Notes on Living in Los Angeles
sashachapin.substack.comSome surprising realizations I had living in LA for 7 years, that were not mentioned in the article:
- Great cycling weather. LA has come a long way in bike lanes and buses that can carry your bike. It's not all about cars.
- It's basically working class due to the garment and aerospace industry. These are filipino and hispanic workers that have families and live generally outside of the trendy neighborhoods (or they do, but in cramped conditions). Most of HN will probably never interact with this demographic though.
- Your "LA is fake" speech as a disgruntled transplant is super lame and cliche, and lamer than actually being a fake/shallow Angeleno. Get over it. It's fake if you hang out with fake people. I found it refreshing to meet people who were not the standard tech bro who lifts weights.
- Great outdoors. Hiking, rock climbing, limited skiing. Take a sailing class thru UCLA.
Edit:
- LA food: Best East Asian (especially Chinese), Mexican, and Persian food in the country, and possibly the best Ethiopian. LA I thought had the highest density of high-quality but midrange ethnic restaurants that you could visit for a weekday lunch. It is not as good for technical haute cuisine that you'd find in SF, NYC, but it's the best for food that you could actually eat everyday.
I grew up in Hollywood and have lived in Los Angeles most of my life. I hated it growing up but upon returning had an experience of rediscovering my home town and finding I love it.
My favorite part of LA is something that is sadly gone with the rise of the LA tech scene, cannabis scene, and migrations from SF and NYC. LA was always a place where you could find a cheap apartment, studio, warehouse, etc, focus on your work (whatever that is) and disappear in the sprawl and then emerge as necessary to engage socially.
There was always an abundance of store fronts and warehouses easily converted into studio spaces and an abundance of fabricators and materials suppliers to feed all sorts of artistic practices. This was due to LA's rich history as an industrial center.
If you wanted to start a small gallery or little studio community you could essentially throw a dart at a map and find the perfect place for you and your friends.
Now with the real estate boom, the expanding tech startup scene, and the cannabis industry LA is becoming more and more expensive and options for creative lifestyles are becoming slimmer and slimmer.
I lost trust in the whole article when it came to the paragraph on food. LA has a great food scene, but I would put Tokyo, Bangkok, Barcelona, Chicago, and probably another 5-10 cities ahead of it. Saying "Los Angeles is the world’s best food city, and it’s not close" is myopic.
I can't speak about Bangkok, or Chicago.
On Tokyo, Barcelona, and to a lesser extend LA, SF, I feel more confident to say something.
It is greatly a question what you are looking for, and the author quite apparently appreciates the variety.
And I have to give it to them, I do not think that Tokyo or Barcelona are in the same league there.
That is not to disparage the quality of the food. I hold Tokyo in high regard, and would say it is the place I would most likely feel confident to go to a blindly chosen random Japanese restaurant. In Barcelona, you already have to filter out the tourist traps. (Hint: Paella & Sangria)
But in both places, it felt to me more dicey if would like some non-local food. It always seemed to be heavily adopted to the local preferences. But maybe my experience is outdated.
My armchair theory is, that both cities "suffer" from the fact of having a great culture of own cuisine. Not sure, if their customers do not appreciate the otherness, or the cooks are preemptively trying to "fit in".
As the author writes, LA is a melting pot, and I have eaten there great food from all over the place, especially when the menu was only half-translated. But then, it may be a prejudice, I am less confident that I can pick a random place, and receive the same quality as in Tokyo.
I thought it was interesting that the author specifically calls out Thai food. LA has a thai population of only about 27k (Chinese is about half a million, for comparison). The abundance of Thai restaurants in LA and other large cities is largely due to a Thai government culinary diplomacy initiative[0] to promote gastro-tourism.
I tend to find that Chinese food, for example, is more organically represented. In San Francisco, despite there being a Chinatown proper, and several other minor pockets (around Sunset for example), the quality of offerings is fairly mediocre, mirroring the americanization of its chinese population, compared to, say, Toronto, where you can find great a many restaurants with untranslated menus, catering to a large native chinese population.
> My armchair theory is, that both cities "suffer" from the fact of having a great culture of own cuisine. Not sure, if their customers do not appreciate the otherness, or the cooks are preemptively trying to "fit in"
I think this is a variation of the concept of "food grammar"[1]. I've noticed, for example, that in San Francisco, a lot of asian eats feature jalapeno peppers, and there's a number of mexican inspired fusion things (senor sisig, for example).
California rolls have quite a life of their own: they themselves are spin-offs of traditional sushi meant to cater to those who may be squeamish about raw fish, but I've seen restaurants in Toronto's Annex neighbourhood (an area w/ a lot of sushi restaurants) make some very flamboyant rolls that are completely detached from that rationale (mango sauce, anyone?)
The thing with a city developing its own food grammar is that it can be hit or miss. Personally, I'm not big on SF's jalapenos-everywhere thing. Sometimes, I just want a good traditional bahn-mi, not a San Francisco take on it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culinary_diplomacy#Thailand
[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/do-italians-eat-spaghe...
When I lived in LA I always felt like the variety argument was kind of nonsensical. It's not like the typical LA neighborhood has great reprsentation of a lot of different ethnic foods. The best korean is in korea twon, the best chinese in the SGV, etc... but day to day it doesn't matter that "LA" has it because theres nowhere you can live where you are even an hour drive to most of it.
Most peoples actual LA experience is that they stay mostly confined to one little part of LA because they have a two hour commute during the week. They never get to really dig into that food scene because it's just to big a hassle to be a part of it.
Hot take: I don't think the best food in southern california is even in Los Angeles it's in Baja Mexico to the south.
I m not sure what level of pricee you expect, also. But LA is really far and hispano-american to be truly neutral culinarily.
I'm french and therefore a bit food snob. I live in Hong Kong, a place where the local food is 3 USD a meal, and the meat dicey while most nationalities, French especially, are represented at all price levels. It's still going to be skewed toward Asian taste (where are the Camembert sushi, a staple of parisian cheap sushi restaurant!?)
I dont know american food scene but it's probably horrendous: a memory of a 2 week stay in NYC when I was 16 scarred me: people in the US call "fat" "food", they cant actually comprehend taste. Just like my indian friends are so burned by spice they cant see the difference between different types of steaks (and tbh, like I find all type of spice just tasteless fire and cant distinguish them).
It's not bias you have, it's complete ignorance, I humbly assert :D I hope at least you're not the kind of american who think fortune cookies are traditional chinese culinary culture (it s an american invention)...
But if you speak of ultra luxury chefs and their distribution vs Tokyo or Barcelona you may be right, but it hardly matters: that's not real food either.
The food scene in larger American cities like NY, LA and SF is fantastic - and I've spent a lot of time outside of the USA.
What I've noticed about the French/Italian food snobs is that they seem to view American food culture as it was in 1990s suburbia. Back then, good olive oil or artisanal cheese was pretty hard to find outside of small "gourmet" food stores. It's very different today.
Purely outsider anecdotes:
Despite also using a similar (or even less!) amount of spice and largely enjoying the same “beige” palette and textures as the rest of the continent, I found Northern Europe’s cities so delightfully open to the rest of the world’s cuisine in contrast to my experiences in the south, I don’t think the other comment is completely off the mark in how immense “local pride” kind of definitely factors into a very certain way of doing things to the exclusion of others, even locally between eg Barcelona & Valencia.
It probably isn’t a coincidence how curry, and donër kebab are devoured left and right by rich-ish and poor in England and Germany to the point of entering the national identity after rocky starts in the middle of the last century while France and Italy’s right wings are still to this day thriving on specifically culinary othering, to the point of coining things like “kebabization” and trying to ban kebab stands in the city centers of Florence and Marseille.
I would also maybe be careful conflating simply being very French or very Italian, and being a food snob in food circles these days. Interest in French, and recently the Italian cuisines have absolutely plummeted globally and its over the top vocal adherents are often linked to some rather unpopular social attitudes (in food circles, anyways).
eg Indian and Thai are booming, though! https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=french%2...
I've been to 2/4 on your list (Tokyo + Barcelona) and the only conclusion I can come to is that it's hard to name a "best" food city because food preferences can be so personal.
With that being said, NY + LA are my personal two favorite cities because these two cities combined cover such a large swath of the globe. No, the food is not as good as the country of origin, but it can get pretty close. And then you have such a variety. Just this past weekend (in LA) I had Jamaican food on Friday, Israeli food on Saturday, and Thai food on Sunday. And they were all pretty top notch.
I've heard Houston also has quite a diversity of food, I've heard Chicago is pretty good as well. To me, to be a best food city it is imperative to cover a broad section of different cuisines. By that metric, LA is world class and (for my taste and the kinds of food I like), unbeatable.
EDIT: One other thing I forgot to add. LA has a great spirit of innovation when it comes to food. You see people selling food out of their house, on the sidewalk, in parking lots just to get their idea out into the world without a lot of overhead. There's this feeling that if you try something new and capture people's attention you can make something big out of your food. And I think that's amazing (also it helps keep the costs relatively low for the consumer which is a bit of a bonus).
Agreed, I've spent quite a bit of time in Bangkok and Tokyo and while the Thai and Japanese food is incredible in those two cities, the selection of other ethnic foods is pretty limited. You won't for example find Mexican, Brazilian or Moroccan food in these cities. When it comes to both quality and selection of ethnic food from around the world it's hard to beat the large US cities.
Speaking as a Tokyoite, you absolutely can but you just won't see them if you're a tourist staying for a week in the most central parts of the city. All in all, it's true that there's more variety in US cities - but I guess I don't value variety as much as you do.
People need to eat, most several times a day. As a result there is great food anywhere there are people because the people will be looking for places to eat. What is lacking is often variety. I know of many towns barely large enough to support one Cafe (some are good some bad). The bigger the town the more likely it is there is something good.
For some weighting of variety and quality it probably does very well. But yeah, this is best read as a love letter, where some qualities of the beloved are overlooked.
Similarly, "if you wake up at dawn in Los Angeles, and you have good time management skills, you can go for a walk on the beach, then go skiing in the afternoon, then fall asleep in the high desert at night" is probably true, but you'd better like the interior of your car, because that's where you'll be spending every other part of that day.
Where I grew up, we would make a big deal out of the one-time-a-year we did ANY of those three things on an annual vacation. So while doing them in one day seems impractical, being able to do them without it being a fairly big trip is something decidedly different than north Texas or similar swathes of the middle of the country. It's nice that the author still appreciates the access to nature.
I'd rather try the same trick in Portland than LA, though we may not be able to satisfy the high desert requirement. Still require some driving, but it wouldn't be as brutal.
I think you could do it in 5-6hr of driving starting in Portland (drive to coast, drive to Mt Hood, and then drive east somewhere, maybe Shaniko). Without traffic (hah) its probably about 2hr less driving in LA (LA->Santa Monica->Big Bear(if there is snow)->Lucerne Valley)
Of course thesausageking is hyping Chicago ;)
I think that’s a tough one to rank as not all great food cities are going to be great at all kinds of food. I’m not familiar with Tokyo for example, but I suspect the Mexican food scene there isn’t as impressive as in LA?
Proximity to fresh seafood and fresh produce as well as the strong immigrant communities mentioned in the blog do generally combine to make LA an excellent place to eat though.
I live in Tokyo, if you judge it on cultural variety it's a definite loser (although there is quite a bit of variety, just not comparable to a place like NYC or LA). The reason why I prefer the cuisine there has little to do with that, though. Rather, I've come to love the "taste" of the city, as in the general criteria by which people judge things as "delicious" is very different than what the average New Yorker or San Franciscan would land on.
The Japanese palette tends to favor much lighter flavors, less oily and rich foods than the American palette. People typically value the natural flavors of the ingredients, whereas when eating out in the USA you tend to get really sweet or fatty sauces that mask the flavor of the base ingredients, even at nice restaurants.
It's not that it's better or worse, it's just a different definition of what "delicious" is, and I happen to prefer the Japanese ideal.
That's my point. A lot of cities have great food scenes, so saying "LA is the world’s best food city, and it’s not close" says more about the author than LA.
If by best food scene, you were to take the top 20-25 cuisines of the world and look for good examples .. ?
Probably Melbourne, London and New York.
Have spent enough time in Los Angeles to know that it doesn’t reach the level of the above cities. It’s great at what it does - Mexican, Korean, Chinese, Salvadoran even, fusion - but the geography just doesn’t help it.
Barcelona is not a particularly great food City (sure, there are a few elite chefs but in general the food scene offers little of variety). Want good food in Spain, go to Basque Country.
Tokyo, San Sebastián, Lyon are cities which are insanely good at rocking their own cuisine which puts them in a different category of food cities. You might say ‘International’ v ‘Local’
International food cities -
Melbourne London New York
Sydney Los Angeles
(And probably Toronto Houston Vancouver but have never been)
The above cities are the great melting pots of the world
Something very special is happening in Melbourne’s food scene, especially in the last 10 years. Pick literally any Asian cuisine or food trend. you can name, even something super obscure, and you can find special examples.
Agree with Melbourne. The bar for good food is set so high in Melbourne and when you combine that with the incredibly diverse population, you have the best most impressive international food scene I have ever encountered. London and New York definitely give it a run for its money, but I'd argue the standard in Melbourne is still higher.
Heading to LA in a few months for the first time so keen to compare.
I can confirm about the Chinese food in Melbourne. It's better than everywhere in the US. Which makes sense given the population there.
Jonathan Gold was food critic for the LA Times, and is the only critic to win a Pulitzer. Michelin doesn't rate in LA any more though, then again Michelin has always been biased towards Western European high-end cuisine which is not really were LA shines.
Michelin is back in LA after Jonathan Gold's passing:
https://guide.michelin.com/us/en/california/us-los-angeles/r...
Lots of overlap between Jonathan Gold's 101 list and the Michelin star list.
Yeah, I live in Tokyo and think that the Michelin Guide has no idea what good Japanese food is and should be disregarded there lol. I only really trust it for expensive European fare.
As a Bay Area transplant to LA I would say that Los Angeles has a large and diverse food scene. There are lots of places to get good food, and because there are so many places it never felt that hard to get reservations. Even a place as famous as Bestia I was able to get same day reservations twice.
Contrast that with lines around the block to get good, but not life changing Ramen (Orenchi, South Bay Area). Or a near-mandatory hour wait for great Ramen (Ramen Shop, Oakland). Or giving up and never going because bots took all the reservations* (State Bird Provisions, SF).
* this is not fully accurate. A friends bot once went haywire and got too many reservations. I was able to attend on a spare reservation.
Bay Area is very overrated for food.
An article about "Living in Los Angeles" without mentioning how stupid expensive it is, it's hard to trust :)
I disagree about Chicago. Good food in America is only where there are many foreigners, esp from Asia. Los Angeles and NYC have the best food (personally I prefer NYC). Outside of the US there are much better cities but if you're into diversity of different foods, then LA and NYC are excellent. Tokyo for example has way better Japanese food than LA but not so good Middle Eastern food for example.
LA also has the better access to a variety of fresh fruits and veggies because of its weather. That also influences the food scene.
When I worked in Italy, I learned that Italy is pretty much the best place in the world to eat Italian food. The variety there was amazing too. On the other hand, they were crap at Chinese food and couldn't figure out the humble hamburger to save their lives.
Chicago has a very diverse population.
As an angelino I disagree, and I say so because of logistics. LA has access to the world's nexus of food.
Almost every sprig of lettuce you eat comes from California, we get the food that travels the least and access to the best foods that have to travel the most, I say this because my brother is a food importer at LAX. I get to eat mangos from Pakistan, starfruit from Indonesia, and steak from Japan with ton's of frequency.
My point is, we serve as a nexus for food delivery and with choice of ingredients the best foods are made.
Manhattan is also better by the way. The sole fact that they have the way more interesting wine lists everywhere is already half of the battle won.
I wish people would specify how many restaurants they visited in each city they judge. I think 50 is the minimum before we can judge any city as a whole. NYC > Chicago > SF > LA > Miami.
I think LA is still deeper and more interesting foodwise than SF. NYC is above all by a good margin though
LA and SF were close for me but in very different ways. Agree about NYC, easy #1.
Some of this depends on what you eat. I’m vegetarian, and yes I know Catalan food is supposed to be excellent, but I would just never personally put Barcelona in my top-10 for food.
I'd rather eat Japanese food in LA than American food in Tokyo, and it's not even close. But the average restaurant is probably better in Tokyo than in LA.
At the end of the day, this is an outlook of someone who enjoys the city, and I can get behind that. But there is not much in this article that wouldn't still hold true if you replaced Los Angeles with 'X well known metropolis in the world'. I moved to San Francisco a couple of years ago and had a negative mindset going into the move given my circumstances at the time...and you know what, I had a bad attitude that led to a worse experience. Ultimately, fantastic things can be found almost everywhere these days, we just have to go in with an open mindset.
I don't think many other places have the geography or the sprawl but I agree many cities are under appreciated.
This is true! Tokyo was pretty crazy though.
One view I would take is that every city is simply unique in its own many ways. I don't necessarily travel somewhere and right away compare it to other places, I feel like a greater experience can be had by just appreciating where a person is in that moment.
> The average walking experience is poor, but the peak walking experience is marvelous.
I feel this applies to almost everything about Los Angeles - the average anything probably sucks, but the peak is probably ether than you’re gonna find almost anywhere. What makes LA so great for me is that you can get those peak experiences in so many different areas of life.
Lived in LA for a decade plus.
The biggest problem in LA is the traffic, plus that you need a car to go anywhere.
Try to go on average day from Griffith Park(Observatory in the picture) to Santa Monica(surfing). You will hate your life.
People who live in LA are kinda used to crazy traffic, but if your value your time, LA is not the place to be
I grew up in Hollywood. The secret is to not try to do multiple outings across town in one day. You have to treat all the different neighborhoods as individual cities and just go somewhere for the day. Once rush hour hits, just expect to stay where you are and enjoy yourself until traffic lets off.
Leaving LA for exactly this reason.
Not just because of the time. But because there is hardly anywhere to live that isn't filled with cars AND walkable.
It's nice that the city has become a lot more walkable - but it's not that enjoyable walking alongside what is basically a highway - I.E. Hollywood, Sunset, and Santa Monica Blvd.
It's such a shame that the city with some of the best weather in the country, and that would otherwise be great for biking, is the city with one of the strongest car cultures in the world.
I feel like the author covered this pretty well. If you have the luxury to organize your life around the terrible traffic (e.g. living and working in Venice) it's fantastic. If you need to get on a highway to get to work your experience will probably be much worse.
Sure, but if I can work from home in Malibu, it is a sweet deal too.
But for most people in LA, it is not the case.
The thing that sold me on LA was seeing that Atlas Obscura lists 221 things there!
https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/los-angeles-califo...
I've visited rather than lived there, but the overwhelming impression I've got is that LA is /weird/ - in all of the best ways.
That density of creative people - with a business model that actually supports them - plus areas of the city that are affordable (at least in comparison to the SF Bay Area) means LA has an abundance of quirky and interesting culture to it. And great food.
There is an entire area of LA full of prop rental warehouses which I am very keen to explore on my next trip there.
> My impression is that Los Angeles is the world’s best food city, and it’s not close. I have a galaxy-brained theory about why this is. Restaurants decline when they sell prestige, rather than food. (This is why Manhattan is often not a good place to eat.)
Stops reading and closes the window. Seriously, what the hell. LA is a great place to eat, but for the love of G... Paris? Tokyo? NYC also kicks LA's ass to the ground regarding food. I know my food, LA's great, but come on.
Anecdotally I have a French acquaintance who dreads his trips back home because the food is so terrible. Paris might be famous for fine dining at the extreme top end, but that doesn't necessarily make for the best eating.
Eating great food in Paris is expensive on average. And the service is unfortunately known to be horrible. It’s not a rule though.
But other French cities are full of restaurants that serves really great food, with either gorgeous local specialities (hello Britain and Provence), or excellent « French » cuisine for really modest prices as low as 12-15€ for the « plat du jour » (which is made from what the restaurant bought in the morning) to 30-40€ for meals you’ll keep in your memory.
This is due to a law that enforces employers to pay for your mid-day meal. Most of them do this by giving you restaurants vouchers so a lot of people in France got to eat at restaurants on a budget every day. So as a restaurant owner, you’d better have nice food if you want to see your customers come back every week.
That's definitely not true. Source: my wife is French and from Paris, I lived in France etc. Paris is AMAZING to eat, in every single tier. And that doesn't mean you'll be eating French cuisine everywhere. Asian food is incredible in Paris, so is Moroccan for instance. It's a deep city though, if you do "shallow dining" you'll eat garbage, like in pretty much every single major western city.
“Best food city” has a lot of dimensions to optimize against. Are you looking for cheap-ish ethnic food? Haute cuisine? Prevalence of vegan options? High quality fast casual? IMO extremely difficult to rank cities in the top tier of food against each other absolutely and LA is def top tier.
LA has the best everyday food. Other cities surely have better fine dining.
It probably depends on how heavily you weight variety, casual vs fine dining, and whether having a food truck with an awesome cheesesteak is the same as "LA has awesome cheesesteaks".
Oh but LA does have an awesome cheesesteak place - it's called Big Mike's and it's located in El Segundo and Hermosa Beach. Amazing cheesesteaks...
LA never felt like a city to me because of the sprawl. I remember driving into downtown from the airport, and thinking to myself, “This is a suburb with tall buildings in the distance”. I chalk this up to me being from the East Coast and going to NYC a lot as a kid, and therefore seeing a “city” as something that’s dense and walkable.
As a fellow northeast-corridor-megalopolis-denizen this got me too (plus the straight-up enormous size of the blocks [0]), but then I realized you can see actual mountains from the actual city and my mind got blown in the other direction.
[0] It's like they're designed for drag racing so you can get up to 60 mph and still brake in time for the next light.
I found LA depressing on so many levels, everytime I've been there I can't wait to get home. I'd feel that cold mist on the Golden Gate bridge, and felt great immediately.
As a kid in high school, blonds (most are out of a bottle) were worshiped. I guess it was the beach Surfer thing? My cousin was so depressed because he looked ethnic. Women just wouldn't give him the time of day.
When he came to visit us in Norther California--he was a rock star. Women really liked him. I never saw him so happy.
It's weird how certain places are just different on so many levels.
(best Mexican food there is though.)
I loved LA. There's so much to love about it. Food, beaches, weather, creativity, etc etc.
If I had millions of dollars and could live anywhere I would probably live in LA.
Nothing on Homeless? Skid row? Hollywood aka Pedowood "holier-then thou" losers?
No offense, but your comment sounds like you only know LA from what you read in your social media bubble online.
The "Hollywood" you are referencing is not geographic. Yes the film studios are in Los Angeles but hollywood celebrity culture is not a property of nor exclusive to Los Angeles the city.
And what about the homless population? Yes it is a problem that there are so many unhoused people. But is it really surprising that they would congregate in a city with such mild weather and access to social services? Do they not also have a right to live their lives?
I had a great trip with friends to western USA some years back, including LA where I loved a lot of things.
Food wasn’t one of those but it was 100% due to our bad choices.
However, Hollywood Bd truly was an horrible disappointment. It’s probably the place during this trip where I felt truly unsafe.
But that fortunately was not enough to spoil my good memories.
There are no worthwhile tourist attractions on Hollywood Boulevard, it's more known for selling apparel to "exotic dancers". There are also no movie studio activities there, outside of that one theater that does red carpets. The stars in the sidewalk are not worth visiting. Anyone living in LA knows this, but it still traps tourists all the time. Please don't generalize Hollywood Boulevard to say much about the greater LA area.
> And what about the homless population? Yes it is a problem that there are so many unhoused people. But is it really surprising that they would congregate in a city with such mild weather and access to social services? Do they not also have a right to live their lives?
Sure. It is a "free" country after all. I have no dog in the fight since I am not in the US and do not intend to visit LA any time soon (maybe in the 70s I would have).
All I am doing is, pointing out the reality of LA.
I'm sorry but I fail to see what reality you are pointing out. Yes there are homeless in LA. Same with many places.
You are commenting on a post about the _experience_ of living in Los Angeles without--by your own admission--having visited the city.
Well, the article was about LA and not "many places".
No, I have not visited but I have seen and heard enough to stay away. Maybe win/win!
The article seemed more geared toward the upsides.