Daniel Shemtob won the Food Network’s Food Truck Race in 2011 with his Lime Truck, which serves a variety of fresh organic fare.
Now, he is trying to succeed at a business that is less mobile: sit-down fast-casual restaurants that serve the kind of food that made his truck successful. Shemtob, 25, who still runs food trucks, opened up his first restaurant in November, TLT Food, in Westwood.
In less than a year, Shemtob is already planning to expand. Another TLT is scheduled to open in early September in a 1,000-square-foot space on Seventh Street and Broadway in downtown Los Angeles.
He’s the latest in a series of L.A. chefs who started with trucks then opened restaurants. Roy Choi of food truck Kogi opened restaurant Chego, which has two locations. Joe Kim, owner of food truck Flying Pig, also now has two sit-down restaurants.
Shemtob is planning to expand even faster. In addition to the downtown site, he has plans to open a TLT in Irvine.
Ask him how it all happened and he points to a lunchtime crowd of doctors, nurses and students waiting in line for his carnita fries and beef short-rib tacos at TLT’s Westwood location, near UCLA and its medical buildings.
The expansion gives Shemtob the opportunity to concentrate on the front end of the restaurant business, what he calls the “fun stuff.” It includes picking the décor and music as well as coming up with two weekly specials. Those offerings depend on what he is in the mood for or what he finds in the in the fish markets downtown. A few weeks back it was swordfish.
Shemtob’s partner, Murray Wishengrad, manages the business side. Wishengrad ran Dollar Rent-A-Car chains in Los Angeles and four Stand restaurants – the Westwood Stand closed and was replaced by TLT.
By partnering up with Wishengrad, Shemtob said both can focus on their strong suits in running the business.
“Murray and I met, we had similar goals,” Shemtob said. “I’ve been approached to open restaurants, offered money, but operationally, I didn’t want to spend all day making a restaurant work because it really does take all day.”
– Justin Yang
