some returned to operation and others still shuttered, possibly forever; emptied lots surrounded by chain-link fencing; and smatterings of short trees, in front of awnings or next to a bus-stop bench, that look almost startling here in their steadfast shades of green.

Over 9,000 structures, residential and commercial, burned across Altadena last January. Bureaucracy has made rebuilding slow. Many who lost their homes — including generations of Black locals who gave the mountain town a defining part of its identity for decades — remain displaced.

It is human instinct to search for hopefulness amid overwhelming destruction. On this corner, where low buildings and rising elevation make the sky appear especially vast, two heartening signs of life sit 279 feet apart: Betsy and Miya, restaurants both owned by Altadena residents whose houses were consumed in flames, and whose businesses were spared enough damage that they could reopen last year.

They are entirely different places. Betsy falls into the category of ambitious American bistro, powered by a central open hearth. Just across the street, Miya is a quirky, two-room Thai charmer with a relatively concise menu of curries, noodles, soups, salads and vegetables. Geography and tragedy unite them, as does the purr of comfort inherent in their cooking.

In an era of extreme division and cynicism, I have all but shed the naive idea of espousing restaurants as hubs of community that bring people closer. Dine at either of these establishments, though, and you feel it. The neighborly goodwill. The ache for vitality among ruin. The absolute rightness of being together.

Betsy

Park along Betsy’s block on a dark winter night, walk past the sobering charred brick shell that housed Altadena Hardware for decades and look for the restaurant’s inviting string of lights hung over the entrance. Inside, light from shaded lamps and sconces glows amber-soft. Knotty patterns ripple through the wood paneling like images of sound waves. The playlist is classic soul and ’90s hip-hop, with a few discos tunes thrown in early evening. Tables fill nightly. The din registers as cheering, not deafening.

Betsy’s emphasis on coziness feels almost prescient — as if knowing how imperative an enveloping, intimate atmosphere would be needed — given that the place opened only a month before the Eaton fire. It was called Bernee at first, started by the team of Tyler Wells and Ashley Bernee, then married, who also ran All Time in Los Feliz. The couple split last year. Ashley took over All Time. The Altadena space suffered minimal damage, and after months of introspection and urging from his employees, Tyler rechristened the place as Betsy in August.

Tyler is an upbeat, engaged presence, a blur of motion in a bow tie or snappy hat, delivering plates or uncorking bottles of wine. Executive chef Paul Downer, who previously held the same title at All Time, stands at the center edge of the open kitchen framed by the hearth. Cooks jostle blazing logs and tend to cast-iron pots set on tiered grates. It’s hard not to pause at this sight, noticing the layers of ash beneath the grating and the blackened tiles behind the hearth, without thoughts flashing to the subject of humans and fires.

Regulars of All Time will recognize the succinct, broadly Californian-Italian tenor of the menu: sharply-dressed, cheese-boosted salads with lettuces and seasonal produce from local farms; entrees that include usually at least one pasta or plate of fish but lean into handsome hunks of meat with well-seasoned sides.

Ricotta gnocchi takes after the Parisian model, finished in a pan until each piece has a deep-brown oval sear, arriving simply sauced in lemon and fragrant black pepper under a blanket of Parmesan. A massive pork chop, roughly in the shape of Australia, lands smoky and sliced and surrounded by market inspirations: succotash in the warmer months, roasted squashes and heartier greens in January. A tomahawk steak rings in at $185, served with chimichurri and a Worcestershire-powered steak sauce, and it could easily be the meal’s centerpiece for four people. A side of potatoes, roasted in beef tallow, crackle and yield in elementally satisfying ways.

I admire the subtle twists of inspiration here and there. For cheeseheads like me, so bored with the repetitive appearance of standards like Humboldt Fog, it’s fun for a daily-changing cheese plate to present a ripe slice of Linedeline, a goat’s-milk beauty made in Wisconsin with a thin mottled rind and a wobbly cream line that nicely contrasts the pleasantly chalky center. A special of Rancho Gordo fava beans, paired with buttery Chanterelle mushrooms, was earthy sustenance ideally suited to chase away the chill of recent rainy evenings.

“Yeah, we’re a band of trauma survivors here,” says server Courtney Johnson, who also curates the wine list, as she opens a bottle of full-bodied white from the Savoie while conversing. Johnson grew up two blocks from Betsy and was also forced to relocate after the fire. She doesn’t say the words with bitterness. Like this whole operation, she’s conveying realism, and chosen purpose, and possibility.

Miya

Chicken thighs at Miya are first marinated with garlic, black pepper and spices, then coated in rice flour and fried to an airy crispness. ((Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times))

The dining room at Miya rings nostalgic with an '80s-era Panasonic boombox, Thai pop music cassettes, and vintage movie and band posters. ((Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times))

At Miya, more often than anything else, I’m disappearing into a plate of fried chicken at lunchtime.

The dish begins as a riff on a recipe most associated with Hat Yai, the largest city in southern Thailand. Chicken thighs first absorb a garlicky, peppery spice marinade stained with turmeric to accentuate the golden crust. Together with thin shallot rings, the bird fries in a coating of rice flour to achieve an airy crispness and plenty of splintered, shattering bits of batter. For effective contrast alongside: a bundle of sticky rice, papaya salad with gently limey punch and sweet chile sauce for dipping.

It’s become a favorite midday meal, especially when I have the time to settle in the sunny two-room space. Owner David Tewasart, who also operates four locations of Sticky Rice plus Moon Rabbit in Grand Central Market, tells me he’s Gen X without telling me he’s Gen X. We may have grown up in different cultures, but the nostalgia in his decor mirrors my own: the ’80s-era Panasonic boombox displayed with a shelf full of Thai pop music cassettes below; the vintage movie poster of Star Wars, its name written in Thai abugida; the iconic art from Duran Duran’s “Rio”; and, in the newer 30-seat room embellished with black-and-white geometric tiles and colorful stained glass, a blown-up cover of Madonna’s first album hung by the window in view of passersby.

These objets d’art have personal resonance: While the menu at Sticky Rice leans into Thai street food, Tewasart envisioned Miya serving a homier style of multiregional cooking. The location also happened to be near his home: He and his family moved to Altadena in 2016 and opened Miya seven years later. Little remained of their house after the Eaton fire. Miya’s landlord was able to remediate the restaurant’s building and Tewasart determinedly reopened in May, when at first there were few customers around to serve.

Now more diners are flowing through, gazing at the handwritten menu on the wall affixed with neat strips of orange tape, or calling ahead. Miya prepares a lot of takeout.

Clockwise from upper left: pumpkin red curry, khao soi and pad kee mao with shrimp at Miya. ((Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times))

Those who stick around often wind up bent over bowls of calming khao soi, the thatch of fried noodles slowly sinking and softening in the coconut broth tinted orange from spices. The kitchen tends to leave the heat customizable, with extra-large bottles of chile sauce close at hand, or splashes of green chile-laced prik nam pla to add funk and edge to dishes like easy-to-love crab fried rice. With almost anything I order a side of appealingly reedy stir-fried morning glory (water spinach).

Curries — nutty beef panang, a ruddy meatless variation made with pumpkin — emphasize creaminess and mild aromatic complexity. Among noodles, the staff quickly recommends pad kee mao, crowded with vegetables, for its wok-smoky intensity. Because I’m a lunchtime habitué, I made a point this week to come for dinner, when the menu includes a few additional items. Among them are rad na, a Thai-Chinese dish of wide rice noodles that arrive with a visible sear from the wok, tangled with pieces of chicken and shrimp and slicked with gravy. A zenith of comfort food.

At night something else stood out: a pink neon sign that reads “delicatessen,” with the blinking horizontal bulbs of an old-fashioned movie marquee. Kern’s Deli occupied the space for decades in the mid-20th century. It closed in the 1980s, when Tewasart was a teenager. Looking up at this switched-on electric relic, though, draws out a lopsided smile. We never know what might endure to light our way, even if only from the street to the door.