Original subtitles

If you were the guy who lifted my cell phone last year

you may have noticed that the camera roll

is rich in taco snapshots.

My inner life tends to be measured

out in radishes, meat and limes.

If you peered closely at the tiny images

trying to figure out who might spend so many

of his days in proximity to small tortillas.

You may have inferred that a startling number

of the tacos came from a single source.

Guerilla tacos, a tiny operation that pops up

a few days a week in downtown Los Angeles.

Guerilla tacos is a pretty singular taqueria

the creation of Wes avila

whose culinary training came under Alain ducasse in Paris.

Avila was crafting tacos in empty storefronts

or stairwells or garage spaces deep downtown

and there were rumors about tacos made with diver scallops

weird vegetables and Sushi grade yellow tail.

When I published a list of the best dishes of 2013

I included his taco made with roasted squash

rubbery oaxacan cheese

and a hint of chili and charred tomato.

The tortillas don't seem to be made to order

but they are fresh and toasty enough.

The taco equivalent of the energy

of what Chinese cooks sometimes call

"the breathe of the wok," is in full effect.

A ducasse disciple, quitting his job at an haute cuisine

pop up to serve charred octopus tacos

on a downtown street corner.

You're not gonna find cooking like this anywhere, but la.

I'm an la guy, I drive.

I am, I am my truck, my truck is me.

I'm going a slightly screwy way.

I got off on the 10 instead of the 5

which I probably shouldn't have.

Everybody in the world has an idea of what Los Angeles is.

Everybody thinks they know what Los Angeles means

even if they've never been here.

And if you live in Los Angeles, you're used to

having your city explained to you

by people who come in for a couple of weeks

stay in a hotel in Beverly hills

and take in what they can get to

within 10 minutes in their rented car.

The thing that people find hard to understand I think

is sort of the... the magnitude of what's here.

The huge number of multiple cultures that live in the city

who come together in this beautiful and haphazard fashion.

And you know, the... the fault lines between them

are sometimes where you find the most beautiful things.

I mean, I became a food writer completely by accident

but it became what I aspired to.

The idea of celebrating, you know

the... the glorious mosaic of the city

on somebody else's dime was just completely fun

and completely exactly what I wanted to do.

I mean, I kept feeling as if I was getting away with something.

There definitely is a Jonathan gold Los Angeles

and it's a Los Angeles that a lot of people didn't know about.

He, like Raymond Chandler showed you a vision

of Los Angeles that was a new vision.

Jonathan changed the food writing world

because he was one of the first restaurant critics

which was, who was perfectly happy in..

I guess I even think happier

writing about the hard to find small restaurants

in tiny little communities.

- Hi, how you doin'? - Good. How are you?

Can I get a huarache de with flor de calabaza?

- Flor de calabaza huarache? - Yes.

Sure. You want cheese on that?

- Yeah. - Okay.

He was going to these places

where food critics didn't always go

and he went to mom and pop places

where generations of tradition were being passed down

in the cooking.

La is great that way because you don't have to travel

far to taste like you traveled far

and... and I think that's what made him such an interesting writer

because he was so curious about that type of cooking.

This is a little sauce right here from my grandmother.

She, she came up with this, with this sauce

so my mom just wanted me to bring you guys some

so you can taste it and see how good it is.

It's really, it's really, really good.

There's salsa de semillas inside.

Yeah, salsa de semillas.

It has peanuts, garlic, hojuelas..

It's really good.

- Thanks. - You're welcome.

The saddest moment in boyle heights street food

most aficionados would agree

was the evening the breed street vendors

were finally chased from their scene.

This gathering had always been

rousted by the cops every so often.

It was amazing how quickly the circus

turned into a deserted parking lot.

But Carmen castellanos, the soul of antojitos Carmen

had been working boyle heights since the 1980's

and after a brief stretch on a sidewalk

next to an mta building sight

she scraped together the funding for a real restaurant

just around the corner and brought along her family.

Other la restaurants began as street food

but none quite so vividly as antojitos Carmen.

You want these guys to succeed.

He became a, a... a figure of the democratizing

movement in, in culture, not just in writin'

not just in food writin', but in the ability to tell stories

about America and the city of Los Angeles in specific

through a series of, you know restaurants and food experiences

that other people weren't writin' about. He gave it value.

It's good.

So, Alice, we.. I wanted to talk about some of these,

pieces we wanted Jonathan to do.

Good.

Suggestions rather.

Right, well, I, I feel the most important thing

and we've talked a little bit about this before

is the grand central market piece.

It's true, it's at that tipping point.

It's been a symbol of a certain kind of Los Angeles

for a very long time.

As it's been redeveloped or the new restaurants are coming in

or the... the new fancy butchers

it's gonna stop being this sort of place that you

associate with the smells and the tastes and the..

The look of that part of Los Angeles

into being the sort of precious artisanal

you know, aren't we special to pay

$35.99 for a skirt steak kind of market.

You know, can a pupuseria

exist next to, a fancy cheese store?

- Yeah. - Is that the challenge that these, that the owners now face?

It is. I mean, I like a lot of the new places

and I shop there all the time

but you have to have a place where you have

like the, the tastes of

sort of last century Los Angeles

existing with the... the modern taste.

There's something cultural about it, and there's something

about it that has become part of Los Angeles

that I think is sort of magical.

It's like when do you start cutting into the flesh and bone of the market?

And that's, that's a hard question to answer, and I think

that would be something really interesting to address.

Yeah.

I... I'm hoping we can get to that piece

sooner rather than later.

Whenever we talk about criticism in New York..

Jonathan gold's name always comes up.

We're always like, I wish we had Jonathan gold

as our chief critic in New York

because I think he's very fair.

I think what separates Jonathan from the rest of the critics

is that his empathy level is higher than anybody else's

and I think that shows in his... in his writing

but this is what pisses me off about j. Gold.

I was in a place that did very esoteric chine..

Korean chicken barbecue.

I was like, "this is great. I'm not gonna tell anybody about it."

And then, in the corner I see Jonathan gold's review

and I was like, "motherfucker."

He knows every place. I don't know how he does it.

You know, I don't know any Korean that knows more about

Korean food than Jonathan gold.

I don't know anybody that knows every taco stop.

I was at the wrong truck, there's another fish one.

I know. That one's good too.

The... the cuatro vientos has, it has always been down there

and sometimes the line is longer.

- Un taco! - Ready to order?

Yeah, sure.

You guys tweeted about a,

tostada this morning, that sounded really good.

What was that?

Yeah.

- Yeah. - Okay.

I met Jonathan pretty much right away.

He walked into the newsroom.

He look, acted like he owned the place practically

and I thought he was one of the bigger writers.

It turned out he was just a proofreader

at the time and I was an intern.

He invited me up to his apartment

for his mom's, peach pie

so, that... that changed a lot.

He sent roses the next morning.

Thank you very much.

When I woke up this morning and saw that tweet

it's like, I know I have to come here.

Yeah. It's very super spicy.

- Good. - That looks great.

It's amazing for us, people like him, that, that writes.

He said that, these tacos are number 1 for him

and, a... actually we're in the process of getting a loan

from the bank to get another truck done.

People asking us to go to orange county and San Diego.

Here, I'll hold this.

I gather that it's unusual for people who've married

as long as we have, to wanna hang out

together so much of the time, but we kind of do.

You know I've been wanting you to do the piece on anonymity

for a long time?

There's still that old idea of a restaurant critic

has to be anonymous, but you know..

Laurie doesn't edit my pieces anymore

but she has this odd ability

of getting the best out of her writers.

And that's, we're doing an excerpt?

Maybe, like, 1, like, 11 inch little story.

The weird way that she does it with me

is probably, maybe not great for the marriage

but it's, she suggests something and..

I'll, like, say that's a really..

N... no, that's not the way it works, but in the way of, like

explaining to her that that's not the way it works

I understand how it does work.

I mean, other people have written about it, but not... not in the way..

I don't think in the deeper way that you want to do it.

You think the history of anonymity in a restaurant?

That'd be, that'd be very cool.

It would probably be ideal to be anonymous.

I mean, I... I was certainly was in the early part of my career.

I mean, I would go to spago, basically looking like

a punk rock kid with my friend who had one pair of pants.

And... and we were not being ushered

to the nice table by the window

but any cri, any critic who does restaurants

is gonna be recognized soon enough.

Especially, in the age of social media

where somebody will tweet your picture

before you've gotten your first cocktail, right?

I mean, the people who disguise themselves

probably aren't getting away with it nearly as much as they think they are.

I'm wearing this mask because I'm an anonymous critic

which means that none of the restaurateurs

or very few of them recognize what I look like.

- Oy, gevalt. - I almost...

you didn't know that I was gonna wear this thing?

Well, I heard that you were..

I believe it's a positive value, other people disagree with me

but I'm always wanna on the side of the consumer

and, have a meal experience that's a..

Just like what a normal person would have.

People have told me that there's pictures of me in the kitchen

but it's with the mask on.

I mean, I think it is essential to get

an unbiased look at how a place is cooking

because they will treat people

that they know are writing about them very differently.

Ruth reichl did that famous review of le cirque

where she went in disguised as this sort of

frumpy woman and got treated like garbage and then

the next week went in dressed as herself and was treated

like a queen and wrote a parallel review.

I do all the stuff you're supposed to do.

I always reserve under different names

I switch up the names I reserve under

I switch up the phone numbers that I reserve under.

I mean, I have a whole series of throw away phones

that I use just for reservations.

It's... it's kind of like the

it's... it's kind of like the fat man's version

of the "bourne identity," I think.

Sir, nice to see you again. How are you doing?

- Good. How are you? - Awesome. That's really good.

- Bonsoir. - Bonsoir.

Hello.

I never know when Jonathan is coming.

I don't know the night before, you know, I don't know.

It's really the last minute, you know, I never have a reservation

for Jonathan gold, 6 people.

No, it's another name and boom, he's here.

Panic in the kitchen.

The beans, the beans are fucking al dente, man, you eat the beans?

You have nothing to do, John? You have nothing to do?

No, I have stuff to do, but..

But what?

I'm always excited to cook for him because Jonathan gold

is a critic who is very open to trying new things.

My god. That's insane.

I saw the corn on the cob when I came in

so this is amazing to see it turned into this.

This is great.

So what makes ludo ludo?

Part of it is growing up as a chef in a way

that almost nobody does anymore.

You know, having the good fortune

to work his way up in the kitchen

with three of the most interesting chefs in France

and I think the way he just..

He loves Los Angeles.

He... he likes working with the produce here

he likes the kind of people who live here.

He wanted to do something that was personal

that... that meant something to him as a chef

and Los Angeles has always been the place

certainly in the United States, where you can come

and you can... Reinvent yourself.

Sometimes as a chef we don't see what we create.

When Jonathan gold gave me an amazing review

for ludo bite in 2007, I did not realize what I create

but Jonathan opened my eyes.

Wow! I just realized I created a new concept.

Food and writing have gone together throughout history.

If you look at France in the 18th century

or China in the 12th century, there wasn't just food

there, there was food and someone writing about it

food and someone thinking about it

and that relationship is what turned food from fuel

to food into an art form.

It's true of literature, it's true of plays

it's true of all cultural art forms

that writing is what made them digestible

so to speak by the masses.

You're trying to tell a story

make that experience into something much bigger

but at a certain point, everyone

I mean, look at yelp, it's such an American thing

where everyone then believes they are the critic

and they are the expert.

You know, now everybody thinks

"I can go to a restaurant

and write what I think about it."

And if I use words like

toothsome, you know, then, "hey, I'm... I'm a food writer."

They all seem to use the word amazing now.

"It's amazing! The Mexican corn is amazing!"

You know, it's like, amazing doesn't tell me anything.

What is the role of the critic

is a question that's being asked

and I think every area of culture right now

because it's, like, "well, why do I need a food critic"

"if I have yelp, and why do I need a book critic

if I've got Amazon reviews?"

I think what a critic brings to the table is knowledge.

You know that he's done his homework.

You know, if you're really interested in a subject

you are gonna find the critics that... that speak to you

that you don't always agree with

but that, that speak to you

that you feel you'll learn something from

that you... you found a new way

of seeing something after reading what they had to say.

The biggest thing in restaurants over

say the last 40 years has been

the introduction of diversity.

When Craig claiborne in the '60s

was reviewing expensive restaurants in New York

they were almost all French.

Then as you start to get cuisines from all over

you can't look at cuisine as a singular thing anymore.

There can be a thousand different restaurants

that are great in a thousand different ways.

Two pieces of legislation in 1965 and in 1986

increased the number of migrants

abolished standard quotas which favored migration from Europe

opened up, I... immigration to a much wider range of people.

La was a leading edge in diversity population growth.

The immigrant population has defined the country.

It's defined Los Angeles.

We are what we are because of our diversity.

Green bean..

Carrot, bell pepper..

My name tui. I'm the chef of jitlada restaurant.

I came America in 1996.

I never went to cooking school, but I learned from my grand mom.

She teach me everything, you know, like..

What is this, what is that..

Like, you know, how to grow the lemongrass

how to grow the coconut, how to grow the turmeric.

In 2006, I bought jitlada restaurant

but at first we lost money.

We're going to jitlada right now.

It's my favorite thai restaurant in Los Angeles.

It serves all kinds of thai food

but what it specializes in is the extremely spicy, aromatic

pungent cooking of Southern Thailand.

"Warning, if you do not eat spicy food, do not order this."

The... the spicier it is, actually the better it tastes

because the flavors come into balance

because that's the way it's designed.

He have very good palate on his tongue

because he can separate, like, "you have this in here."

I... I start laughing. Especially with my thai coffee.

No one in the whole wide world, even my family

doesn't know what I put in there, but he know.

I learned from the customer that Jonathan gold

important for the people in America.

And then one day he came here

and they all laugh and they say.

"Jonathan gold in front of you."

And I remember my leg, shaking like this, like

"my god, is it Jonathan gold?"

But still I didn't know who is him, just the name.

Well, thank you.

If she, if she brought it out with this

then you know it's hot.

This is extra chili that you can pour on the beef if..

It's, it's spicy enough.

No, it's fine.

Oof.

After he writes about our restaurant

the people, they waiting, you know, before we open.

They bring the newspaper.

I want to eat Southern thai food, and after that

we are the famous restaurant everyone know.

I, I feel, like a, so proud, you know

if she like to learn in America, you know?

Bye, thanks again. Your, your food is always so good.

Well, thank you.

One of the amazing things about Los Angeles

is that there really is a thereness beneath the thereness.

And of course, some people think

what the hell is this place?

I think that you can build a city any shape you like

as long as it works.

And you say, "works, Los Angeles works?"

Everyone tells you that it doesn't work.

Reyner banham's book came out in the early '70s

and he was the first person who, I think made sense

of Los Angeles for an awful lot of people.

The changes that were occurring in Los Angeles

were typical of a lot of changes that were happening

in other cities in this country.

And somehow or other, Los Angeles had got there first.

Right then, Los Angeles needs some explaining

because it's normally regarded

as an unspeakable sprawling mess

though certainly not by me.

Pretty much all cities in the 19th century

the 20th century, grew from the centre outward.

Los Angeles was different.

You were getting a post modern arrangement

whereby their peripheries were more important than the centre.

And all of these different centres have grown

and they collided with each other

into one giant megalopolis of 18 to 20 million people.

And the city is so large and so sprawling and so diverse

that it allows for the, the interseses between the major spaces

to be occupied by people to create what they want.

And this is where gold, as a critic of urban living comes in.

He provides a map for us.

His culinary mapping becomes a cartography of the region

and through leading us, we come to understand our city.

Los Angeles is a lot of self-contained communities.

We have communities of people here

who are not cooking for tourists

and they're not cooking for the newspaper critic

and they're not cooking for the glory of it.

They're cooking because they're filling

a specific need that their community has.

Because of that, it becomes almost the... Anti-melting pot

less a melting pot than sort of a great glittering mosaic.

There's no end to the fun in the San Gabriel valley.

And this is, El monte proper.

Ca... can't you feel the electricity and excitement in the air?

People not from Los Angeles sometimes don't understand

the beauty you can find in mini malls.

That's probably the best dim sum in town at the moment.

That's the remaining, Chinese islamic restaurant.

This, this is lupe's, this is the place I love.

In case you think I love everything

the stuff in that restaurant is absolutely disgusting.

That place we just passed called pho huynh is famous

for boiled ox penis in your pho.

That place, has like the best, nim nong.

You... you have another pho place.

Yeah, there is it. It says, "pho Kim."

Or pho Kim?

Which is..

Sometimes they don't, like, think these through.

This is yee-Lou which is interesting

because it's a really old-fashioned

Chinese American place that's been taken over by Chinese

who are doing Chinese American food

as an exotic food for Chinese people to eat.

In here is a nanjing kitchen

which specializes in this duck dish that's just..

I'm not sure it's the most pleasurable duck in the world

but it's perfect in its way.

It's sort of a, a boiled duck with absolutely

all the fat taken out of it.

But there just happens to be

you know, in this completely ordinary place

there, there happens to be extraordinary food.

It's the miracle of entry level capitalism I think.

My name is genet agonafer, and I'm from Ethiopia.

I cam 1981, Valentine's day with my son

with my 5-year-old son.

Lemeneh tefera is his name.

I moved to la to provide my son with education

and I was working as a waitress for many years.

I raised my son being a waitress for many, many years.

And that adorable son is my grown son now.

I have another picture.

This is when he graduated from medical school

and he's been practicing medicine for 12 years.

This space opened up and my generous son

took cash advance practically on all the credit cards he have

and opened it for me.

I was very busy at first, and then 9/11 came

and then just completely at a standstill

and my son was pumping money to keep the place alive.

And then all of the sudden, the review came

and I was, like, "my god."

Every day I would have people out lining up.

Celebrities come.

I could not cook the doro wat fast enough.

But for me, it was so important to tell my son I could succeed

and whenever he comes here, now he's just so proud.

It takes a special temperament to be a food critic.

You need to have, you know, a mixture of, sort of

ego, and,

and-and interest and obsessi with food

that very few people have.

My first year out of college, I was working downtown

as a proofreader, and I was bored out of my mind.

So I decided to make it my project to eat

at every restaurant on pico boulevard.

Pico boulevard is kind of Los Angeles' back porch.

It goes through a remarkable swath of town.

There's a place called the El Salvador cafe

on the eastern end.

That was one of the first salvadoran places in town

and way at the Santa Monica end was a place called tom's no. 5

which had my favorite chili fries in town.

Those were really good chili fries.

Pico, in a certain sense was where I learned to eat.

I also saw my first punk rock show on pico, was shot at

fell in love, bowled a 164

witnessed a knife fight, took cello lessons

raised chickens, ate oki dogs

and heard x ice-cube hole and Willie Dixon perform

though not together.

It was fascinating to go every night

and to sit into a place and have my plate of rice and beans

or my papusas and listen to the dialogue around me

to look at the stacks of newspapers people were reading

to, you know, seeing what was on the TV

that was perpetually on in the corner

to see what people were talking about.

I gradually started to find things out that I didn't know.

The Mexican restaurants weren't all just Mexican restaurants

and they were from different regions of Mexico.

This was the time in the early '80s

when the wars were bad in central America

a lot of people migrated to Los Angeles.

And they started out selling street food

then they opened little restaurants

and by the time I was in the middle of my project

they had colonized an entire strip.

I learned this very quickly as a journalist

that if you randomly go up to somebody on the street

and start talking to them

they're probably not gonna talk to you

they're gonna think you're odd and brush you off.

But if you're doing it in a restaurant..

You have a context in which to be

so you'll sit down and they'll feed you

and they'll be nice to you, and maybe there'll be some gossip.

It was the year that I got to know.

Los Angeles as Los Angeles.

Hello-o-o. Hello, there, darling.

How are you? Okay.

You saw what I wrote, right?

I answered somebody's tweet.

I said, you know, "yeah, he'll do a Kuala Lumpur restaurant"

but what, there's, like, one of them.

Yeah, and... and then another person said

"he'll run out of restaurants in koreatown."

I... I refrained from saying, there are 900 restaurants in koreatown.

It's not gonna happen in your lifetime, buddy.

I seem to be going through a Korean foods fixation.

Welcome back to "good food"

it's that time where we check in with our resident gourmand

on where to eat this weekend in Los Angeles.

So where are we going?

We're going to a restaurant called soban.

And what is their specialty?

They're specialty is galbi Jim. They're famous...

I remember the first time I went to a Jonathan gold

approved restaurant from the "la weekly"

and, you know, you drive into a mini mall

and you're, like, "really?"

You know, "really? I'm not gonna be waylaid?"

I'm... I'm not gonna be mugged walking into this place?

And you walk in and it's, like, "yeah, it's people

it's just people."

This isn't the El bulli of sandwich shops

but he does, kind of, use his toys

in making them which makes a lot of it fun.

He's so much more than a food writer.

Jonathan is a cultural commentator

who uses food and restaurants as a way

of creating these little commentaries on modern life.

I've been eating lately at chego, the new restaurant

from kogi auteur Roy choi, the architect of the truck-based

restaurant phenomenon, and the only chef I know

whose food is capable of attracting

several hundred people to an eagle rock parking lot at midnight.

Chego specializes in rice bowls

wavy, baroque constructions that splice

all the flavors of the city into great splooshes

of combinatorial DNA.

Pickled watermelon radish, sauteed ong choi

crumbled cotija cheese and a spurting slab of pork belly

that's been burnished as lovingly with Korean chili paste

as a '64 impala show car has been rubbed with lacquer.

David!

Kogi's taco is a new paradigm of a restaurant

an art directed take on Korean street food

previously unimaginable in both California and Seoul.

Cheap, unbelievably delicious

and unmistakably from Los Angeles.

Food that makes you feel plugged into the rhythms

of this city just by eating it.

We're working on some new dishes right now.

This is, it's summertime here in Los Angeles

so we're working on a tomato, watermelon, goat cheese

thai basil, soy, chili, lemongrass dish.

In all of my properties, the only litmus test is

when we eat it, can I just throw this down and say, "fuck."

If we say that, then, then,

then the dish makes it to the menu.

The small kitchen keeps us together, keeps us focused.

There's nowhere to move around

so you have to be really creative and move here, boom.

It's all about muscle memory, boom, boom, boom.

It's fun, it makes for a lot of jokes too

because we bump asses with each other all the time.

Especially right here.

This is the danger zone right here.

You know, the weird thing about my... my first interaction

with Jonathan is, he helped me figure out

what we were trying to do.

Kind of like," this is what kogi is."

We're kind of, like, this justice league

of, like, kind of weird, warped super heroes

that came together to feed the city, you know.

When he writes about me, he understands..

And is able to articulate the little

kind of secret, you know..

You know, tangled webs I have inside

that I'm trying to put out into the plate.

He, like, understands it.

I never explained it to him.

He gets exactly where that came from.

Like, we were trying to recreate..

How Asian kids grow up and eat in their home

and what their refrigerators look like

but also how stoners eat.

In that first review, he was able to capture that moment

you know, of... of what was happening.

Anthony!

I kind of like that Italian beef.

They have those Italian beef sandwiches that's marinated.

Alice always said it was marinated

because it was such crappy meat that they have to marinate.

Modern food writing starts with Calvin trillin.

He was saying, that, you know, everyone reveres

these French restaurants that no one wants to eat at

and you know, and it's the, the colloquial food

that's really important, and I think that's, you know

that was, like, the battle call for both Jonathan and for Robert

and then for a lot of people who have followed after.

Alright, what are we gonna do here, Jonathan?

You're the guy, you're the expert, you're the food guy.

I was probably a sophomore in college

and I, I was house sitting.

Among the books in the study was "American fried"

you know, Calvin trillin's first book.

And I read it, and I was utterly fascinated by it.

I read "American fried" and "Alice, let's eat"

so many times.

Yeah, I... I imitated him absolutely blindly when I started.

Trillin was writing about eating

he was writing about the culture of eating

and it was obviously the way to go.

You know, I always say that if I'm in a strange town

and I don't know where to eat, I go up to the motel clerk

grab him by the necktie and pull him over the counter

just to get his attention

and I say, "not where you took your parents"

"for their 25th wedding anniversary

"the place you went to the night you got home

after 13 months in Korea."

And the second place is really good.

And I think your... your idea

has become almost the norm now

that if you're gonna be a newspaper critic or a writer

in a, in a big town, you better

you know, know among the 6 good rib stands

which, which is up and which is down.

Why? That didn't used to be true.

This... this is, king taco which is beloved.

It's not necessarily my favorite

but it's very good tacos, you know, pretty good al pastor

and one of the great things about it is they actually

have a truck parked outside the restaurant

sort of this canopy, place of honor

and if you come on a weekend night, there'll be

an hour wait for the truck, and you can walk right up

to the counter at the restaurant itself.

I've had the tacos at the truck and at the restaurant

and it's correct, you actually do want the ones from the truck

but it's, I've always wondered why the taco

honors the truck so much.

My theory is that taco eating is... It's almost a verb.

Taco should be a verb, right..

The... the, the tortilla, the tortilla's hot, the... the, the meat's hot

they combine, the sauce is sloshed on it

and then you're almost eating it in one continuous motion

from the way it comes from the grill to the guy to the counter.

I know it's overly romantic.

Yeah.

Yeah, that was a great place.

And speaking of that..

If, if we're looking for somebody for the picnic

if we're doing a sandwich thing..

I mean, there's some interesting people

doing sandwiches right now, but, Fred Eric

has this new place attached to his tiara

called delish.

I'm definitely a great procrastinator.

I suppose when I need to have an attention span for something.

I... I have an attention span for something, but..

It's... it's, it's hard, it's hard to explain.

So for some reason you wanted that, right?

Yeah, that was great. I think that's perfect.

I mean, o... otherwise I would have sent the call away.

A... as is my want.

Keep as new..

Maybe if the Internet went away

but even before the Internet, I mean, I would always find

you know, 12 books and 17 magazines

I had to read before I could finish an article.

Now, I have the attention span of a gnat.

Being Jonathan's editor

it's like being someone's, like, teenage stalker for me.

I knew he won't turn his piece in

even if he agrees to do it

and then I realized that what it was gonna take

would be, you know, bordering on psychotic levels

of, of e-mail and phone and text harassment.

I'll call when I get back.

You know, actually I went to somebody who specialized in writer's block.

I mean, that was her thing, and she just threw her hands up

and usually I do writer's block, I do people who can't write.

There's something that keeps them from writing

yet you publish 150,000 words a year. Clearly you're writing.

That, I'm not, I don't deny that what you're experiencing

is something, but I have no idea what it is.

I mean, I could sit down and I can say that

"you need to do this piece a week early"

but I end up like, you know, torturing one paragraph for

you know, 3 and a half days

and then somebody calls and starts yelling at me

and the rest of the piece will be done in an hour and a half.

So... Alright.

What else we need to talk about is what you think

you might be doing in terms of reviews for the next couple of weeks.

I think next week will be,

this new szechuan restaurant in..

Surprise, alhambra.

That, is called the chengdu taste.

Like, there's, there's a dish on the menu

called intriguingly enough..

Little sister's spicy rabbit.

Yeah, great.

I don't think they're actually cooking...

rabbit?

It's rabbit, but I don't think

it's, like, the little sister's rabbit.

I think it's in the style of..

The way a little sister would make it

unless it actually was...

I sort of regard him some days as my younger

much smarter little brother

and I'm the first born, and I'm the responsible one

and I have to make the trains run on time

and he's the funny, smart, talented one, and I,

there's probably some love buried down there deep inside

but

it's, sometimes the role is difficult to play.

So, how difficult, alright

is it gonna be to photograph there?

Is there gonna be a language barrier?

There is gonna be a language barrier.

We need to take care of that this afternoon.

- Okay, I'll do that. - Okay, -

- you come up with the cattle prod

I'll come up with the copy.

Awesome.

Chengdu taste.

Everybody's excited about it.

Not 'cause we haven't had chengdu style food here before

but the sort of freshness, the, the vividness of the flavors

the fact that everything is not just lashed

with oceans of chili oil

makes it sort of a really appealing place.

One thing that I try never, never to do

is to pretend expertise that I don't have.

I like to come to it the way

that I assume most of my readers are gonna come to it..

That I don't necessarily, no more than they do

and I find out chengdu is the largest city

and the capital of sichuan proper.

It's inland, so there's probably not gonna be

a lot of sea food..

Although these pictures are all, like

you know, abalone crab.

I very rarely take notes in a restaurant.

I'm more involved in, sort of, observing the music of the meal.

I mean, you could take notes when you're having sex too

but you'd, sort of, be missing out on something

and I go to restaurants usually 4 or 5 times

before I review them.

In the case of places where the cuisine is unfamiliar to me

I may go many, many more times than that.

I think my record is 17.

Let's get the... The fish with green chili.

They... they don't have that chicken dish you like

but they have, -

- that's okay. I mean, I don't...

- And the wonton with... - Okay.

I've been thinking that you'll like

the water boiled fish.

A lot of, sichuan peppercorn..

Hi, how are you today? Nice to see you again.

Nice to see you too. Thanks.

I mean the sense of discovery of eating

something you've never had before is exhilarating.

But what's even better I think is

you get through the exhilaration

you go through the infatuation phase

for the next couple of meals and then maybe

if you're really lucky, you get to the place of understanding.

I mean, I wouldn't pretend to know anything at all

about Burma from having had two dozen Burmese meals, right?

But there was, certainly a point where I thought

I knew something about Burma for having that

and it's, like, seeing a movie or something

like, seeing a documentary.

It gives you the illusion of understanding things

and maybe you have a different context to put things in

and sometimes that's, that's all you can ask for

and sometimes that's enough.

No shortage of bean sprouts.

The book that we oughta write

would be some sort of popular, populist thing

on all these communities and who runs what

and all the stuff that I always wanna know the answer to.

Between the two of us, the number of hours spent

not writing that book..

It would be, it would take a lifetime

not to write that book.

- Yeah, sure. - Okay.

You will probably find this chengdu style cooking

lighter, cleaner, and less likely to wake you up

in the middle of the night with chili oil induced nightmares.

The food is still quite spicy, flavored with a vast array

of fresh, dried, pickled and ground chilis.

The almost electric charge of the peppercorns

brings out the flavor of the filets and chilies.

The taste flits around your lips and tongue

with the weird vibrancy of a flashing las Vegas sign

where the pepper sauce with the wonton

obliterates everything in its path

like a mysteriously pleasurable punch in the mouth.

The little secret that people don't get about.

Jonathan's writing is the way he uses the second person.

He'll start a review something like

you probably have found in the past

that deer penis is not really worth the effort

that the, that the amount of gristle and fat and bone

is just to high in proportion to the amount of stringy meat

you're able to pull off,

but that's because you've never had deer penis

at this vietnamese restaurant that specializes in it.

In the first paragraph, he's formed a bond with the reader.

You know, you and I are people who eat deer penis

and you know even though the readers

even though 99.9% of his readers

has never ordered or eaten deer penis

he brings you to his table in a way that

I've never seen another restaurant writer do.

It takes great writing and great storytelling

to elevate food criticism to what Jonathan does

and Jonathan was the first pulitzer prize winner

for food criticism.

The fact that someone could write about food in such a way

as to get the attention of people not in the food world

but in the journalism world, in the cultural criticism world

to me was hugely significant.

I think the fact that he got the pulitzer for food criticism

sort of put the stamp on food as a, a subject

worthy of, of serious inquiry.

Thank you, - are you guys interested in wine?

- Coffee is fine. Thank you. - Right. Sounds good.

Have you ever been on any kind of a diet?

Have you ever made any sort of dietary restrictions?

No.

I mean, you've read all the stuff that, like

cooking is actually what makes us human.

Right. I had to explain to my 4 year old. Like, what's the diff..

It was like, she's like, "we're animals."

I'm, like, "yeah, we're animals." She's like

"so what makes us people?"

And I was like, "well, we cook."

And she seemed satisfied with that.

That's the difference between me and a monkey

because I will puree the banana for you

and he will just throw it at you.

So what's, what's your next thing

for "lucky peach" going to be?

Or what ideas can I steal from you

and then put into "lucky peach?"

I'm taking hagfish

and you threatened to take me to the hagfish restaurant.

I didn't threaten you, did you go to the hagfish restaurant?

I have not yet been to the hagfish restaurant.

I didn't think that you were fucking with me

but your description of the hagfish..

Well, the first thing about the hagfish is that it's not

really delicious.

It's like eel, only a lot worse.

Really? Like muddier? Blander?

It's bla, it's blander

and the filets are gelatinous

but sort of everything about the hagfish

is bothersome, right?

The fact that it's this weird hybrid

of a vertebrate and invertebrate

it's really sort of an early species and the..

It has a cranium, but it really has no other bones.

- And then the slime thing. - And the slime thing.

You could put a hagfish in a 5 gallon bucket of water

and the bucket will turn to solid slime in seconds.

Jonathan doesn't write about food because it's weird

like that's not, I don't think that's ever a sole motivator

though he is, like, uniquely good at finding

horrible things to eat.

He writes about it because people eat it

and that's a part of their culture and their world

and if you learn about that, then you're connected to them.

Now we're going down Westwood boulevard

and towards, what was for so many years

junior's deli, which was the deli

my family grew up going to.

For, reformed Jewish families in Los Angeles

sometimes like your deli is more telling

of who you are and what your status is

and how you grow up than the show you went to.

If your family went to Nate'n al's

you were, you were kind of fancy.

If your family went to..

Labels table, you were probably

pretty close to working class, but if your family was going

to junior's, you were, you were doing alright.

You ever been here before?

No, I never have.

It's kind of like a social scene in Tehran

that's reproducing itself, like 30 years later.

That's cool.

It's funny that everybody thinks

we had this sort of like gourmet upbringing, right?

Just remembering the stuff that we ate when we were kids.

What do you mean?

Iceberg, salad..

Orange jello, French fries

cream wafer sticks, and Dr. pepper.

That was like the perfect meal. What are you talking about?

When you describe it like that, it sounds like

one of those typical last meals that prisoners request..

Before they go to the electric chair.

We just had that a lot.

We did have that a lot.

So have you eaten any endangered species lately?

Yes, I had an ortolan souffle.

It was, it was delightful.

My brother and I are pretty different.

I mean, he's an environmentalist.

He lives to save the ocean.

And I'm the guy who bought the truck

that was the single most polluting vehicle

in consumer reports that year.

I'm not proud of it, but mark definitely pointed it out to me.

Dinner at the gold table was always a blood sport

because all 3 of us brothers were always

ragging on each other all the time.

How can you say, "okay, this is an amazing Sushi place"

and say, "don't eat the blue fin"

when you're still getting people to go to that place?

Well, I'm, I'm subtler than that.

Yes and no.

You're the one who was on a Korean whale eating tour.

I have to be an environmentalist

because Jonathan's eating everything I'm trying to save.

The question is whether or not you go to the point

o... of using a regulatory mechanism to have this country

lead by example.

I've often thought that one of my biggest achievements

was getting my brother to write and op-ed piece on a bill

that we were pushing to ban on the sale of shark fin products

in the state of California.

Believe me, I'd like to see, you know

shark's fin soup banned tomorrow..

It took me 4 months to get him to write that piece

but I read his piece and my anger melted away.

"But as much as you might love conpoy

"dried flotation bladders, crab eggs, braised fish cheeks

"and the other esoterica of cantonese seafood cooking

"it is hard to work up an appetite

for the bitter taste of extinction."

I had people who worked on the bill say that that was one

of the most critical aspects of the entire campaign

to get the bill passed, and so the power of how well he writes

really made a big difference.

My dad always wanted to be a writer

and he was very talented.

My father was probably the most overeducated

probation officer in the history of Los Angeles county.

He really wanted to be an English professor.

He was all but dissertation in American literature

but la county probation paid a lot more

than being an English professor.

So, our household was all about culture

and we were just exposed to, you know, any book we wanted.

Doesn't matter what our financial situation is

that book would appear.

There was always music playing

usually my dad's infatuation

with either mahler or Italian opera.

And there was the idea that the culture of the nation

was sort of like flowing through our living room.

What are you working on?

Well, yeah.

Okay, so here, here, here it is.

I remember this.

This was in your painting class.

- Yeah. - Dark stuff.

Isabel has always drawn, even when very young, 4 or 5

she used to paint and draw pictures like incessantly.

I mean, it must be hard living with writers, right?

I mean, people who are

who basically judge or you think judge

every single sentence that you say.

Maybe that's why she went into cartooning.

"Cold okapis!"

Looks like I have, like, a split lip

like a dog, that's good.

I hope my kids have grown up with culture in the way

that I grew up with culture.

I mean, I do this thing where we go to a museum

and we stand in front of a painting for half an hour

and we talk about the painting

and every single thing about it.

And the idea of being able to spend that much time

with your child and having that dialogue about it

is... is just wonderful.

These are all like members of the congress

or something, right?

Yeah, yeah.

None of them were so stoked about these, right?

I mean, I think he was the first caricaturist.

And he was very vicious in his things

but he was also like really accurate.

Well, you might not have to see eyes on that one.

It's like when you're writing something

and you're just describing something as a, as a writer

you can't list every single detail.

You've gotta pick just a couple of details

that let the reader see and then they'll build

the person up in their imagination.

And so, like this guy, you know, he's round

and he's squat and he's froggy

and, you know, like there's nobody in the world with a nose

that's that big.

In just a few months, la Tia has already established itself

as one of the most serious Mexican restaurants

in Los Angeles in complexity and deftness.

I always end up with the quail in the traditional black mole

so dark that it seems to suck the light out

of the airspace around it.

Spicy as a novella and bitter as tears.

Mole whose aftertaste can go on for hours.

La Tia's mole negro appears so glossy and rich

that I'm always tempted to test its consistency

by stabbing an index finger into it and the resulting stain

lingers as long as the empurpled digits

of patriotic Iraqi voters.

The last time I was as inspired by glossy black

it was part of Charles Ray's infamous sculpture ink box

and it was enshrined in a major museum of art.

Hey, this is garth Trinidad from kcrw and I am here

with Jonathan gold, food critic and writer

who actually got his start writing about music.

Yeah, I was the classical music critic at the "la weekly"

before I did anything else

and then later got to write about Los Angeles hip hop.

So we're going to be talking about some of his favorite songs

as part of the kcrw guest dj project.

Can we talk about the song that you picked

"flow my tears" real quick.

Sure, I was a classical music geek growing up.

I was locked in a, small room with my cello

for most of my adolescents.

I played, you know viola da gamba.

That's the way to get the chicks I'm telling you.

John dowland was probably the hit composer

of the elizabethan era, a little bit afterwards.

"Flow my tears" was more or less

the "stairway to heaven" of like 1620.

My dad wanted a string trio with the three brothers

and I was the worst violinist player ever.

Josh was probably the worst viola player ever

and Jonathan's the guy who had some talent

and really stuck with it.

He knew every single opera and every classical music piece.

They used to have a contest on the radio

on classical music and opera trivia

that he would excel and dominate on.

He didn't grow up with rock and roll

the way most of us did just because his parents

were mostly listening to classical music

and because he was so obsessed with the cello, that was..

The cello was kind of his whole life.

So he experienced like there's a kind of radical shift

when he heard, you know, punk rock for the first time.

You brought, okay, a track from the germs, "forming?"

"Forming" is the first la punk single

ever recorded in Los Angeles.

Punk rock is sort of what got me out of my shell

and somebody dragged me to the whisky

to see a show of, you know, x and the screamers.

I was just..

"You can do this?"

"It's possible to do this?"

And it was as transforming as anything I've ever done.

I think punk rock is one of the things

that's really helped shaped his world view

and his ideas as a critic.

The idea of disruption and, and pushing boundaries.

When Jonathan came in and was first a critic

the fact that the "la times" was reviewing, you know

a burrito place, was disruption.

That's delicious, I love mezcal.

Mezcal on an empty stomach.

Welcome to la.

My dad was a mezcal maker in oaxaca

and things were going really bad for my dad in '93

and that's when, the peso devalued

so there was an economic downfall in Mexico

so he decided to move here.

So he just started kinda exploring la

and this area where we are right now

koreatown, there was a lot of latinos and a lot of people

from oaxaca that lived in the area.

So my dad opened a little food stand

and it became very popular among people from oaxaca

because they just knew that's where you went

to get oaxacan food.

So he was like, you know, -

"let's open up a restaurant."

It was this little hole in the wall, maybe like 6 tables

and we opened like a little alley

it was like totally illegal.

So one day my dad walks in and was like

"where are all of these white people coming from?"

Because there were all these white people.

Somebody was like, "don't you know you were in the 'la times?'"

in fact, Jonathan gold reviewed the restaurant

before the Spanish speaking media.

And now the restaurant's run by my sister, my brother

and myself, and we sit 300 people here.

These are so delicious.

The grasshoppers?

They're so delicious.

I think there's 2 things, I mean one, it's insects

and two, it's a whole animal, which is still

really hard for Americans.

I mean, if we're going to survive as a species

we're going to eat insects.

- We are. - I mean, unless we're idiots.

For us, the oaxacan community

we owe him a lot because in oaxaca

people are really looked down on

because we come from an indigenous background

and to have someone put it out there and say

come and taste this oaxacan food.

I think it even helped me as a person

to embrace my culture because people cared

about my food and people cared, and people were really like

"your food's like, your food's cool"

and I was like, "yeah, my food's cool."

Hello.

He's a funny guy.

The don of dogs.

- How you doing, Duane? - What's up, big guy?

Same old, you?

Hot dogs.

So, so you're, you're back to the cart.

I'm back to the cart, we're doing it big again.

We did this just to let people know

hey, what's happening, we're about to get back open.

It's cool because I'm getting a lot of my old customers

who were hot dog cart customers, pulling up saying

"I could have sworn, I saw your little peanut head

"standing over there, so I had to come back

over here and see what your hot dogs were like."

Earle's wieners is opening up!

28 years, since what '86?

- '86. - '86

- crenshaw suave, baby. - Lotta dogs.

There's no tidy way to eat one of these.

I've always felt a little uncomfortable about claiming hood.

I grew up in south la, but I obviously

my family moved out before..

When I was still very young.

We had moved there, or my parents had moved there

in the late '50s when my dad was a teacher

at audubon junior high school

which was this sort of beautifully integrated school.

There were, you know..

There were lots of black kids and lots of white kids

and lots of Japanese kids, and it seemed like

that was gonna be the future of la

and he wanted to be part of it, so he moved into the community.

Some of my earliest memories are of the riots in 1965.

You know, sitting at the top of our hill

and, and seeing the fires burn down below

of seeing the tanks go along crenshaw boulevard

and after that the neighborhood changed.

We're here with Jonathan gold.

So you brought funkadelic with the classic "maggot brain."

Maybe you remember in the old days when you could actually

buy like, soul records in liquor stores.

I was 13 or 14 when I was trying to buy

you know, beer on a false ID.

And I picked up "maggot brain" because I loved the cover.

Got home and put it on and the guitar solo.

Eddie Hazel, it's just amazing.

It just keeps flowing.

It has a sort of, majesty

that you expect from somebody like, you know, Wagner

the concept of the endless melody

the one that goes on forever.

Almost all of blues guitarists

just Peter out in the middle, they have nothing more to say

so they did the wa wa wa, but Eddie Hazel doesn't.

He always has something new to say, and the tune

and the chord progression keeps folding in on itself

and showing itself in all of these

you know, wonderful miraculous ways.

Please join me in welcoming Jonathan gold.

Thank you.

Hi.

I, in some ways I think come to you as an emissary

from the world of failure

a rare citizen of the wide country

where things do not turn out exactly as you've planned.

I'm here to say that that's okay.

Still, when I wake up in the morning

I don't feel like a semi-successful writer

a chronicler of Los Angeles

I feel like a failed cellist

which was more or less my ucla experience.

But all of us, especially those of us in the arts

experience failure, and it is this experience

of failure that makes us strong

that helps make us who we are.

Did my ucla acquired knowledge help me

when I wrote about hip hop in the 1980s?

Not directly, but it was a way of listening that gave me a way

to understand the music in an important way.

Did my experience in writing about opera and new music

have anything to do with food writing?

Yes, as it turns out, on a very basic level

criticism is criticism.

An Aria is in some way

equivalent to a well-cooked potato

and both the comprehension of form and the ability

to describe abstract sensation

which I learned to do as an undergraduate

in music and art courses here, turns out to be exactly

what I needed to know.

I think the great human ill

is, contempt prior to investigation.

Jonathan takes that idea..

It's a really comfy idea for a lot of Americans

and he just, he just blows it the fuck up.

Jonathan gold is my guest dj.

Okay, man, so you brought some la gangsta rap.

Some Los Angeles gangsta rap

and you brought "g thang" from, Dr. dre, snoop dogg.

Now, listen, the rumor is you were in the studio

a lot of the time with them when they were actually

recording "doggystyle" and stuff like that.

Yeah, yeah, I was.

This was when you were really writing

about a lot of that music

during that time.

Right, la hip hop was great, but nobody ever heard it.

Everybody just heard the New York stuff

and dre was the guy who figured out

how to slow it down, made it gangsta.

Chronic, I think was the total breakthrough album.

It crossed over to the bouncing cars to the hanging out

and barbequing in the park.

It was less about bang bang bang

and it was more about, this is the neighborhood

you live in and you're enjoying it

and ya'll are invited to the party

and there's something beautiful about that.

You know, after the Los Angeles riots

there was a lot of hand wringing

about what had gone wrong in this city

and there was a movement to like get to know

who your neighbors are

but long before the riots and after Jonathan gold

was introducing us to people and to neighborhoods.

There's a certain level of utopian thinking in his work.

There's a certain level of dedication

to asking the question how we live.

He talks about the miscegenation

between races in essence appearing over the table.

Those food nations become an integral part

of the way he sees Los Angeles

in a way Los Angeles comes together.

There's so many different ways to tell stories

about Los Angeles, and of course, telling stories

through food is one of the ways Jonathan gold does that.

And the piece he's going to read

represents another way of talking about Los Angeles

in a moment when, the fabric of the city

kind of looked like it wasn't going to hold.

So, Jonathan.

This is an older essay written, the week

after the, the riots in 1992

and... It..

Well, I'll, I'll, I'll read and you can, you can hear.

I can't tell you how much I love Los Angeles.

"It is 8 o'clock and the light has started to fade"

"as I sit on the floor of my apartment"

"staring at the spot where the rain not so much dripped"

"as oozed from the door jam."

"For the last decade or so"

"I have lived in a creaking apartment"

"probably swank in its day"

"that has been home to a dog trainer"

"a fiddle player and a series of writers"

"in a smartly column building in an aging neighborhood"

"nobody has yet bothered to name."

"Downstairs a baby cries out in Spanish"

"in the distance the ghetto boys"

"boom from a passing truck."

"For the fifth time, in about an hour"

"I think about the other parts of town"

"the ones with croissant shops on the street corners"

"and air conditioned shopping malls"

"and neighbors who look like me."

"Before the fires of April, there were 14 different kinds"

"of ethnic restaurants within a 5 minute walk."

"Now, there are just 10."

"For a while, everything in the neighborhood"

"seemed just a little more ominous."

"The Saturday night gunshots a little louder."

"The omnipresent sirens and helicopters"

"a little closer to home."

"When you spend some time in my neighborhood"

"you'll learn the rhythm of the place."

"The mornings when the Mexican's food truck"

"shows up on the corner."

"The hour when Filipino teenagers"

"snack on liver buns and Coca-Cola at the pancit shop."

"The peaceful time in late afternoon"

"when the Avenue flows majestically."

"Guatemalan women walk home from Ralph's"

"with bags of groceries"

"balanced expertly on their heads."

"Salvadoran construction workers crowd"

"into the local Korean noodle shop"

"for steamed dumplings."

"In this neighborhood, most of us are just passing through."

"Transients on our way to more permanent homes"

"in long beach or huntington park."

"We are all citizens of the world."

"We are all strangers together."

"But to my Korean landlords, this neighborhood is home."

"I have been awakened before dawn"

"by the rhythmic thud of their pounding garlic"

"into paste on the back porch."

"I've stumbled out the door with an armful of wet laundry"

"only to find all of the clotheslines"

"taken up by drying fish."

"I've also come home from work to find the back stairs spread"

"with leaves of cabbage, curing in the hot sun."

"Even when their son was shot"

"a half mile south of here"

"there was questioning of their sense of place."

"The landlords keep to themselves and so do I."

"I often wish that they would invite me over for dinner."

Thanks.

Alright, man, you brought some Louis Armstrong.

We gotta talk about Louis.

"tight like this," why did you choose this track?

I think it's by the best driving music there is.