Love’s Public Kitchen in Richmond Has a California Definition of Comfort

By Eric Barton
6:43 a.m. ET, Aug. 14, 2026

AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.

When Mike Lindsey began thinking about Love’s Public Kitchen, he looked about 2,500 miles west—to Southern California, where his wife and business partner, Kimberly Love-Lindsey, grew up.

Comfort food there, he says, crosses borders without stopping to explain itself. Burgers and meatloaf coexist with avocado egg rolls and ahi tuna, a collection shaped by the cultures that have settled across Southern California.

“In California they love comfort food, and a lot of people don’t know that,” Lindsey told Style Weekly.

At Love’s, which opened in Richmond this summer, that idea produces a menu with few concerns about staying in one lane. French onion meatloaf comes with mashed potatoes and green beans. Jambalaya pasta combines shrimp, crawfish tails, and andouille sausage in Cajun cream sauce. There are spicy tuna tartare nachos piled onto wonton chips, barbecue pork ribs with cheddar cornbread, and avocado egg rolls served with pico and cilantro crema.

Roasted chicken with butter sauce

Lindsey describes it as a neighborhood American restaurant, the sort of place where someone can show up without turning dinner into a project. Prices mostly land between $14 and $30, and the menu moves from a BLT made with deviled egg spread to striped bass over cauliflower puree and kale slaw.

The restaurant’s name honors Kimberly’s father, Robert Love, following his recovery from cancer. It continues a family tradition within Lindsey Food Group: Lillie Pearl, the couple’s flagship, was named for their grandmothers.

Shrimp salad roll

Love’s occupies Lillie Pearl’s original home in Richmond’s Arts District. The couple moved that restaurant into a larger building nearby, leaving behind a kitchen with some history and, conveniently, all the expensive parts already installed. Lindsey Food Group now operates seven restaurants, several clustered downtown, including Buttermilk and Honey across the street and The Foundation down the block.

Striped bass with cauliflower puree

Cinnabon cheesecake

The bar keeps things close to home. It pours beer from Blackwell & Brainstorm Brewery, Richmond’s majority Black-owned brewery, in which Lindsey Food Group is a partner. Cocktails include the Steel Magnolia, made with gin and grapefruit shrub, and Duke’s Day, with rye, Cognac, lemon, and red wine syrup.

Lindsey wanted Love’s to feel like the restaurants Kimberly knew growing up: casual, generous, and unconcerned with whether meatloaf and avocado egg rolls belong on the same menu.