03 Aug Lemonade Unveils New LA Neighborhood Plate Collection

This post originally appeared on FoodableTV.com Los Angeles is a vast city with thousands of small neighborhoods, each with its own flair. It is difficult to define Los Angeles and in many ways, it is a city as disjointed as it is spread out. But in many pockets of these neighborhoods, Lemonade Restaurant Group has opened one of their fast casual, cafeteria-style restaurants that feature seasonal Southern California comfort food. Owner Alan Jackson opened the first Lemonade in 2008 and today there are sixteen locations throughout Los Angeles, Orange County, Ventura County and San Diego, with four more pending, as well as two locations in the Middle East. Each location is bright and welcoming and offers healthy, flavorful food – salads, sandwiches, braised meats, desserts and of course lemonades. Lemonade is the spot where people go for a quick lunch or pick up food for an easy dinner, becoming a central location in a neighborhood. The Neighborhood Plate Collection To commemorate the various neighborhoods that Lemonade has made as its homes, local designer Ilan Dei has created a series of 24 neighborhood-inspired stoneware plates. Each plate celebrates a different location with an image of what best represents that neighborhood. As Dei explained, “Los Angeles is such a multi-faceted city -we have people from over 140 countries, speaking more than 200 different languages, eating all different kinds of food. So, even though we’re one big city, it’s hard to define one style. The plates are a celebration of that diversity, with hints of the sun and weather unifying the graphics. We hope the plates will provoke conversation about each neighborhood’s specific locality, and we want to empower people to take ownership of their barrio. Some neighborhoods, like Beverly Hills and Hollywood, have obvious icons which are immediately recognizable thanks to movies and television. Others require more discovery. For example, in Toluca Lake we revived an old book store that was an iconic symbol only locals might recognize.” A Santa Monica beach lifeguard station, the Rose Bowl, Griffith Park Observatory, Disney Hall, the LAX theme building, the Hollywood sign are just some of the iconic images that represent a city. Each theme plate has a second plate that is a satellite view of the neighborhood with a yellow lemon to mark the spot of the Lemonade location.