With chef jackets dyed the deep hue of blueberry skins, pink pants that resemble those iconic doughnut-shop boxes and cream forager vests streaked with jagged gray stripes to evoke blue cheese, Meals is helping you look like a snack.
The locally made independent clothing line is a favorite among Angelenos with a fashion bent, the puppeteers of Bob Baker Marionette Theater, ceramicists, skateboarders and some of your favorite chefs and farmers. They come in solid colors, or patterns like banana yellow splattered with dots of just-ripe brown.
“It’s like, how could we take these two simple things that we really love — fashion and food — and combine them together?” said co-founder Sam Salad, adding, “Every wash we do is made to look like a food.”
Modernist vests are modeled on vintage duck-hunting garb, the forager pants are sewn with extra-deep pockets, and the garments are made to be loose but heavy enough to withstand a day in the kitchen or scavenging in the mountains.
Sam Salad — who pores over restaurant reviews, keeps a copy of Jonathan Gold’s “Counter Intelligence” at his bedside, and even adopted a last name that reflects his “complete obsession” around food — doesn’t just take design inspiration from food; it also shapes how he approaches business. He looks to his favorite Korean restaurant, Kobawoo House, for lessons: He sees its specialty of boiled-pork bossam as a dish honed over decades. Why mess with perfection or offer endless items?
“If you over-index,” he said, “you can lose strategy.”
He and his romantic and business partner, who goes by Rebma Salad, began Meals Clothing in 2019 with that same goal: Offer a limited line that does its specialties well. They work with a local wash house to transpose colors and patterns that represent food. It all began with watermelon — bright yellow and green stripes resembling the rind — which is still one of their most popular patterns and is sometimes worn by fan Alex Weiser, one of L.A.’s most celebrated farmers.
Meals garments are produced within six miles of the Highland Park storefront, beginning with fabric that’s purchased in the piñata district. The clothing is cut and sewn blocks away, near the original location, Salad notes, of Teddy’s Red Tacos.
More than a decade ago he was selling denim at a shop along Abbot Kinney Boulevard. He noticed the rising star of neighboring restaurant Gjelina: the fervor for fresh produce, the lines of customers who’d pay $30 for pizzas eaten while sitting on milk crates. Why not approach denim with a food vocabulary?
“As a joke I started using the language of food to sell clothing,” he said. “I would say things like, ‘This raw denim is super crispy, but it gets really buttery over time.’ Just peppering food speak. I was doing it secretly just to amuse myself.”
Years later, he began dating Rebma, the fashion designer behind modernist, inclusivity-minded denim line 69. They began designing their own fashion line together, which became Meals.
Now when they eat, they see patterns and color and wonder how it could translate to linen and canvas. “It does totally change your lens about how you look at the world,” Sam Salad said.
They began selling at local shops and then, in late 2025, flipped a former insurance-agency office into an 800-square-foot storefront splashed with color, along with tarp and duct tape that nods to construction sites and workwear, and a shopping cart, faux-food candles and a large plushy stuffed sandwich to evoke grocery stores.
Their chef fandom grew organically. Jessica Koslow stumbled upon them at another shop, Virgil Normal, resulting in a collaboration with her restaurant Sqirl. Another followed with Kismet, and another with Jon & Vinny’s.
“A couple restaurants have asked for uniforms for their chefs and the people who work in their kitchens,” Sam Salad said. “It’s amazing and we’re thrilled. Because I am a food outsider, I want to make garments for these people.”
According to one local chef-fan, Meals now comprises roughly 40% of his wardrobe.
After taking on a more corporate cooking job, Estrano and former Poltergeist chef Diego Argoti was searching for more formal attire beyond his band tees and black hoodies. Early last year he stumbled on a light-green linen suit at a designer vintage shop and knew he had to have it: It turned out to be an avocado-inspired ensemble from Meals. He wore it to cook a VIP dinner series at Coachella that spring, and the clothing line became a fashion fixation. He’s since purchased chef pants, forager pants, shorts and jackets in the washes and styles of watermelon, bubblegum and mustard, among others.
While the price can be inhibiting for some — with chef pants priced as high as $190 and jackets as much as $210, the price of a decent knife or other cooking tools — Argoti feels the heavy usage justifies the cost for him. He also recommends shopping at the store’s “bruised fruit” section, which sells slightly imperfect or overstock items at half price.
Argoti wears Meals in the kitchen, at photo shoots and events. It’s helped him develop a style in the kitchen that feels almost anachronistic to traditional chef’s whites.
“We’re taught to wear these big coats and big pants and dress a certain way that is very uniform, very brigade, and there’s no expression,” Argoti said. “I feel like this is kind of fun because in the same way that it is uniform, there’s so much color that could also reflect seasons and reflect personality.”
According to Sam, there’s a natural synergy to food and fashion — at the core, both are forms of art and consumption — but in Los Angeles, it’s also geographical. Color and great food surround us here. Why not wear it on our sleeves?
Meals Clothing can be found online and at the storefront at 5829 N. Figueroa St. in Los Angeles, which is open Wednesday to Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The post Meet the Highland Park clothing brand dressing L.A. chefs like snacks appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
