Photo: Nichol Nelson
The flashing cameras, beefy security guards and gawking bystanders give it away: Jamie Oliver and his food revolution have landed in Los Angeles. Clad in a scruffy blue flannel shirt and electric-green sneakers, Oliver wasted no time yesterday telling visitors to his new Community Kitchen space in L.A.'s Westwood neighborhood that he wants Angelinos to eat better. Yet he's the first to admit he's up against major challenges. (See my post from Tuesday for more on Jamie's mission.)
The truth is, Oliver says, he doesn't yet know how he'll go about changing things in LA, or even whether he'll succeed. "I'm just one fella, and I'm only human," he says, cracking a wide grin. The new kitchen space is impressive, which isn't surprising, since it will also function as a television set for the next three months. It has a large demonstration kitchen, an eating nook, small cooktops for cooking lessons, even an area filled with baskets of colorful fresh produce. ("People who don't buy this stuff don't know what to do with it," he says.)
But he'll need more than a nice facility to make a meaningful change in a city this large. Last year, Oliver made a splash in the town of Huntington, West Virginia, (population 49,129) -- but L.A. has almost 4 million residents, and the chasm between ethnicities and wealth here only add to the difficulty. He says he chose Los Angeles exactly for these reasons. "There's incredible diversity here," he says. "Rich and very poor. Poverty and the need for help is within a couple of miles from anywhere, no matter how rich the district."
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