He turned a Mongolian BBQ joint into a Baja-style seafood spot — while battling cancer
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- Joshua Gil, battling cancer for years, continues to pursue his culinary passions.
- His latest genre-bending restaurant serves Baja-leaning tacos, tostadas and burgers alongside Mongolian barbecue.
In November, chef Joshua Gil nearly died. In February, he opened his new restaurant.
“I’m a very stubborn a—,” Gil quipped recently. “I like telling people, ‘I’m Mexican. I don’t know how to give up.’”
The prolific chef started pioneering pop-up dinner series Supper Liberation Front in 2009, and went on to open and close celebrated restaurants including Tacos Punta Cabras in Santa Monica and Mírame in Beverly Hills. As the founding chef of Mírate in Los Feliz he cemented himself as a local leader of Alta California cooking.
Now he’s serving another menu of Mexican cuisine — alongside Mongolian barbecue — from a Westchester strip mall, while also battling Stage IV cancer.
Gil and his team of chef-partners recently flipped a neighborhood spot on Manchester Avenue known to locals for some 50 years as Three Flames Mongolian BBQ. The new Three Flames kept the flattop and will will serve Mongolian BBQ, reimagined, along with Baja-inspired fried seafood tacos, burgers, loaded fries and some of the city’s most creative new tostadas and specials.
Despite years of health hardships, Gil won’t stop cooking.
He received his Stage II cancer diagnosis in 2022. The following year he helped open the lauded Mírate in Los Feliz, then two restaurants in downtown’s maze-like Level 8, a sprawl of restaurants and bars within the Moxy Hotel. Then, he quietly launched an Italian restaurant in Rancho Cucamonga.
Why open restaurants in the midst of Stage IV colorectal cancer?
“I love providing for 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
In late 2024 and into 2025, Gil underwent months of antibiotic treatments for an infection while also completing rounds of chemotherapy. The toll it took on his body nearly killed him, he said.
Simultaneously, he mounted a legal case. In November, Gil filed arbitration in an equity dispute with his former Mírame and Mírate business partner Matthew Egan, alleging contract fraud; the complaint is pending in Los Angeles County Superior Court. “Mr. Egan categorically denies Mr. Gil’s claims, including those of contractual fraud,” Todd Whitman, a legal representative for Egan, wrote in an email to the L.A. Times.
The last six months have been eventful for the chef. “There were people [who were] super surprised that I was even functioning,” Gil said.
But he did not want his medical or legal strife to delay his latest project, which debuted in February. Gil tapped Anthony Rodriguez, with whom he’d cooked at both Mírame and Mírate, to head up the kitchen as Gil continues to battle cancer — and contemplate life, mortality and spirituality.
Gil said spirituality has long played an important role in his life. He practices shamanic healings and feels some of his most fulfilling moments come when his skills overlap: cooking for people during these ceremonies and providing people “with the nourishment to be grounded.” Someday he’d like to open a spiritual retreat, where food would play a role.
For now he’s focused on reprising some of his past achievements in a new light at Three Flames.
One of Three Flames’ most popular items is a new albacore tostada inspired by Gil’s Sonora-raised grandmother, whose uncle was a Chinese chef. Family lore included a recipe for chicken with sesame salsa; Gil created his own version, which now tops vegetables tossed in Key lime juice and burnt-habanero salsa, buttery albacore and chicharrón furikake.
The restaurant’s made-to-order tortillas use fresh masa from the adjacent Maria’s Tortillas. The tacos are filled with gluten-free tempura-fried scallops, shrimp, rock cod or a blend of mushroom, seaweed and cauliflower.
“It might look like a little taco shop, but the recipes are legit,” Gil said. “There’s a lot of layers to everything. I want it to pop. I want people to feel it in their heart. I want you to feel the love that we’ve been putting into it.”
Gil and his team brought new life to the original restaurant’s hibachi recipes too, tweaking the ingredients and drawing on techniques from Gil’s high-end teppanyaki restaurant, downtown’s Maison Kasai.
At Three Flames the team switched the previously used udon to fresh yakisoba noodles. They’ve added more vegetables to the Mongolian-barbecue mix, and new sauces. A new shrimp option riffs on shrimp toast, forming it into a patty and throwing it into the noodle mix (it’s also a burger).
The desk clerk in my Taipei hotel gave me a hot tip for dining out.
Not everyone’s been thrilled with Gil’s new direction; multiple longtime Three Flames fans asked why they can no longer choose their stir-fry vegetables from a refrigerator, which Gil removed to make room for more seating.
The dual format of taqueria and Mongolian grill is also a frequent cause for confusion.
“People walk in and they’re like, ‘Wait, what?’” Gil said. “We still have the Mongolian grill because we want to pay homage to what’s been there, and what built the foundation of the spot.”
‘I can’t really do it all’
But with a strained immune system and a requirement for rest, Gil spends less time at the grill and more time mentoring. He helps steer the team and collaborates on specials such as butchering a whole tuna head for tuna machaca, or chopped clams with aguachile granita and Gil’s “Mexikosho,” a Mexican spin on yuzu kosho made with Meyer lemons, serrano chiles and Key lime.
“I can’t really do it all anymore, so I’m doing this with him [Rodriguez] and a couple of my other chefs,” Gil said. “They need to be owners.”
These days he sees Rodriguez 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 haven’t donned the [chef’s] whites in a long time, and yet I’m still referred to as ‘chef.’ We never lose that. It doesn’t matter how away from the kitchen you are. You’re constantly being called ‘chef’ by those that know you as such, and it’s [hard] holding on to that livelihood, that lifestyle.”
It is, he said, a little like the Sufistic belief in ego death: of “dying” before physical death by separating one’s self from the notions or titles of who he is.
Maybe you know chefs Josh Gil and Daniel Snukal from their Westside taqueria Tacos Punta Cabras, where they’ve been serving seafood and tofu tacos (yes, tofu tacos) since February 2013.
Gil doesn’t know what comes next for his culinary career or his life as he continues to battle cancer.
But he knows that he wants Three Flames to serve as a tool in bringing more love into the community. He plans to reprise and host his long-running, cross-cultural underground supper club there, bringing the renegade, experimental Supper Liberation Front and its rotation of anonymous chefs to the small strip mall in Westchester — one taco, Mongolian stir-fry or mystery fine-dining course at a time.
Three Flames is located at 5608 W. Manchester Ave., Los Angeles, and is open daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
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