Bourdain’s Field Notes

LOS ANGELES, April 2017—California itself used to be Mexico. The architecture, the food, the culture, the music, the very names of the things and places we love are Mexican.

Today, our entire food production system, from who picks, raises, transports, processes, cooks, serves and then cleans up after, is hugely and irrevocably based on the work of Mexicans or Mexican-Americans.

And you can be sure, if you swing by Trump Vineyards, you’re not going to find a lot of Chads, Tads or Hunters picking grapes.

We’ve done shows in Los Angeles before. And will again. Los Angeles is big—a sprawl—a patchwork of communities with origins everywhere in the world. Last time we did a show in L.A., we pretended that pretty much everyone who lived there was Korean. This time, it’s all about Mexicans and Chicanos.

How “American” are Chicanos? How Mexican for that matter? How Mexican is California? We thought we’d bumble around with cameras and ask questions like that, partaking of many of the good things within that very large, vital part of Southern California and America as a whole.

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