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Balo Orozco’s freezer is stuffed with nectarines. Properly, considered one of them is. The opposite is stuffed with plums. At his industrial kitchen in South LA, the chef is fermenting 100 kilos of chiles in orange juice. He is evenly simmering berries to make kombucha. He is scooping up extra unsold or “ugly” vegetables and fruit from native farms and reimagining them into a few of LA’s most inventive kombuchas, scorching sauces and condiments by Sundown Cultures, his pandemic-spurred challenge that is taken on a retail lifetime of its personal.
As a result of development in enterprise — and demand — most days of the week are spent working, and plenty of of these contain driving. In his black Prius, Orozco traces a path to farms throughout the state or to farmers markets for designated pickups of packing containers or pallets of produce that may in any other case be thrown out or composted. His mates who personal different beverage firms inform him to buy recent juices from bigger companies, however that may restrict the aim on the coronary heart of Sundown Cultures: to curb meals waste for native farmers and to assist them get better their losses from in any other case unused, unsold fruit and greens.
“The thought of his firm was excellent for meals waste that occurs naturally,” stated Rick Dominguez, the proprietor of Rick’s Produce and the farmer to encourage the beginnings of Sundown Cultures. “[Orozco] stated as a substitute of waste, make one thing wonderful from it; it is already not sellable [for] retail and never sellable [for] wholesale, however it nonetheless tastes scrumptious, it is nonetheless alive, it may nonetheless turn out to be one thing stunning. That is the place he is available in.”
This early winter morning Orozco is choosing up packing containers of persimmons and fistfuls of avocado leaves in Fallbrook from Dominguez, who operates Rick’s Produce outposts in Virgil Village and the Unique Farmers Market. The avocado leaves will likely be used for cooking savory dishes, whereas the neighboring farm Rancho la Paz de Mi Corazón’s late-season fig leaves, which give off an virtually coconut-like scent, will likely be utilized in a future kombucha with surplus cherries from Murray Household Farms .

Balo Orozco, a founding father of Sundown Cultures, among the many fig leaves.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Occasions)
Because the inception of Sundown Cultures in spring of 2020, Orozco — together with co-founder Jacqui Harning — has been brewing scorching sauces from eggplants, making five-spice syrup from jujubes and fashioning vinegar from persimmons. The sheer quantity of produce used ranges in scope; final yr, Rick’s Produce supplied a whopping 1½ tons of persimmons, whereas this yr, Windrush Farm provided 85 kilos of strawberries.
This season, Orozco sourced nectarines from Ken’s Prime Notch Produce in Reedley and BriarPatch Meals Co-op in Grass Valley, — a lot of it “ugly” fruit that was nonetheless edible and scrumptious however, on account of misshapen kind or marring, possible wouldn’t promote at a market. The chef picked up 800 kilos of the stone fruit one morning (it took two journeys), then broke the haul down in batches — washing and coring them, leaving the pores and skin intact for taste, then freezing all of it to be used in future kombucha, jams or scorching sauces. Usually he is impressed by the excess, or he is on the hunt for particular flavors he’d wish to create.
“I believe I have been fortunate to work with folks all in my profession who need to work with waste,” Orozco stated. At considered one of his first restaurant jobs, at a sushi bar in Guadalajara, he repeatedly watched because the chef-owner broke down complete fish and used each facet and realized that sustainability may very well be inventive.
He had been cheffing at a restaurant in Tulum when he developed an in depth work relationship with one of many farmers. The supply of his kitchen’s pork and plenty of of its greens requested if Orozco may assist slaughter a few of his turkeys, and that farmwork led Orozco into a brand new manner of cooking: butchery, making sausage with each little bit of meat. He met cooks René Redzepi and Danny Bowien, of Noma and Mission Chinese language Meals, respectively, each influencing his pursuits in fermentation and waste administration.
Ultimately Orozco landed in Los Angeles, cooking at Night time + Market, Redbird, Madcapra and Sqirl’s catering arm. He labored a quick stint in Wolfgang Puck’s occasions firm, the place he started to query waste on a bigger scale.
“At their kitchen, of their facility, 300 cooks could be working there typically. It is large,” he stated, “so think about the quantity of waste towards one individual making an attempt to struggle this — it was inconceivable.” The day that he helped prepare dinner for the chef’s well-known annual Oscars dinner, he says, the group crammed up one giant trash bin with still-edible waste, and half of it was uncooked seafood. (Up to now, Puck’s catering department has donated occasions’ surplus meals to organizations corresponding to Cooks to Finish Starvation.)
The state of kitchen waste started to daybreak on him, associated not solely to the dimensions of surplus for giant occasions but additionally to the way forward for cooking: Are generations of cooks, he wonders, being taught that waste is unimportant? It is a matter he says he discusses with fellow cooks repeatedly after they think about the way forward for eating places 5 and 10 years from now.
Orozco moved to San Francisco to work with Gabriela Cámara at her now-closed Cala, which led to his function as government chef of Onda in Santa Monica, which he opened with Cámara and Sqirl chef-owner Jessica Koslow in 2019. Throughout that restaurant’s 5 -month tenure, Orozco ran a kitchen that attempted to make use of scraps and targeted on fermenting scorching sauces and different jarred and bottled merchandise. His future Sundown Cultures associate, bartender Jacqui Harning, was reusing Orozco’s surplus masa grain left within the milling machine to make kombucha, then started experimenting with miso and koji.
The 2 started a romantic relationship, and when Onda closed in April 2020, citing the pandemic, Orozco and Harning regarded for different types of work — and enjoyable. They used the spring and summer time to go to native farms, and one go to to Dominguez’s gave them each new instructions.
“We had been consuming these tomatoes from the vine they usually had been scrumptious, they had been excellent,” Orozco stated. “However he was like, ‘Yeah, dude, it is costlier for us to pay folks to select it as much as take it to the market, and we all know that we’re not going to promote it as a result of we’re not promoting something proper now , so it is simply gonna go to waste.’”

Balo Orozco, of Sundown Cultures, left, visits a farm to select avocado and fig leaves.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Occasions)
It is not unusual for purveyors to community with different growers and fee a future crop. Rick’s Produce works with a discipline in Chino whose farmers planted roughly 5,000 kilos of tomatoes for Dominguez. In 2020, when these tomatoes had been prepared, the world was nonetheless deep within the pandemic.
Orozco and Harning hatched a plan: They may course of the tomatoes into bottled sauces, thereby extending the window for Dominguez to promote them, and hopefully make again a few of his funding. Due to the jarred-sauce gross sales, he was capable of get better his preliminary funding.
Orozco and Harning processed roughly two tons of tomatoes, hand-writing labels for about 16,000 32-ounce jars of tomato sauce. They had been so in over their heads that they’d name mates to come back and assist them, promising a meal and a enjoyable time in return.
“We knew that we may do it, however that was like, sick of us, you already know?” Orozco laughed. “It is simply loads of work. However Café Tropical helped us a lot, like because the very starting.”
The long-running Cuban bakery in Silver Lake is served because the occasional base for the operation till the couple lands their very own industrial kitchen house in late 2020. It is usually served as the primary buyer for his or her kombucha within the early days of Sundown Cultures, a house operation that was then brewing solely 5 gallons at a time. (Batches now clock in round 55 to 65 gallons.)

Citrus rising at Rick Dominguez’s farm.
(Irfan Khan/Los Angeles Occasions)
They started with 4 core flavors of kombucha, now the tentpole of the model, and their first launch continues to be considered one of their favorites: strawberries and wild fennel flowers, each sourced from Rick’s Produce. One other early taste used wild elderberry they’d foraged themselves whereas on pandemic walks, paired with Santa Rosa plums from Ken’s Prime Notch Produce. Stone fruits, citrus, Buddha’s hand, berries, Sichuan peppercorns, fermented honey, recent ginger, jujubes and herbs all started making their manner into effervescent, uncooked kombucha in hues of brilliant purples and pinks and yellows.
Each time they’d make a batch, they’d discover new byproduct from the product produced from byproduct; they’d beforehand composted it, however inside the final six months they’ve begun making jam, giving new life to the evenly boiled strawberries, nectarines and different fruits. Now, 5% to 10% of the jam fruit is repurposed from kombucha byproduct.
Just like the flavors, the marketing strategy has modified over the course of the final two years. At first, farmers would give the pair their surplus produce, Harning and Orozco would ferment it or in any other case protect it, and the pair would hand the completed product again to the farmers to assist them make ends meet throughout the pandemic. From regardless of the farmers had been capable of promote from that, the duo would obtain a lower. Issues look a bit of completely different now. Today, Sundown Cultures purchases discarded or surplus fruit after which manufactures and sells its items immediately. Harning and Orozco cut up up romantically, and Harning, whereas nonetheless a associate within the enterprise, is now not concerned in day-to-day manufacturing, though they nonetheless stay shut. Sometime they may even open a bar and a restaurant collectively. “However we’ve not gotten there but,” Orozco stated.
For now, their challenge stays considered one of LA’s hottest homespun kombucha manufacturers, and one which’s more and more exploring condiments and pantry items. The label could be present in roughly 40 retail outlets and on-line, with enlargement into extra cities anticipated in 2023. Whereas the duo would like to department out nationally, the grassroots ethos is a part of the allure: serving to hyper-local farmers to make a revenue by making one thing fully new — and scrumptious — from their discards.