In November, chef Joshua Gil almost dies. In February, he opened his new restaurant.
“I am a very stubborn,” Gil recently joked. “I like to tell people: 'I'm Mexican. I don't know how to give up.”
The prolific chef began to be a pioneer in the emerging series of the dinner of Dinner Liberation Front in 2009, and opened and closed famous restaurants, including cutting -go -go -cutting tacos in Santa Monica and Mirame in Beverly Hills. As a founding chef on the happy, he consolidated himself as a local leader from Alta California Cooking.
Now he is serving another Mexican kitchen menu, along with the Mongol barbecue, from a Westchester Strip shopping center, while also fighting cancer in stage IV.
Gil and his chefs-partners team recently placed a place in the neighborhood in Manchester Avenue known by the locals for about 50 years as three flames Mongolian BBQ. The three new flames maintained the flattop and will serve the Mongol barbecue, reinvented, along with fried shellfish tacos inspired by the casualty, hamburgers, loaded fries and some of the new and special most creative toast and special of the city.
A trio of tempura tacos, inspired by the tempura, with three flames in Westchester. From the left: Vieira, local rock cod and mushrooms with cauliflor and wakame.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Despite years of health difficulties, Gil will not stop cooking.
He received his diagnosis of stage II cancer in 2022. The following year, he helped open the praise look at the happy ones, then two restaurants in LEVEL 8 OF LABYRINTH OF THE CENTER OF THE CITY 8An expansion of restaurants and bars inside the Moxy hotel. Then, he silently launched an Italian restaurant at Rancho Cucamonga.
Why open restaurants in colorectal cancer of stage IV?
“I love keeping people,” Gil said. “What we do, we do it from our heart and soul. It's just love, and that's what I want to share.”
Facing challenges
At the end of 2024 and in 2025, Gil underwent months of antibiotic treatments for an infection while completing chemotherapy rounds. The toll he took to his body almost killed him, he said.
Simultaneously, he set up a legal case. In November, Gil presented the arbitration in a capital dispute with his former Mirame and Matthew Egan, Matthew Egan, alleging contractual fraud; The complaint is pending in the Superior Court of the Los Angeles County. “Out of respect for all parties, we cannot comment on ongoing litigation,” said an Egan representative to The Times.
The last six months have been agitated for the chef. “There were people [who were] Super surprised that he was even working, ”said Gil.
But he did not want his medical or legal fight to delay his last project, which he debuted in February. Gil hit Anthony Rodríguez, with whom he had cooked both in Mirame and Mirate, to direct the kitchen while Gil continues to fight against cancer, and contemplating life, mortality and spirituality.
Gil said spirituality has long played an important role in his life. Practice shamanic cures and feel that some of their most satisfactory moments occur when their skills overlap: cooking for people during these ceremonies and providing people with “food to be based”. Someday he would like to open a spiritual retreat, where food would play a role.
For now he has focused on repeating some of his past achievements in a new light to three flames.
Albacore toast with marine beans and sesame sauce to three flames.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
One of the most popular articles of Three Flames is a new albacore toast inspired by the grandmother's maid of Sonora de Gil, whose uncle was a Chinese chef. The family tradition included a chicken recipe with sesame sauce; Gil created his own version, which now fills with vegetables launched in juice of Lima and Habanero sauce Burntt, Albacore and Chicharrón Furikake.
The tortillas made to the order of the restaurant use fresh mass of the adjacent tortillas of Mary. The tacos are full of chips without gluten, shrimp, rock cod or a mixture of fungi, algae and cauliflower.
“It may seem like a small taco store, but the recipes are legitimate,” Gil said. “There are many layers in everything. I want you to explode. I want people to feel it in their hearts. I want you to feel the love we have been putting in it.”
The informal dining room of three flames.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Gil and his team also brought a new life to the Hibachi recipes of the original restaurant, adjusting the ingredients and resorting to the techniques of the Teppanyaki high -end restaurant of Gil, Maison Kasai of the center.
To three flames, the team changed the UDON previously used to fresh Yakisoba noodles. They have added more vegetables to the mixture of Mongolos and new sauces. A new Riffs shrimp option on shrimp toas, forming it in a empanada and throwing it into the noodle mixture (it is also a hamburger).
Not everyone has been delighted with Gil's new address; Multiple Three Flame fans for a long time asked why they can no longer choose their sauteed vegetables from a refrigerator, which Gil withdrew to leave space for more seats.
Taquería dual format and Mongol grill is also a frequent cause of confusion.
“People come in and say: 'Wait, what?'” Gil said. “We still have the Mongol grill because we want to pay tribute to what has been there and what built the base of the place.”
'I really can't do everything'
But with a tense immune system and a requirement to rest, Gil spends less to the grill and more tutoring time. It helps direct the equipment and collaborates in specials such as buttical an entire tuna head for tuna machaca, or chopped clams with Aguachile Granita and “Mexikosho” by Gil, a Mexican turn in Yuzu Kosho made with Meyer Lemons, Serrano Chiles and Key Lime.
“I can't do everything anymore, so I'm doing this with him [Rodriguez] And a couple of my other chefs, “Gil said.” They need to own. “
Three flames' grill in action.
(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
These days he sees Rodríguez as the chef, and himself as a cook who sometimes creates recipes.
“I've been sitting with our identities: who we are, our images of who we are,” he said. “I have not put the [chef’s] White in a long time, and yet, they still know me as 'chef'. We never lose that. It doesn't matter how far from the kitchen you are. Those who know you constantly know you as such, and it is [hard] Hold on to that livelihood, that lifestyle. “
It is, he said, a little as the suffister belief in the death of the ego: to “die” before physical death separating from the notions or titles of who he is.
Gil does not know what comes later for his culinary career or his life while continuing to fight cancer.
But he knows that he wants three flames to serve as a tool to bring more love to the community. He plans to repeat and organize his long -term intercultural underground dinner club there, bringing the renegade and liberation front of the experimental dinner and his rotation of anonymous chefs to the small shopping center in Westchester, a taco, mushroom saving or mystery of a fine course at the same time.
Three Flames is in 5608 W. Manchester Ave., Los Angeles, and is open every day from 11 am to 8 pm
