Cultural Appropriation Tastes Damn Good: How Immigrants, Commerce, and Fusion Keep Food Delicious
Writer Gustavo Arellano talks about food slurs, the late Jonathan Gold, and why Donald Trump's taco salad is a step in the right direction.
The late Jonathan Gold wrote about food in Southern California with an intimacy that brought readers closer to the people that made it. The Pulitzer Prize–winning critic visited high-end brick-and-mortar restaurants as well as low-end strip malls and food trucks in search of good food wherever he found it. Gold died of pancreatic cancer last month, but he still influences writers like Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times columnist and author of Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.
Arellano sat down with Reason's Nick Gillespie to talk about Gold's legacy, political correctness in cuisine, and why Donald Trump's love of taco salad gives him hope in the midst of all of the president's anti-Mexican rhetoric. The interview took place at Burritos La Palma, named by Gold as home to one of the five best L.A. burritos.
Produced and edited by Paul Detrick. Shot by Detrick, Zach Weissmuller, and Lorenz Lo.
Photos of Jonathan Gold, Credit: Patrick Fallon/ZUMA Press/Newscom
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