Right Mealz, the Downtown eatery that is a meals-to-go spot-meets-coffeehouse-meets-restaurant, is slowly building a name for two things. One is creating healthy food that goes beyond the boring chicken. And two, its owner, Chris Sweeney, became inherently connected to a neighborhood that could use all the love it could get.
Right Mealz is nearly a decade in the making
“Yesterday was the first time I posted a picture of a prep meal—in Mo’s kitchen nonetheless,” Chris said. Smiling, he noted that Brother’s Keeper BBQ owner Maurice “Mo” Stewart was a former roommate. “It was like watching a flower blossom. Because we didn’t decide to do a restaurant until many, many years after I began it.”
Constantly working out of ghost kitchens or rented spaces, Chris has no intentions of moving into the brick-and-mortar world. As his meal prep business slowly grew, it became attached to professional athletes. With professional athletes comes more opportunities and bigger contracts—contracts he ultimately had to turn down because he simply didn’t have the space to execute the work when and how he needed to.
This became even more impacted when Right Mealz became part of the Los Angeles Sports Entertainment Commission. That’s the nonprofit organization that helps connect local businesses to massive athletic events, from the Olympics coming in 2028 to the FIFA World Cup in 2026 to smaller events like their Dodgers All-Access programming.
“I’m going to a meeting for the upcoming 2028 Olympics here in L.A.,” Chris said. “Before taking on the spot on 4th Street, I was hesitant to take on contracts like these because I was so limited on space: I was limited to two days of business instead of telling Maxx Crosby from the Raiders, ‘No, I can’t deliver your food.’ It was inevitable that I had to find a permanent space of my own to better control my future work.”
Taking over the former Berlin Bistro space, Right Mealz gets healthy food right
When former Portfolio and Berlin Bistro owner Kerstin Kansteiner opted to shutter both businesses simultaneously to make way for Alder & Sage, Chris saw a relatively sweet opportunity to get that massive step toward finding Right Mealz the right permanent home. While people “still think we forced Berlin out,” Chris decided to look beyond the fact that he now has an accessible kitchen 24/7 for meal prep building. He also had a restaurant that could be a community space.
“I wanted to look at it from a way of using what we already had in a different capacity,” Chris said. “How can we cross-utilize our ingredients to make the front of the house shine beyond the meals to go? Not just the boring stuff.”
Shunning seed oils, opting for gluten-free sauces, and aiming for the healthier part of food intake, Chris didn’t entirely abandon the so-called “boring” extension of nutritious foods. (He even mocks the idea of healthy being boring with a to-go meal literally labeled “Healthy Boring Chicken” with chicken and rice.)
This means a non-GMO barbecue sauce for chicken. A teriyaki sauce that is both gluten- and seed-oil-free, following the trend that showcases how these oils increase inflammation and disease. Diary-free mashed potatoes. Using bread from Nonna Mercato’s stellar bake shop. And Chris, rather than chasing diet trends and exuding the attitude of health influencers who depend on faulty information, works directly with sports dietitians.
The food of Right Mealz
“They’re the most under-utilized resources, dietitians,” Chris said. “Anybody can call themselves a nutritionist—and that is dangerous because dietitians are the real professionals. And it has helped my business: For example, there’s a professional football player here in Long Beach that I work with and they were shocked to find out I called the team dietitian to assure what I was making him was aligned with the health professional assigned to overseeing his diet.”
Because of this, if anything, Right Mealz avoids the stereotypes surrounding healthy food in a world dominated by hyped culinary excesses.
“We’ve never been bland—and how we achieved that is our work with and through athletes,” Chris said. “You know, these are often kids who grew up eating Takis and Cheetos, and then they hit the NFL and say, ‘Oh shit, I gotta eat healthy; my body is my money maker.’ All food is good food, but it’s more about how the food is prepared and what ingredients you are using.”
There’s a stellar, hearty breakfast sandwich, where layers of bacon and egg are smashed between two slices of sourdough from Nonna Mercato. One of their best-sellers is the über-Millennial avocado toast (that we will never forget as preventing them from buying homes). Beautifully arranged avocado meets an Aleppo pepper oil drizzle. A steak salad sees medium rare strips of beef lined over arugula.
Don’t think there aren’t sweets: overnight oats’ n berries sit next to peanut butter toast lined with banana, berries, and coconut. This is healthy, yes, but also quite delicious and a marked turn away from the excesses of hefty food. And in all frankness, it deserves applause for being just that in a scene that desperately needs it.
And the name? Despite how one may mock it, it isn’t going anywhere.
“It’s me; people know it as me,” Chris said. One of my favorite comments I got was, ‘Right Mealz? As in, this is the only place for right-wingers to eat?’ That made me laugh. But whether people think it’s cheesy or not, I’m sticking with it. And I’m also sticking with my neighborhood and business. We’re in it for the long run, Long Beach.”
Right Mealz is located at 420 E. 4th St.
