Cheeky’s and F10 Define Farm-to-Table Palm Springs
At Cheeky’s in Palm Springs, the menu starts in the fields of the Coachella Valley, not just in the kitchen. For Cheeky’s, desert-grown dates, citrus, and seasonal produce dictate what’s available week to week. This is not a quirk. It is the entire point of the restaurant.
Tara Lazar is the CEO and founder of F10 Hospitality, the Palm Springs hospitality company behind some of the most beloved spots in the Coachella Valley. It started with Cheeky’s and now also includes Birba, Mr. Lyons, Seymour’s, the Alcazar hotel, High Pie, Birba Cabazon, and a brand-new Tack Room in Indio. Cheeky’s was the first.
Nearly nineteen years later, Cheeky’s is still the baby Tara calls her first and always. The reason the menu keeps turning over has everything to do with the farms in its backyard.
The Menu Changes With the Growing Seasons
F10 runs more than a dozen restaurants, hotels, and bars across Greater Palm Springs and North County San Diego. But it all started with Cheeky’s, the breakfast spot Tara opened to honor small local farms. These days in Palm Springs, you can head to Birba for seasonal Italian, Mr. Lyons for the vegetarian-forward steakhouse reimagining of a legacy Palm Springs room, or Seymour’s for a swank cocktail bar.
Farther afield in the Coachella Valley, they have the farm-fresh inspired Birba Cabazon for the outlets-adjacent crowd as well as the Tack Room in Indio, with a second Birba opening soon alongside it. While in North County San Diego, they have High/Low and High Pie.
Across all of these properties, one thread holds: ingredients move at the speed of California’s growing seasons. “We have some of the absolute world’s best produce. And I don’t say that lightly,” Tara says. “Everything from obviously citrus and dates. But we have amazing artichokes. And we have amazing peppers. And we have amazing chilies.”
That abundance is the reason the menu moves. Cantaloupes come in, they go on. Asparagus comes in, it goes on. Dates from Thermal arrive, so do citrus from Riverside. Anything that has to fly in from far away is viewed skeptically. “I really don’t like the process of having to get anything from far away,” Tara says. “It just doesn’t feel right. Even in good health. I love to really celebrate each thing as it comes in.”
A Hometown Girl Finds Her Love For Farm-To-Table Food
Tara was born and raised in Palm Springs and grew up around the region’s agriculture. Life led her to study at UC Berkeley and work at the San Francisco Stock Exchange before she pivoted to the food industry.
On a year off from Berkeley, Tara went to Bologna, Italy to learn Italian. On her father’s advice, she took as many cooking classes as she could fit in around school. She ended up marrying an Italian, which she had not planned, and absorbing an approach to food that has shaped her ever since: learning the source, salting the eggplant, taking the extra steps, and respecting the grandmother’s recipe.
Upon returning to the Imperial Valley, she was motivated to open Cheeky’s, which became the first piece of the F10 Creative brand. Even though she had never cooked professionally in her life, she did have an instinct. She also has a rule she has never broken. F10 kitchens make everything from scratch and as much local and seasonal food as possible. That single rule, together with the changing menu, is why Cheeky’s has stayed relevant for almost two decades in a town that sees visitors come and go constantly.
Women in the Imperial Valley Food System Kitchen
2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer, and F10’s front-of-house, back-of-house, and supplier relationships reflect how many women are carrying the valley’s food system forward with locally produced goods.
Tara makes a point of putting a woman in every F10 kitchen. “I think estrogen is really important just to balance energy,” she says. “I also think women cook more for their guests.” Her leadership style, shaped by the fact that she was never indoctrinated into the toxic side of restaurant kitchens, has become an invitation for younger women coming up in hospitality.
“A lot of women in my field look up to me more as a business leader,” she says. “I try to always convey, don’t try to act like a dude. You can be a lady in the kitchen, and you can be feminine, and you can be powerful, and you can really be yourself.”
On the supply side, F10 works with local farms, many of which are women- or family-led. Dates from Flying Disc Ranch in Thermal, citrus from Bernard Ranch in Riverside, specialty produce from growers small enough that one blown tire can change the morning’s delivery. “I just value so much the people who are doing it,” she says,“especially the new youth that’s taking an interest in it. We need this.”
F10 Love: Feeding the Valley That Feeds F10
The same agricultural valley that supplies Cheeky’s also has serious food insecurity. This is particularly true in the East Valley communities outside Palm Springs’ tourist corridor. That gap is where F10 Love, the F10 Creative nonprofit, spends its time.
F10 Love started during COVID. Its centerpiece is Frankie, a food truck Tara designed with a row of automat-style cubbies along the side. This means meals pop out of individual compartments rather than being handed across a counter. The design is deliberate. “There’s a lot of shame behind food insecurity,” Tara says. “Some of our neediest participants don’t need to look at someone in the face or interact with people. It’s very fun and engaging, and it doesn’t have any judgment.”
Frankie can also move fast. When federal food coupons were recently paused for a brief period, the local school board issued an invitation, and Frankie fed roughly 2,400 families in five days. On a regular basis, F10 Love focuses on East Valley children whose school meals are sometimes their most reliable of the day and layer in nutrition education, so kids learn to cook with four ingredients from the ground rather than four ingredients from a box. Cheeky’s and F10 also partner with the local Boys and Girls Club and YMCA on kitchen classes.
“Food is our only saving grace for humanity and for health,” Tara says. “If we lose farmers, especially farmers who farm responsibly, we are in a lot of trouble.”
California Grown Is Lucky
Ask Tara what California Grown means to her, and she does not reach for sustainability or quality, even though both are true for her. She goes somewhere else. “I would say California Grown is lucky,” she says. “We’re really lucky to have this. And I feel that really from my core.”
That is the whole F10 thesis, condensed. The menus change because the valley is generous in supplying fresh ingredients. The kitchens run on scratch cooking because the ingredients deserve it.
The nonprofit exists because the same abundance should reach the people who live next to it. And the restaurants multiply because Tara has more ideas than square footage, and because Palm Springs contains more kinds of people than outsiders usually realize. “We have artists, we have old, we have young, we have all colors, we have all sexual preferences,” she says. “I really want some restaurants that people can come to multiple times a week, and then other restaurants that maybe you come to only for a special occasion. The idea is you’re welcome in all of them.”
Plan Your Palm Springs Farm-to-Table Visit
Book breakfast at Cheeky’s for the rotating seasonal menu, dinner next door at Birba for seasonal Italian, a special-occasion night at Mr. Lyons ‘ Steakhouse, or a cocktail at Seymour’s. For a full Palm Springs farm-to-table day, pair a Cheeky’s breakfast with a visit to Moorten Botanical Garden and a loop back through a local farmers market.
For more agritourism itineraries, see more than 15 activities to do in Palm Springs and Riverside County, or at Experience California Agriculture.
Need a new soundtrack for your next road trip? Check out this CA GROWN Spotify playlist:
Frequently Asked Questions About Cheeky’s and F10 Creative
Where is Cheeky’s?
Cheeky’s is on North Palm Canyon Drive in downtown Palm Springs, California, next door to Birba (F10’s seasonal Italian restaurant) and near the Alcazar Hotel. It has been open since 2008 and is the flagship restaurant of F10 Creative.
What restaurants does F10 Creative run?
F10 Creative operates Cheeky’s, Birba, Mr. Lyons, Seymour’s, the Alcazar hotel, High/Low, High Pie, Birba Cabazon, the Tack Room in Indio, and a second Birba opening in Indio, across the Greater Palm Springs area and North County San Diego.
What does F10 Love do?
F10 Love is the F10 Creative nonprofit focused on food insecurity in the Coachella Valley. Its signature program is Frankie, a food truck with automat-style cubbies that can deliver meals quickly and with dignity to children and families, particularly in East Valley communities. F10 Love also runs nutrition education in partnership with local Boys and Girls Club and YMCA chapters.
Why does the menu at Cheeky’s change every week?
Cheeky’s menu changes every week (and every two weeks during peak season) because F10 builds its menus around what is in season from Coachella Valley and broader Southern California farms. Ingredients lead the menu rather than the other way around.
This article was written by CA GROWN Content Creator Aida Mollenkamp, and images from Salt & Wind.
Aida is a food and travel expert, author, chef, Food Network personality, and founder of Salt & Wind Travel. With a career in food travel media and hospitality, she has traveled the globe in search of the best food destinations. Her cookbook, Keys To The Kitchen, is a favorite among home cooks seeking adventure, and her Travel Guides For Food Lovers series is cherished by food travelers.
Influenced by her many adventures and inspired by California’s bountiful produce, Aida’s recipes are fun, fresh, and bursting with flavor. We’re loving her Grilled Artichoke Recipe with Herbed Roasted Garlic Aioli – you will too!