Vida Kitchen, a Backyard Restaurant in Lomita, Is the MEHKO Week Dinner to Book

Home cook Wendy Farajpour's three-course special pairs heart of palm ceviche with dolmades and cardamom tres leches, for dine-in or takeout.

Wendy Farajpour's dining room is a garden behind her house in Lomita, and nobody gets the address until they've paid. After a guest books, the confirmation email brings the exact location, according to Vida Kitchen's FAQ page.

Farajpour's place is one of more than 70 licensed home kitchens taking part in L.A. County's first MEHKO Week, Nov. 9 to 15. LAist reported that she'll cook a three-course menu on Nov. 13 and 14, and that for that week only it's also available as takeout. Of everything on the map, that's the one I'd book first, and I'd book it now.

Dessert is a tres leches with cardamom in it; ahead of that come Turkish-style dolmades, and ahead of those, a ceviche made with heart of palm. Farajpour's cooking pulls from her Guatemalan and Nicaraguan background and from Middle Eastern food, LAist reported, and her site sells the place as Latin warmth meeting Middle Eastern spice. That pitch fits into three plates here: a Latin American opener, a Middle Eastern middle and a Latin dessert carrying a spice from the other side of the family table.

The timing is the reason to move fast. On an ordinary month, Vida Kitchen's communal dinners and its afternoon tea run in rotation, according to its website, with private dinners booked in between. It's reservation-only and prepaid. Two straight nights plus a to-go option is more open than this house usually gets.

Vida hasn't announced a price for the special. Its experiences page listed prix fixe dining at $75 to $125-plus a person as of Oct. 30, and its Sol y Saffron dinner soft-launched in January at $85 a ticket. Farajpour runs it.

A restaurant can hide that well because the rules force it to. Program rules don't let home kitchens put up signs outside, which makes finding customers the hard part. "They don't have signs — people don't just walk by," Roya Bagheri, executive director of the COOK Alliance, told LAist. Permit fees and taxes don't top the list either: 79% of operators in the alliance's statewide survey said their biggest problem is landing customers.

So the week, built by the alliance with Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell's office and county agencies to mark two years of the program, is basically a map standing in for a storefront. Bagheri told LAist that L.A. County's program is the biggest of its kind in California.

Most of Farajpour's customers already find her through social media, LAist reported, and she said she signed up so that more people would learn what these kitchens are. "I want to raise awareness," she told LAist. "And pay it forward."

If Lomita is too far, the Valley has its own no-storefront option. Take N' Taste, Ashley Childs's delivery-only sandwich kitchen in Burbank, is dropping its $5 delivery fee in Burbank and Toluca Lake for the week, and Childs's husband is its only driver, LAist reported.

The takeout is for people who want the menu on their own couch. I'd take the seat in the garden, because the garden is what Vida Kitchen is selling. Book through the MEHKO Week map on the event's website, then watch for the email. In a business that isn't allowed to hang a sign, that message is the closest thing it has to one.

Source: LAist, retrieved October 30, 2026. Other sources: Vida Kitchen's website, vida.kitchen (FAQ), vida.kitchen (2), vida.kitchen (3), the MEHKO Week website.