Los Angeles has some of the most glamorous neighborhoods filled with hillside mansions, but it’s also a place with a crippling unhoused population. What Ulysses is speaking to here is that LA is a city with huge economic divisions.

As Ulysses pointed out, “The community here relies on each other.”

The community tends to shop for vegetables and basic homewares at small local shops rather than Whole Foods. You’re walking through Chinatown, but within five minutes, you’re walking past a Vietnamese sandwich shop specializing in bahn mi, a Filipino wine bar, California burger joint, French cafes, and a Southern hot chicken restaurant.ĭespite the number of restaurants and dim sum parlors in Chinatown, we noticed something else: There are no supermarkets in Chinatown. The thing about LA is the way cultures collide. Next door at a tiny shop called Steep, we had a traditional Taiwanese tea ceremony, sipping black tea that had been aged in dried tangerine peels for 8 to 10 years and sampled savory BBQ pork bao and sweet Taiwanese egg tarts. (Kathy Gunst/Here & Now)Īnd then we headed to Mandarin Plaza, where we found the James Beard Award finalist restaurant the Angry Egrette, which does not serve Chinese food at all but some of the best fish tacos I’ve ever tasted. Fish tacos from Angry Egrette in Chinatown.

We walked past the Bruce Lee statue where so many movies were filmed. Ulysses pointed out the dumpling shops and small mom-and-pop shops that sell basic home goods. We met our guide, Ulysses Salcito from Culinary Backstreet’s Culinary Walking Tours of LA, on foot under the arch at the entrance to LA’s New Chinatown. But walking is a unique way to see parts of the city you can't see behind the wheel. Most people in LA drive and drive and drive … and sit in lots of traffic.

Walking is not exactly what comes to mind when you think of LA. A few months ago, I took a five-hour walking food tour of several LA neighborhoods. There are more than 4,000 taco trucks and close to 25,000 restaurants in LA County that represent cultures and cuisine from all over the world. Los Angeles is one of the most exciting, diverse food cities in the country. Mochi in many flavors from Fugetsu-Do (Kathy Gunst/Here & Now)

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