As the restaurant industry continues to struggle, Los Angeles-based chef Aaron Elliott has a simple solution: he’ll bring the restaurant to you.
The restaurant industry has seen better days. Many once-thriving establishments took hits during lockdown even despite outdoor seating options and innovative takeaway services. It’s been hard to recover, and many haven’t. The widespread shift to remote-first work has also taken a toll, putting the lunch rush on what seems like a permanent diet. For plant-forward or fully vegan restaurants, there have been even bigger challenges, including a string of closures like the once-booming LA celebrity hotspots Nic Adler’s Nic’s on Beverly and Moby’s Little Pine.
Other restaurants have resorted to menu overhauls, like the longtime Los Angeles favorite Sage Vegan, which recently caused a stir after announcing a name change to Sage Regenerative Kitchen, which reflects its decision to serve regeneratively farmed meat. Mainstream salad chain Sweetgreen recently announced it was adding steak to its menu after long eschewing the unsustainable protein. Restaurants are, in a word, starving, and willing to try almost anything to stay alive. Even fast food is feeling the pressure; a recent consumer survey found nearly 80 percent of Americans now see fast food as a “luxury” due to inflation.
Noma-trained Los Angeles area chef Aaron Elliott has one answer to the crisis. The former punk drummer turned private chef brings restaurant-quality vegan food to a limited number of customers weekly through his new offering, Meal Ticket. The meal delivery service features six generously portioned meals, “made correctly,” according to the menu.
“I shop at the Santa Monica farmers market on Saturday, prep on Sunday, and then we finish and deliver the meals on Monday,” Elliott told me over a recent Zoom call after I tried a week’s worth of the meals. “My ethos is to make everything from scratch,” he says. The chef avoids processed ingredients and instead focuses on fresh, whole foods.
The commitment to freshness comes through in every dish. The food was all a hit in our house and most lasted us more than a single meal. Our menu for the week: pasta puttanesca; a pot pie in an easy-to-heat cast iron skillet; de la funk salad with crispy hazelnuts and chickpeas in a sherry dijon vinaigrette; Korean fried cauliflower tacos in gochujang cream; pulled yuba with fava beans and rhubarb; and creamy broccoli soup.
The puttanesca featured al dente handmade linguine in a bright, well-spiced nod to Elliott’s Italian family restaurant heritage (his family’s restaurant was about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh, PA, which also happens to be my hometown). The vegetable-heavy pot pie was so good I had to fight my ten-year-old daughter for a bite. (“It’s for an article!” I had to insist.) Elliott’s take on cream of broccoli soup brought in sunchokes for the creamy element, and, according to the menu, “lots of greens.” It was so good it could have counted as several of the meals for the week and I wouldn’t have been the slightest bit disappointed. These takes on familiar classics were well-balanced with Elliott’s talent for imaginativeness — the pulled yuba (tofu skins) with fresh pea pods, fava beans, and little nuggets of rhubarb was light and flavorful and thankfully lasted for three meals. I’m always a bit wary of fusion dishes, but the Korean fried cauliflower tacos were a surprising favorite. Even the simple green salad was far more complex and, as my daughter would say, giving, than expected. We scraped up every last bit of that sherry dressing with our fingers.
In addition to his family being in the restaurant business and training at the world-renowned Noma in Copenhagen, Elliott says he also learned a good bit from famed chef Tal Ronnen of the popular Los Angeles vegan restaurant chain, Crossroads. “He is kind of a mentor,” Elliott says. “Even to this day, he is very generous, kind, and has been so helpful in my career.”
Elliott’s talent isn’t just in his recipes or good mentoring, though. He’s got an eye for ingredients that’s a worthy skill in its own right. “I plan menus based on what’s available at the farmers market, ensuring everything is fresh and seasonal,” Elliott says. Maybe it’s his background as a musician that gives him the ability to riff on, say, a surplus of sunchokes, rhubarb, or fresh fava beans. I’ve shopped at farmers markets with that kind of ambition. Only, I come home overwhelmed by too much produce that often goes to compost before I can find that same inspiration to cook with it that I had when I bought it.
But that’s why Elliott isn’t like the rest of us; that made-from-scratch commitment isn’t a chore to him, but the reward. His eyes light up when he talks about his ingredients, how he finds them at the market and starts planning the weeks ahead knowing what will be in season. He crafts dishes where the vegetables play well-deserved starring roles that vegans and meat-eaters can both get behind; the meals aren’t the sum of their parts, but, rather, they are parts in a harmonious, delicious, not overly seasoned sum.
As we chatted about our hometown connection, we realized we’d both dined at the James Beard-nominated restaurant Apteka in Pittsburgh. It’s the only vegan Polish restaurant in the country. Pittsburgh has a large Polish population and you’re never more than a few steps away from a pierogie or kiełbasa. But Apteka innovates beyond the classics; it went viral for its whole roasted sunflowers, among other menu creations. Like Meal Ticket, Apteka only serves a few meals a week with dinner service just Friday to Sunday. And, also like Elliott, Apteka’s chefs Kate Lasky and Tomasz Skowronski make everything from scratch. “One thing I love and I always wanted to copy it,” Elliott says, “their menu says everything is made from scratch ‘except Heinz ketchup.'” (Heinz is based in Pittsburgh.)
They’re all on to something. Besides inflation, one of the reasons restaurants have seen a recent slowdown is an increased interest in avoiding ultra-processed foods. Series like Netflix’s 2023 Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones, and the recent Hack Your Health both put a spotlight on cleaner eating for optimal health. Recent studies have warned about the dangers of eating too much processed food, and consumers are cautious. Chipotle, which emphasizes a made-from-scratch commitment, saw its total revenue increase more than 14 percent last year while its fast food competitors grew at about half that.
Meal Ticket was initially supposed to be a restaurant in the popular West Adams neighborhood back in 2020, “but the pandemic changed our plans,” Elliott says. He and his brother, who also works in the restaurant industry, were set to close on a contract for a location about a week before lockdown. But with restaurants still struggling more than four years later, Elliott decided on a lower-risk route. Meal Ticket allows Elliott to continue his private chef work — clients include James and Suzy Cameron and WME’s Ari Emanuel — while testing out menu items and consumer interest.
“Initially, Meal Ticket was just for friends and family to see if it was something I wanted to pursue,” Elliott says. After positive feedback, he opened it up to the public a couple of months ago and has been consistently selling out every week. Meal Ticket is a first-come first-serve lottery via Instagram open to just ten customers per week. Elliott’s wife assists with administrative work and fellow vegan chef Jason Stefanko helps prep and cook. Elliott’s mom helps out when she’s in town, too, making Italian classics like stuffed cabbage and a hometown favorite, pierogies.
Soon, Elliott’s Leimert Park garage will be converted into a commercial kitchen so he can scale. Elliott says he’s ready to double from ten Meal Tickets a week to 20. It’s a big jump but still small enough that it’s manageable. The limited service also gives Elliott the freedom to try out new ingredients and menus. “I’m always experimenting with new dishes,” he says. And keeping it small makes that more doable — especially on a whim. A new Vince Staples track was the motivation behind a dish on next week’s menu — a Creole-inspired king oyster mushroom étouffée. “So I’m listening to the new album and there’s a song I really like,” Elliott says. “I go to see the name of the song and it was called ‘Étouffée’. So I said, ‘cool, I’m going to put an étouffée on the next menu.'”
The goal is to still open a restaurant someday, but for now, there’s more than enough demand for Meal Ticket, and Elliott’s having fun with it. “People really seem to like it,” he says. “So we’re just gonna keep going.”
Head over to Meal Ticket’s Instagram to sign up for the week.
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