During the inaugural Westside Night Market on Friday, Sept. 18, balloons framed the doors of the Candlestick Ravine Cafe across from Admiral Kidd Park on Santa Fe Avenue. A crowd of kids, fresh from their dress rehearsal at The Jewel Box Children’s Theater next door, were sampling horchata speckled with toasted pepitas, cinnamon and sesame seeds — Guatemalan style.
The cafe’s soft launch last week spurred excited buzz in Long Beach’s Westside — especially from students and faculty at Cabrillo High School. Principal My Ngoc Nguyen said the students and teachers are eager to have a place directly across the street to grab a coffee (from Anaheim’s Two Tone Roasters) or a breakfast burrito with Candlestick Ravine’s famous salsas.
“It’s something we look forward to now, because besides a mini mart, the 7-Eleven and McDonald’s, there really hasn’t been many places to get a good coffee or breakfast. So now there’s a great alternative,” Nguyen said.
“That was our first order of business,” said James Roddy, one half of the duo who run Candlestick Ravine. “We wanted to make sure that we connected with the school. We knew they’d be our main audience.”
James and his wife, Claudia Alvarez Roddy, opened Candlestick Ravine Cafe on Monday, Sept. 21, but their presence is far from new in the Westside. The couple bought their home there in 2021 and began to create a community almost instantly.
“We started to take walks around the neighborhood, and that gave us time to talk and check in with each other. But then we began to talk to people we would encounter,” said Claudia. “Without even knowing that we were going to start this business here in the Westside, we were able to build a community just by meeting folks and recognizing the people we would bump into every night. I don’t feel like you get that anywhere else.”
It began with salsas: After Claudia and James found themselves unemployed in 2022, the couple decided to launch a line of salsas to sell nationwide, but primarily at farmers markets in Southern California. James took guidance and inspiration from his mother’s recipes from Mexico and Claudia began to create a network of supporters.
But, most importantly, she created the name: A combination of Candlestick Park, where the Giants and 49ers played, to represent James’ Northern California roots and Chávez Ravine, the community that was uprooted to create Dodger Stadium, nodding to Claudia’s Southern California upbringing.
Even inside the cafe, customers are greeted with a collage of photographs from Claudia’s upbringing in Hawthorne and her family roots in Guatemala, as well as James’ family in Northern California and his Mexican and Irish heritage.
As the salsa orders kept coming in, the couple’s accountant suggested they join the Long Beach LGBTQ+ Chamber of Commerce to find additional resources and support.
“After we joined, the events coordinator asked if we did catering and could we cater an event they were putting on. At that time, we were just doing chips and salsas,” Claudia said. “But I looked at [James] and said, ‘Yeah, we can do that…we’ll figure it out.’”
Initially, they began catering for events with 30 to 50 people. “We weren’t really sure if we could cook for a lot of people,” Claudia said. But they found a good rhythm — suddenly catering for 100 or more people.
When they found space for the cafe, the family stepped in: Claudia’s sister is the baker behind the cafe’s highly sought-after cinnamon rolls, muffins and cookies. The cafe’s countertop was handmade by Claudia’s father.
A few students trickled in after school during the cafe’s opening day. They got some drinks and pastries, but then asked James if they were hiring. Claudia said that immediately sparked a conversation with Principal Nguyen about finding a way to provide work experience to students.
“[The students] told us they were thinking about college and getting in some volunteering hours. Maybe they can help us with social media,” said Claudia. “That’s the thing about this cafe. I want it to be this resource where they can feel like there is a place that I could go to potentially get hired.”
Principal Nguyen said the couple reached out to her in the summer about their plans to open the cafe. Nguyen invited them to the faculty’s professional development event — their community learning walks, where teachers from the high school engage with the community.
“On our way back from our walk, we went to Candlestick Ravine. It was so sweet, Claudia and James had set up an entire complimentary spread to introduce the space to our teachers,” Nguyen said.
Claudia and James brought up the idea to dedicate the left side of the cafe to host Cabrillo student artwork.
“The wall in Candlestick Ravine is an extension of what we intended with Night of the Arts: to highlight the incredible work of Cabrillo’s student artists,” said Cabrillo visual arts teacher Emily Yarborough. “Students are always delighted to find out their work is on display, especially when the location is off campus. It is thrilling to know that a stranger values your work and wants to put it on display.”
While the cafe’s hours are Monday to Wednesday from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. to accommodate their catering jobs and filling salsa inventory, James said that could change later.
“The vision has always been from the beginning building community,” Claudia said. “How can we be a beacon of hope? Yes, the Westside is looked down upon, but we want to change that narrative.”