Seedy, a pop-up built on Mexican American comfort cooking, finally has a permanent home in Lincoln Heights. Partners in business and life Raquel Rodriguez and Nikko Cruz opened the restaurant in a pint-sized space along North Broadway in April with a menu that draws on the memories of what they grew up eating in Los Angeles.
For Rodriguez, a third-generation Angeleno who grew up in Lincoln Heights, opening Seedy has been a dream realized. “Seedy itself is magical takes on LA comfort food,” she says. “The majority of how it started was my food memories, my family’s food memories.” The menu draws on both her Los Angeles upbringing and Cruz’s in Murrieta, a Southern California suburb set in Riverside County, as well as their mirrored experiences
of Mexican American cooking. “A lot of joy and positive memories for both sides of my family would revolve around food,” Rodriguez says.
In Lincoln Heights, Seedy serves a tight menu of dishes that includes papa tostadas topped with pepita crema, cabbage slaw, salsa verde, and salsa macha, as well as a tahini chickpea salad sandwich on thick slices of sourdough bread. The salsa macha chicken, which arrives bedded on garlic rice with turmeric cauliflower, hearkens back to teriyaki chicken bowls at the now-defunct Spikes and pickled-vegetable-and-chicken plates from Zankou Chicken. “The chicken itself has this seedy salsa macha that I’ve been making for a long time, and it’s kind of like a salsa that I can incorporate into anything, and it’ll instantly taste good,” Rodriguez says. “This is my little sauce flavor bomb, like how a teriyaki sauce is.”
Pozole, which Rodriguez grew up eating for Christmas, arrives with tender hominy and massaged greens swimming in a verdant broth. While pursuing a Ph.D. in microbiology in Boston, Rodriguez quickly found herself missing the Mexican food she was raised on. On a fateful grocery trip, she stumbled upon canned hominy and took to her kitchen to recreate the soup that has commanded a place in her consciousness. Soon, she was making it for herself at least once a month and sharing it with friends. “Pozole for me was just the example of the sort of confirmation of my love of food, but especially the Mexican food that I grew up eating,” Rodriguez says.
The menu at Seedy rounds out with classic morning fare and pastries such as coconut French toast crowned with fresh fruit, bay leaf coffee cake, and a double-chocolate sesame cookie. Drinks span drip coffee, cold brew, and a matcha latte, along with Linger, a cranberry-cardamom shrub, and Warheads, a sour kumquat shrub. As Rodriguez and Cruz further settle into the space and establish a routine, they hope to bring back dishes from previous pop-ups as specials.
For Rodriguez, bringing Seedy back to Lincoln Heights felt like a priority. For years, Seedy was at the mercy of various venues as it bounced around in pop-up form but this neighborhood has given it a permanent home. “When we started, a lot of people didn’t know where Lincoln Heights is,” she says. “They had never heard of it, even when we would be in places fairly close.” Returning to the neighborhood has given her a new chance to connect with neighbors and the surrounding community, and offer something that she hopes will be both sustainable and affordable. “Comfort food should be something that is at least within reach once a week, for some people every few days,” Rodriguez says. On the opening menu, no dish costs more than $15.
“The ultimate goal, other than the tasty food, has always been to create this fun sort of whimsical space,” Rodriguez says. “Things don’t have to be super still and serious, just a warm place to come.”
