MrLA

Monday, April 23, 2012

Sunday in the Rain Forest with Mr. LA!

It's been Spring in Los Angeles for the last two weeks.  While we still have cooler than normal temperatures, life is beautiful here in Los Angeles.  This is what we pay the big bucks in houses, mortgages, and taxes for:  the scenery and the chance to experience it with our five senses.  This is why my friend, Joe, and countless thousands of other transplants like him like to call their friends "back home" and razz them about the 80-degree sunshine and everyone in shorts and flip-flops while they freeze for the 80th day in a row in sub-freezing temps.

While film after tv show makes everyone believe that Los Angeles is one neverending  palm and surfing Malibu Beach, L. A.'s scenery elsewhere is even more spectacular. 

L. A. has two giant parks:  Griffith Park, the largest city park in the United States; and Elysian Park, a huge remnant of the land the Tongva Indians lived in and the Spanish found in 1769.  Running alongside both of these massive "green lungs" is the Los Angeles River.  I am lucky to live in between all three of them.

I experienced my "Eat Your Heart Out, You Non-Angelinos" moment last Sunday.  I love going to the Atwater Village Farmers Market.  I remember Atwater Village when it was just Atwater but changing a neighborhood's name to "Village" to make a house worth 1/3 more than it was before is another blog entry for another time :-).  It's one of the liveliest, funnest, culturally and culinarily eclectic farmers markets in a city filled with those types of farmers markets.

Where else but at a L. A. farmers market can you breakfast on pupusas and Korean short ribs, followed by a raw sugar cane juice chaser and finish it off, al fresco, with a pain au chocolat and espresso, then get your energy cleared and your chakras up and running like they should by an acupuncturist.

I decided to walk there.  It's two miles from my house to the market but it was a gorgeous Sunday morning and I wanted to feel the sunshine, clear blue sky and nature along the L. A. Riverwalk.



Saturday, April 21, 2012

Foodtruck Heaven

After the holidays and some issues that took much more time and attention than I wanted, I'm back and, like the old saying says, "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach", what led me post for my first post of 2012 was food.
I planned a social event in February where I was supposed to meet members of a meetup group I organize at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Mr. LA's second home for more than 3--- years.  Much to my most pleasant surprise, the entire other side of the museum was covered with food trucks offering the world in culinary offerings.  You want Mexican food, you got it there; Need to get your Berliner curry wurst fix fixed fast; or you have a hankering for an organic, handmade ice cream sandwich on gourmet dark chocolate chip cookies, enter Foodtruck Heaven, on Wilshire Blvd. between Spaulding and Genessee Avenues.  They're in front of the L. A. Fitness on the side opposite LACMA.

How L. A. to eat your gourmet foodtruck meal and work it off in the same location!  How also L. A. it is to eat Korean tacos, something you can get at the Galbi food truck in Foodtruck Heaven!  For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about or have heard of one but have not yet ventured to try one, a Korean taco is a Southern California invention.  Someone thought that serving galbi, Korean short ribs, on a Mexican tortilla, stuffed with the usual taco toppings, was in for a treat.  You are!  Korean tacos are as L. A. as the palm tree or Friday night bike riders and girls with barely enough skirt and stiletto heels at the Hollywood nightclubs.  A food revolution was born!!!

Suddenly, Twitter became a reservation book as the Korean taco truck published its latest locations all over Los Angeles.  Hundreds weekly flocked to have this latest craving, opening the door (pun not so intended) to trucks featuring every kind of food imaginable. 

There is more than one "foodtruck heaven".  The one on Breed Street in Boyle Heights will have 20 different trucks, each selling a particular type of Mexican sandwich or food.  They park at night in a parking lot off of Breed and Cesar Chavez Ave.   Where are the best tacos in Los Angeles?  At the Ay, Que Tacos Leonor food truck on 3rd and Indiana Streets in East L. A.  I defy anyone to find a better taco anywhere.  You've been to Japan and you are craving the massive (as big as a frying pan) pancake known as a "onokomiyaki"?  Besides going to a restaurant in Gardena, the only other place to get these succulent, meaty, vegetabley, lightly breaded square of food heaven will be courtesy of Glowfish, a food truck that parks on Friday and Saturday nights in front of the Spaceland Nightclub on Silver Lake Blvd.

But the Foodtruck Heaven I'm talking about here offers trucks that serve sandwiches from all of the Latin American countries, Korean tacos, Indonesian food, Berlin currywurst, Mexican food,  French crepes, and of course, burgers and hot dogs (we are in America, after all!).  All this and ice cream sandwiches made from organic, artisanal gelato and organic cookies, too!





So, support your local foodtruck heaven.  You'll be glad you did!
Hi, Guys:

I'm back after tackling life issues that kept me away but I'm back.

Flash!!! Tomorrow Olvera Street celebrates its 82nd anniversary of being a Mexican marketplace.  There is a jam-packed list of events for kids, adults, and just general partying.  It'll be amazing as mariachi bands, Aztec dancers, salsa and marimba groups, mass baptisms at the Plaza Church, massive lines at the taquito stands along the way.  For those going there, getting there on the 2 Bus along Sunset Blvd. will put you within one block of Olvera Street.  The Metro Red Line will bring you from the San Fernando Valley.  The Green and Blue Lines will bring you in from the South Bay and the Gold Line will bring you in from Pasadena and points between it and Los Angeles.  Parking (if you must) can be had for $7.00 the entire day (the cheapest rate around there) at the Metro Plaza Hotel, cr. Main St. and Cesar Chavez Ave., diagonally across Olvera Street.

For those who might not know, Olvera Street is where the oldest buildings in Los Angeles are congregated.  Really, a glorified alley during the Spanish and Mexican days in Los Angeles, it was really that until the 1920's when, rundown buildings everywhere, drug deals, prostitution, bootleg liquor sales, and all kinds of violent crime were happening there.  Leave it to someone outside of L. A. to value and save historical landmarks.

Christine Sterling, a San Francisco socialite, visited Los Angeles many times and became enamored of its history.  When she saw the decrepit street and the Avila Adobe being readied to demolish, she took it upon herself to save the house and the entire street, restoring it to its former glory and saving L. A.'s origins, turning it into a marketplace and inviting people from all over the globe to see it.  She had the ears, eyes, and money of Harry Chandler, the publisher of the Los Angeles Times 24/7.  Through Chandler, Ahmanson, and many other major economic players in Los Angeles, Mrs. Sterling got the City of Los Angeles (when it had money............Don't get me started on THAT topic!) to clean up the street, pave it with bricks, restore the ditch that used to bring fresh water from the Los Angeles River to the houses on Olvera Street, invite Mexican business owners, and the rest came together on April 21, 1930, with the mayor, Harry Chandler, newsreels (the movie theater version of the nightly news), and thousands of people attending the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Many of the original business owners still operate the shops and restaurants on Olvera Street, albeit the great-grandchildren of the original owners.  Olvera Street remains one of the most famous and most popular tourist attractions in Los Angeles.

For my money, the best Mexican meal on the street is at La Luz del Dia, a cafeteria containing freshly-ground and -made tortillas right in front of you; the best carnitas in Los Angeles; and the best nopales, a citrusy salad made of diced cactus, onions, tomatoes, cilantro, lemon juice, salt, and some diced chilis, in town.  Although Olvera Street was made into a Mexican marketplace and, indeed, it pays tribute to the city's Spanish roots and Mexican character, there are several reminders of other ethnic groups with strong ties to Olvera Street:  the Chinese-American Museum on the southern end of the Plaza, next to the Pico House, a great and long-overdue museum that fascinatingly chronicles the history of the Chinese in California, especially Los Angeles.  Don't miss photos of the Massacre of 1871, the worst mass violent episode in the United States for the next 50 years.  Also, nearby though not open is the Italian Hall, site of the once huge Italian immigrant community in Los Angeles.  To all you New Yorkers, L. A. had its own Little Italy and it was bigger than yours, nahh na ne na nahh!  When you have a great margarita and good Mexican dinner at La Golondrina on Olvera Street,  you'll be eating at the home of Antonio Pelanconi, one of the earliest Italians in Los Angeles and one of the biggest landowners in L. A. County and one of the pioneers of the wine industry in California. 

Enjoy a margarita, a taquito or a carnitas plate (more than one of each if you like) and "Viva la Placita Olvera" on its 82nd birthday!!!