Sara’s Market
Over the last ten months, the small Sara’s Market on City Terrace Drive has been a haven for burgeoning restaurant entrepreneurs. Not only does the shop supply everyday goods for the Eastside neighborhood at the edge of City Terrace and East LA, it carries small, local producers for things like wine, coffee, chorizo, and tortillas. Out on the sidewalk, a different kind of marketplace takes hold nightly, as customers hover around whichever food stand is set up under the street lamps, cooking away.
Many notable names, from Bootleg Pizza (now with its own storefront on Pico Boulevard) to Evil Cooks, have walked away from Sara’s Market with new fans and plenty of social media buzz. More than anything, the sidewalk at Sara’s has been a safe space, an open area for emerging new vendors (almost always restaurant workers and other unemployed folks) to rotate in and out, earning at least a semblance of a living during such a terrible year for the dining scene at large.