L.A. TACO

23 hours ago | lataco.com | Javier Cabral

Thirteen years after Wes Avila first turned the classic taco de papa on its head by using in-season, local sweet potatoes, he continues to evolve his iconic, accidentally vegetarian taco. Five iterations of that iconic taco later, it now comes in a superlatively crunchy flauta filled with fluffy steamed Okinawan sweet potato and fried in rice bran oil, a best-seller at MXO by Wes Avila, his Mexican steakhouse on La Cienega.

6 days ago | lataco.com | Javier Cabral

Often in food media, we tend to focus on the success of a chef or restaurant. But what about their life before that? Daniel Castillo opened up to L.A. TACO Editor-in-Chief Javier Cabral about everything he had to overcome to become the current James Beard Award finalist, and how sometimes “the only journey is the one within (Rainer Mmaria Rilke).” Growing up, I never quite felt like I fit in.

1 week ago | lataco.com | Lexis-Olivier Ray

On a late afternoon in early March, Hector Alaniz’s mother called 911 desperately pleading for help. Her schizophrenic, autistic, and bipolar 23-year-old son was expressing suicidal ideations while he sat in a brown Chevy Malibu on the border of Filipinotown and Silver Lake. A day earlier, Alaniz’s mother had called a county-run 1-800 mental health line asking for assistance, but they told her that they couldn’t do anything because her son was reportedly armed with a BB gun.

1 week ago | lataco.com | Javier Cabral

It's been a long five years for Brandon Conaway and Carolina Pedroza-Conaway, the couple behind Wallflour (the pizza artists formerly known as Quarantine Pizza Co.).

1 week ago | lataco.com | Jesse Katz

The Los Angeles hood movie flourished as a genre in the 1990s as Hollywood awoke to the dreams and dramas of the underserved communities in its own backyard. Some of those films became classics (Boyz n the Hood and Blood In, Blood Out), some stunk (Colors and Hot Boyz), and some satirized the whole concept (Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood).