The Pacific Palisades home where chef Daniel Shemtob and his wife, Elyse, dreamed of raising a family is now nothing more than twisted metal and rubble. The fancy kitchen, the nursery with baby animal wallpaper, and the half-century-old olive trees in the yard are gone. But even as the Los Angeles-area wildfires continue to burn, Shemtob is dishing out free, foil-wrapped breakfast burritos and tacos from his award-winning food truck to first-responders and weary evacuees. He’s found comfort in helping others.
It would be easy for the two-time Food Network competition winner to dwell on the loss of the home. Instead, Shemtob thinks about the people he’s met through the food giveaways.
One man was so happy with his sweet and spicy steak taco that he declared it the first time he smiled since his home burned. Another person loved his cheese quesadilla so much he came back for more—and brought six family members.
Then there was the National Guardsman who lent a sympathetic ear one cold morning.
“He sat and wanted to hear my story while he ate his breakfast burrito,” says Shemtob, 36. Talking about his troubles helped Shemtob release tension.
The Palisades and Eaton fires broke out January 7 in Los Angeles County. They forced tens of thousands to flee their homes. Tragically, at least 28 people died. Nearly 16,000 structures are completely gone. The two blazes rank among the most destructive in California history.
Shemtob never dreamed the fire would reach his neighborhood. When he evacuated around noon on January 7, he took only a laptop for work and homemade meatballs and pasta because he was hungry.
But that night a remote home sensor alerted him and his wife to smoke in the master bedroom. Then there was fire. The windows shattered.
Two days later he sneaked back to the neighborhood by bicycle to see the ruins.
“That was our garage. That’s our basement,” he says in a video he made for his wife. He pans the camera across the scene and says, “Everything is gone.”
At first, Shemtob became depressed. Then he remembered he had something to give.
Four days after evacuating, Shemtob took his food truck, The Lime Truck, to a donation center in Pasadena. He volunteered with World Central Kitchen (WCK). WCK is a nonprofit founded by chef José Andrés. It rushes to disaster sites with hot meals.
Since then, thousands of people have gotten meals from his trucks.
At another donation site in Pasadena last week, Shemtob whooped as he handed out the final two foil-wrapped meals of the night. “Great job, team,” he said, pumping both fists in the air. He estimates they distributed 750 meals that night alone.
Shemtob’s experience of joy and excitement from giving to others echoes the sentiment of Acts 20:35: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
On Sunday, Shemtob returned to his neighborhood. He drove past lot after lot of flattened wreckage before stopping at what used to be his home.
Among the spiky metal and charred rubble, he spotted a blackened muffin tin, a shard of a platter that was a wedding gift, the outline of a refrigerator, and a piece of a car.
For now, he and Elyse, who is expecting their first child in April, are staying at her aunt’s home.
Shemtob has bounced back before. Just before the coronavirus pandemic that reached the United States in 2020, he purchased two businesses that wound up failing.
“And then I decided to take my food truck out and feed front-line workers,” he says, “and the moment I did that, I started feeling better again.”
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. — Philippians 2:4
