Opening a Plant-Based Restaurant Fuses Two Unique Food Journeys

Raised in Glendale, Jason Cervantes first came to the South Bay to surf in El Porto. Enamored with the beach community, he moved here in 1999 and began taking waiting gigs at various local restaurants, including The Depot in Torrance. 

“Michael Shafer was my first chef crush,” he says. “Everyone made fun of me for how much I adored that guy. I loved to observe how he moved through that restaurant. I learned so much from him.”

Jason, who admits that he had a tough time keeping a serving job, eventually landed a gig on the opening team for The Strand House in Manhattan Beach under a new mentor: Mike Zislis. He went on to a general manager role at Rock’N Fish. 

“It was pretty poetic to get to be the big boss of a place I thought I’d never be good enough to even wait tables at,” he recalls.

But it was while serving at Kincaid’s that Jason met his now fiancée, Scarlett Curtis, a Redondo native. “She was a hostess. I refer to her as my PhD in romance. Took me 10 years!”    

As a young adult, Scarlett had struggled with a variety of skin and digestive issues. After extensive research and experimentation, she switched to a plant-based diet and achieved positive results. She also became a certified nutritional therapy practitioner in the process. 

“We’re not ethically opposed to any of the things we omit. We just feel that these things may cause inflammation, so we work around them.”

“In 2019 Jason moved in with me, and I started teaching him how to eat that way with me,” she shares. “He would take me to vegan restaurants because they were the easiest places for me to enjoy a meal. During the COVID-19 lockdown, we birthed the idea of a restaurant. We wanted to support people who could not cook for themselves to have a healthy, whole-food, plant-based, nourishing meal to turn to. And so our journey with the restaurant began.”

Jason and Scarlett partnered with Mike to open lil’ Vegerie in Redondo Beach. “It still doesn’t feel real that I own a restaurant in this town,” says Jason. “I remember when we started to get close on our space at Knob Hill and PCH, I kept thinking to myself, ‘This can’t be happening.’ We’ve had booths at BeachLife Festival and Tiffany Wells’ boutique Come Together Market. We do a lot with the Beach Cities Health District. We serve bowls for baseball games at Redondo Union High School and at Redondo Sunset Softball. It’s the hugest honor to be woven into the South Bay fabric.”

lil’ Vegerie handmakes bowls, salads, pressed juice, agua fresca and a small selection of desserts. All of the offerings are 100% vegan and free of gluten, soy, seed oil and MSG. “We’re not ethically opposed to any of the things we omit,” says Jason, who does not follow a strictly plant-based diet himself. “We just feel that these things may cause inflammation, so we work around them.”

Menu highlights include poke made from diced beets, slow-cooked jackfruit folded in BBQ sauce, and the popular mushroom carne asada. “We created the menu with the very talented Chef Eileen Elizabeth, who is not only creative but very mindful and passionate about health and conscious cooking,” says Scarlett. “The dishes are hearty, and they hit the spot.”

Recently Jason also became part owner of Paradise Bowls, a longtime local business with a devoted following. In addition to being new business owners, the couple are raising a 17-month-old in South Redondo, and Jason frequently records music and plays open mics with his 21-year-old daughter. 

“I’m so immersed in the grind, I rarely get to step back and appreciate it. But this community that I adored so much when I would come down to surf for a couple hours at a time has become my home,” he says. “In a neat way I’ve been blessed to contribute to it by doing what I love.”