Meet Paola Guasp, Chef and Owner of LA’s Amara Kitchen

For Paola Guasp, running a restaurant has always been second-nature.

A decade ago, she opened Amara Kitchen, a café dedicated to serving healthy food that tastes good. Tucked on a residential corner at the edge of Highland Park and Garvanza in Northeast Los Angeles, Amara Kitchen features a curated vegan-friendly breakfast and lunch menu, house-made gluten-free pastries, and a full espresso bar. Committed to accommodating all dietary lifestyles, Amara has easily become a neighborhood favorite and a cultural staple in the community.

For the holidays this year, the restaurant is featuring limited cranberry muffins, on display beside a petit Christmas pine.

At the center of the operation is Paola Guasp: chef, entrepreneur, business owner.

“I always liked to cook,” she says, “and I do feel like I was good at it from the start.”

Guasp was born in Los Angeles; moved to Santiago, Chile, when she was eight-months old; and returned to Los Angeles when she was five, where she spent her most formative years.

“My mom was a waitress and worked late, so my sister and I would be home alone,” Guasp says. “If I cooked, then she would clean, and that was our little trade off.”

Throughout her youth, she experimented with different flavors, tried new ingredients, and – really – taught herself the basics.

What really cemented Guasp’s culinary ambition was the onset of health issues when she was a teenager. Healthy cooking became her primary focus — and this was shortly before healthy food had become trendy and more accessible. So, as she explored specialty grocery stores for organics and alternatives, they slowly started to show up in the mainstream markets that exist today.

“And then I became a nanny…[and the kids and I] had similar diets,” Guasp says, “which is why I started cooking for them, very naturally.”

In this role, she experimented with an array of unique ingredients and originated new recipes, many of which are now found on the menu at Amara Kitchen. This includes the Bison Ragu, Paleo Pancakes, the Sweet Potato Quesadilla, and Amara Milk—a house-made almond-cashew milk that patrons enjoy with granola or in espresso beverages.

When the family she nannied for hired a personal chef, Guasp took the opportunity to deepen her skills and understanding.

“When she was in the kitchen, we’d go and yakkity-yak-yak together, and we became really close friends,” Guasp says.

Together, they decided to open two businesses: a restaurant and a catering company.

“We found this Highland Park space. It was [an] affordable rent for us, so I took out the money I had saved, got a few angel loans from friends, and we just went for it,” Paola says.

Though Guasp hadn’t owned a business before, she’d worked in restaurants her whole life. And so had her mom. She knew what she knew and learned the rest as she went.

“There was no failing. That didn’t even cross my mind,” she says. “At first, we didn’t even pay ourselves. I was still nannying. Maybe a year and half in, I started paying myself, and I was like – okay – I can survive off this.”

Ten years later, Guasp has two thriving restaurants (Amara Kitchen’s second location opened in Altadena in 2021!) and a catering company that serves weddings, film shoots, and parties. Her team of managers, baristas, line cooks, prep cooks, bakers, and third-party vendors help manifest her vision on the daily.

While she forms long-lasting relationships with those she’s worked with, she never takes things personally.

“I think that’s really important,” she says. “You deal with so many people. Everyone has their own life, their own dreams, and their own attitudes. [It’s about] being able to let go of things quickly.”

After celebrating the company holiday party last week, she looks to 2023 with as much passion as she had from the start.

“When I walk in, I know [it’s] exactly where I belong, and it’s always felt that way,” Guasp says. “You’ve got to have passion going into it. If you don’t, you’re not going to last.”

Amara Kitchen is open from 8am to 4pm daily in Highland Park and Altadena. Plan a visit; stay awhile. And definitely get a chocolate chunk cookie.

By Andrew Tamarkin

Photography by Josiah Sickler