Street Food Thuggery

Yay, civilization! Several friends emailed me about the Los Angeles Street Food Festival that occurred this past Saturday. With the explosion of gourmet food trucks – gourmet fries, gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches, gourmet sundaes, etc. – it promised to be an exciting and trendy occasion. I had a friend visiting from out of town so I purchased us VIP tickets, which meant that we could enter all civilized-like through glass doors as opposed to a cyclone fence gate and use flush toilets instead of Port-O-Lets.

I picked up my friend, Steve, who did not have VIP tickets, but we stupidly figured it wouldn’t be a huge deal. As we neared the venue a few minutes after the event started, we started to worry as teams of hipsters swarmed in the same direction while sizable numbers of disappointed, but sensible looking people headed in the opposite direction. We found the VIP entrance first, a line 60-people deep and moving slowly. I waited there while Steve went to scout the loser line, but given the mobs of people, we figured it wasn’t likely he would make it inside before dinner time.

While I was waiting, I thought about why I was there. People told me, “I’m sure you’ve tried most of the food trucks already,” to which I laughed humbly and looked down at my feet. But the truth is, I haven’t tried any of them. O.K., awhile ago, someone brought me a plate from the Kogi truck, which started the whole craze in L.A., but they weren’t even at this event. If I were a 23-year-old out partying and needed a food fix, I might have made the rounds, but I’m not. I’m an old fart who likes to eat with metal flatware while sitting down. I like tables and napkins and not waiting in lines.

The other thing is, I can’t imagine that the food is that great. How can the slice truck produce pizza that is better than out of a wood burning oven at Mozza or Bollini’s? Putting kimchi on your cheese fries doesn’t instantly make them better. This isn’t to say that they’re not making good food, but I don’t want to wait in several lines in the sweltering February sun (um, yeah. It was really hot) to find out if I’m right or wrong.

But the biggest issue I have is that these cupcake/crepe/Asian-Latin fusion trucks don’t represent actual L.A. street food. I admit that’s a condescending thing to say and, in fact, they did have two Mexican food trucks at the fair, but neither of them represented the taco trucks from my life. For that, I recommend Daily Taco, which has a comprehensive review library of local taco trucks and I couldn’t find reviews of the two that were at the fest.

So when Steve reported back that it would be a 2-hour wait (two goddamned hours!) for the non-VIP ers to get in, I suggested that we abandon the lines and get some real food. I handed my tickets off to some friends I ran into and we went to Boyle Heights for some birria – stewed goat.

The restaurant was perfect: booths, beer, and an oral menu consisting of birria, quesadillas and cabeza tacos (made from cheek meat). That’s it. The goat was almost as delicious as the homemade corn tortillas and we were sitting down in Naugahyde booths, not like Neanderthals walking around eating out of flimsy cardboard trays. Sadly, a hungover Steve did not enjoy the talented table-side Mariachis as much as the rest of the clientele, but he enjoyed the meal otherwise.

Afterwards we visited El Mercado de Los Angeles, a three-story marketplace where you can buy everything from Disney knock-off toys to cowboy boots to exotic culinary ingredients. I got the stink eye when I took this delicious photo. Unfortunately, the vendors didn’t care for me taking pictures so I only have a few, but the moles looked just as delicious as the toys looked creepy.

Again, for some reason I got the stink eye when I took this photo. I appreciate that a sorbet truck arriving outside a night club at 1:30AM has a certain mystique but to me, a bakery that sells heart-shaped loaves of bread for Valentine’s Day has way more street cred. Can you feel the love? I'm interested to know what food trucks readers would like to see on their street. Thoughts?

Beyond the Burrito

Los Angeles is a culinary goldmine, especially when it comes to (cheap) ethnic cuisine. Vietnamese, Thai, Salvadoran, Armenian, etc. So it comes as a surprise that it is not known for their burritos. On the burrito front, Northern California comes out way ahead. I have fond memories 25 years ago of the burritos at Super Taqueria in San Jose or El Toro in San Francisco but the only remembrance I have of burritos here is the giant "Pregnant Burrito" at El Nopal in Palms. And not because it was good, but because it was the size of a Tonka truck. This doesn't mean that I haven't had good burritos in L.A. The carnitas burrito at Senor Fish is delicious, as is their scallop one. The vegetarian burrito at Chabelitas is scrumptious. Which brings me to my point: it's not that burritos in L.A. are inferior, but the rest of the Mexican cuisine here is so spectacular, no one cares about a tortilla sock stuffed with beans and meat. And for me to call a burrito Mexican is debatable. The multi-layered version we gringos know, with the beans, meat, cheese and salsa, is far more a California product than it is a Mexican creation. Its goal seems to be to overwhelm with quantity rather than quality. Taco Bell announces, "We've got a seven layer burrito!" Del Taco responds, "Oh, yeah? We've got an eight layer burrito!" But why get a burrito when you can get chuletas en pasilla at La Cabanita? Or the quesadilla con borrego at My Taco? Or the tacos al pastor at La Estrella? There's so much depth in Mexican cuisine, why would I settle for a pedestrian burrito? Case in point: Last week I was in a minimall with a friend when I saw a tiny hole-in-the-wall spot selling these huge sandwiches. Even though I had already had lunch, I wanted to try one and my friend, who's Mexican American, said, "Oh, these things are everywhere." But I had never seen them before. They're called cemitas poblanas and my friend was wrong. They're not everywhere. Essentially, it's a hard-ish sesame seed roll that's been heated up on a grill and stuffed with meat, avocado slices, panella cheese (a fresh Mexican cheese), sometimes onions and cilantro and finished with a slathering of either zingy jalapeño or a smoky chipotle salsa. So here's their story (according to the Internet and Jonathan Gold): it's basically a street food from the city of Puebla in the state of Puebla which is almost smack in the middle of Mexico. I guess there was an influx of Europeans in the 19th century, which may account for the use of bread, but according to lore, the term "cemitas" refers to the Lebanese, or Semites, who immigrated there. Traditionally, the sandwich meat used is milanesa, thin, pounded steak that's been dusted and deep fried. Stateside, cemitas are more popular in the Mexican neighborhoods of Chicago and Brooklyn, but there are a few places here that make them. The closest place to my house is El Ruby Cafe on San Fernando Road in Glendale. It's been around for awhile and they serve only one variant of the cemitas poblanas, with the milanesa. It was tasty and the salsa was just the right amount of hot, but the meat was stringy and tough and the bread (the most important part) was on the chewy side. A few minutes further south in East L.A. is Cemitas Poblanas Elvirita, which has a solid following. It's a box-shaped restaurant that looks like a small converted bingo hall. The rolls there is crisper than El Ruby's, but a bit on the thin side. The milanesa was more tender and flavorful. I also tried a cemita with barbacoa - long cooked meat, usually lamb - and it was a little oily and stringy. I'd read a fair amount about this place and was somewhat disappointed. I did enjoy a Mexican Coke there - much better than the American version which uses high fructose corn syrup instead of sugar. I like it because it's less sweet, plus there's something about drinking Coke from a bottle. My favorite cemitas place was the first one I visited, Don Adrian, in Van Nuys. Though it was the smallest of the three, it had the largest menu. Pork, beef, ham, milanesa, head cheese, fried chicken, tongue, pickled tripe - they had it all. I opted for the barbacoa and it was just stunning. Piles of tender, juicy lamb on a fresh bun that was hard on the outside and soft like a memory foam pillow on the inside. The onion/cilantro relish they use on it cuts through the richness of the meat. Not bad for $5.50. The biggest and best of the sandwiches I tried, hands down. My two week romance with cemitas poblanas is still in its infancy. There is still much to explore - the taco truck that sells them outside the Smart and Final at Pico and Cotner, the place on Sherman Way and the other variants I have yet to try at Don Adrian. Who needs burritos?