L.A. Street food

Sweets and snacks for sale in Winston Alley

This week we've been hearing about a new event called the L.A. Street Food Fest. Two smart young entrepreneurs have gathered some of Los Angeles's most popular street food vendors at a local event space for a tasting festival. The event mingles traditional street food vendors, like Nina's and Carmen's Antojitos, who used to appear at the Breed Street Food Fair, and some of the new, young food vendors that serve the late-night crowds, like the Coolhaus ice-cream truck, the Kabob truck, the Asian taco vendors, the grilled cheese sandwich truck and the fried chicken truck.

The NomNom truck, selling Vietnamese sandwiches and fusion-style tacos, driving in Santa Monica

These new trucks are a true phenomenon - the new wave of food entrepreneurs, young creative chefs trying a non-traditional business plan. They plot routes that bring them near nightclubs and bars at night, and at busy workplaces by day - broadcasting their locations by Twitter so that their fans know where to find them.

We thought a festival of trucks sounded pretty cool, so we headed out for it. It was supposed to start at 11:00 am, and we got there around 11:30. Well, the traffic was crazy, and the sidewalk was packed with people. There was a line for the entry that wrapped around the corner. As we drove past the gate and turned left on 6th, there were scores of people walking up the hill toward the event location from the subway station at 7th and Figueroa.

Clearly the Fest had attracted a huge following. But we had no desire to stand in the lines and battle the crowds. It was time for Plan B.

We headed downtown, and went to Cole's Pacific Electric Buffet, for a French dip sandwich and an expertly mixed cocktail - a weekend indulgence, mind you, but you can't go to Cole's and not have a cocktail.

After we ate, we decided to take a walk around. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and, besides, we needed to walk off those cocktails.

Cole's is on 6th just west of Los Angeles Street - chaotic, bustling Los Angeles Street, in the middle of the Toy District. This section of downtown where wholesalers of goods such as toys, electronic gadgets, party supplies and novelties mingle with pet stores, beauty supply stores, homeless shelters and lingerie dealers is a crowded, noisy neighborhood bordered by Los Angeles Street on the West and San Pedro Street on the East, between Third Street and Fifth Street.


And today it was in fine form - packed with people, everyone out in the street. Shopkeepers touted their prices and wares through microphones wired into tinny-sounding boomboxes. Music pounded out from passing cars and from other shops. People stood on the sidewalk waving merchandise to attract customers - lots of Valentine-themed things today, like teddy bears and helium balloons and even bird cages with parakeets, the bars twined with sparkling mylar garlands of valentine hearts.

The sidewalk also teemed with scores of street food vendors, ranging from conventional taco trucks to more makeshift efforts.

This vendor fans the coals beneath roasting ears of corn.

There were lots of vendors selling Los Angeles' favorite bacon dogs.

This woman was making homemade tortillas using a traditional tortilla press. She's also heating cecina, or salted aged beef, on her comal, or griddle as a filling for her quesadillas.

While just a few storefronts away, this woman was also making quesadillas, only with blue corn masa harina. Note her cart - it's fashioned from a folding stroller, with condiments and utensils in the trays and hanging in plastic bags tied to the push handle.


Another vendor was selling fruit smoothies from a cooler in the trunk of her car.

There's a little alley that goes behind Winston Street, and if you walk down it past a party-wares store - pinatas and toys glittering in the sudden bright sun - you end up in a wide courtyard where people have all kinds of things laid out for sale.

The old warehouse buildings with their boarded up windows are painted in bright colors - pink, blue, red - and the vendors who set up their ad-hoc shops in the alley have striped umbrellas to shade them from the hot sun of an uncharacteristically warm February Saturday. Valentines gift baskets wrapped in ribboned cellophane crackled in the breeze that fluttered the pink and pastel baby clothes hung out on display, and the tissue streamers of pinatas from the party store.

Lots of people lined up for the taco trailer that looks like its been here forever. There are CD vendors, socks and underwear vendors. People set up a box in the middle of the pavement and begin selling from it. There was a guy selling toasted nuts and seeds from small trays tied to a fancy wheeled walker.

This vendor is selling fried plantains, dressed with sauce and crema. They smelled amazing!


Here at the intersection of two alleys, there are several vendors selling all kinds of food, clothing, and jewelry.

Paleteros, or ice cream bar salesmen, roll their carts up and down the street, their brass bells jingling. On the corner of Los Angeles Street and Fourth this little boy is fascinated with the many pictures of flavored ice cream bars.


Here a woman is selling horchata and cantelope agua fresca from plastic vitroleros in a shopping cart.

The official L.A. Street Food Fest was too much of a success for us to deal with, but in a happy coincidence, our afternoon was spent at a Los Angeles street food festival that was a bit more authentic.

I applaud the idea of young entrepreneurs taking to the streets in catering trucks, to serve their own gourmet creations to late-night crowds, using social networking to gain followers, parking outside nightclubs to feed the hunger of those who party hearty. It's interesting to see the creativity behind these new trucks and their menus.


But I wonder if the popularity of the new trend will have unintended consequences on L.A.'s traditional street food vendors. If food trucks are being bought by culinary school graduates to sell snacks to nightclubbers, will the prices of such trucks soar, and access to permits and licenses become more difficult? Sure, it will become easier to grab a Korean taco, cupcake, or bento box at 2:00 am in West Hollywood after a night of bar-hopping. But will there still be trucks to serve daytime gardeners and construction workers $1.50 tacos for lunch at their worksites in the hills of Brentwood?

The downtown street food scene is a tier below taco trucks as far as mobility and earning potential is concerned. You can't stock much food in a shopping cart or portable cooler, and the Health Department will never countenance a propane burner mounted on a stroller. These food vendors are designed to be swiftly dismantled and hidden from the authorities if raided.

Perhaps the food cart is a secondary job taken on in addition to another job as a domestic or laborer. Or perhaps these vendors are undocumented, and can only earn money in this mobile and off-the-books manner. Even so, their families' well-being depends on their ability to stand on a sunny sidewalk on a Saturday, over a sizzling hot griddle. How much is a day's take after expenses, I wonder, for $1 quesadillas or ears of roasted corn?

The downtown street cooks are just as creative entrepreneurs as the architecture students who sell green-tea ice cream sandwiches from pink-painted catering trucks. They are inventive cooks, persistent salespeople, and improvise their means of production.

The other day I was wondering what I would chose to do, if I ever had to start a business. What product would I sell? What skill do I have that I could bring to such an effort? How much would I be willing to risk to make it a success - or just break even?

It seems to me that a woman who decides that people might buy fried plantains like her mother used to make, or quesadillas like they made in her home town deserves some applause for trying to make a go of it in a tough world.