Running a restaurant in L.A. seems impossible. So this chef has one employee — himself

Chef Okay Inak, who grew up in Turkey and spent time in New York cooking at fine-dining institutions Per Se and Eleven Madison Park as well as Mélisse in L.A., is alone in his tiny 16-seat restaurant on an industrial stretch of 12th Street in downtown L.A. It’s his “day off,” which he spends prepping food for the week.

Inak has no other staff because the financial landscape for restaurants in L.A. is soberingly challenging. His only employee is himself.

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March 11, 2025

Inak and his wife, Sezen Vatansever, who is a doctor and researcher for a pharmaceutical company, opened Sora Craft Kitchen in May 2024 with no help from investors. In a time when opening and sustaining a successful restaurant in Los Angles seems impossible, they are approaching it in a way they believe is sustainable.

“Since we opened the restaurant with our own life savings,” says Vatansever, “we have a very limited budget, so that for now, under these economical conditions, financial conditions, this is the only sustainable way. He cannot hire another chef. He cannot hire a cleaning person or server.”

Okay Inak prepares shrimp in tarhana butter at his downtown restaurant Sora Craft Kitchen.

(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)

Standing behind a counter that faces a dining room of simple white tables and brown box stools, Inak forms perfect spheres of ground meat that he has been slow-cooking with caramelized onions and Turkish yenibahar spice for hours. He lightly flattens the meat in his hands into a patty, then wraps it in a smooth thin piece of bulgur wheat dough, a recipe he learned from his late mother whose photo is on the wall across from where he stands.

“It’s very hard to make. It takes me like eight hours, 10 hours,” says Inak of the kitels that he boils during service and serves over homemade yogurt with mint chive oil and drizzles with Aleppo pepper-infused butter.

Turkish i?li k?fte, or kitel, is one of chef Inak’s signature dishes, which takes several hours to make.

(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)

Though running a restaurant completely alone sounds overwhelming, chef Inak doesn’t seem to mind this approach. “Actually, this is my prep day, I’m really happy because I’m alone. I have my own timeline,” he says, and the peace and quiet of a kitchen all to himself.

But when the restaurant is open for dinner service, the scene is slightly different. Tall flames burn on the stove behind him as he juggles grilling garlic kebabs, clearing and wiping down tables while plating a plump filet of charred-on-the-grill branzino that he buries in herbs and sliced pickled radishes. A regular customer, who is dining with his family, approaches him and asks him in Turkish for hot water for his child’s bottle of milk, which Inak provides swiftly and happily.

Inak and Vatansever stress that a chef-focused restaurant where the chefs interact with the guests, was always the plan, not only because he wants chefs to become more visible but also so they can get paid more.

If and when he can afford to hire another employee, it will only be another chef, not a server or dishwasher, because he wants to create a system where chefs receive tips and can therefore earn a living wage. Typically under labor laws, servers are considered tipped employees while chefs are not.

“He worked at the best restaurants in the world, and chefs cannot make money in the restaurants. We know that,” says Vatansever. Sora seems to be their answer to this.

“If we do everything,” says Inak, referring to serving, bussing, clearing tables, washing dishes, cleaning and anything else that comes with running a restaurant, “we make money together.”

Behind the restaurant, Inak harvests flowers from his garden, which he says will be flourishing come spring.

(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)

“My guests, they love that I serve the food,” he says, noting that at Mélisse the chefs cook and serve. Other fine-dining restaurants operate similarly.

“I know this neighborhood is not fancy,” he says, admitting that he gets few walk-ins.

He said the building had a lot of problems that he fixed himself. And despite little foot traffic, he takes pride in the rapport he has built with a loyal clientele that comes from all over L.A.

“My budget is lower, and the rent is very important for me. Santa Monica, Venice, West Hollywood or Arts District is crazy expensive. It’s impossible, you know? And then I found this place [with] very low rent.”

In addition to the 16-hour-plus days, there are other downsides to having no employees. Three months after opening Sora last May, just as the restaurant was beginning to gain momentum, Inak was washing a glass water jug before service when it shattered and severed a tendon in his left hand, requiring surgery.

“The hand surgeon told him not to work for three months,” says Vatansever. “It really was devastating.” With no one to fill in, he was forced to close the restaurant for three months. “However, it gave him time to rethink his cuisine.” In that time Inak describes developing his pickle recipes, the jars of which now line the shelves of Sora.

Okay prepares a candied pumpkin dessert called kirecte kabak.

(Yasara Gunawardena / For The Times)

Since reopening, Sora has seen steady growth. But Inak’s dream is to be able to serve the kind of food he has been cooking for years.

“He has big dreams,” says Vatansever. “This actually creates a limiting factor for him. He wants to serve more sophisticated and more complicated dishes because he worked at three-Michelin-star restaurants for many years, and now he cannot actually show his full potential because the complicated and more sophisticated dishes require a team of workers and better equipment.”

That said, everything about Sora is exactly how they intended it to be. “Almost everything in the restaurant is secondhand,” she says, “We always wanted a place which can be sustainable, zero waste. It’s about the philosophy. It’s about the values we have. We never wanted to open a brand-new, million-dollar restaurant.”