Latest news with #L.A.Times'
Los Angeles Times
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
To understand what immigrants mean to California, eat at any restaurant
Taquerias, dim sum parlors, sushi counters, noodle shops, kebab stands, strip malls filled with businesses serving 12 different Vietnamese specialties: Immigrant excellence powers every single restaurant on the L.A. Times' first ever 101 best restaurants in California guide. Without exception. Even in the white-owned places serving Euro-centric dishes, who is doing the cooking or delivering the plates to the table? I see the greatness of immigrant contributions to our dining culture everywhere. Given the past week in Los Angeles, amid the accelerated immigration raids and anti-ICE protests, and the many obfuscations across social media and national coverage in their portrayals of L.A. and Angelenos, it feels important to say plainly: The top-to-bottom glory of culinary California feeds and influences the nation and the world, and it would not exist without our immigrants. That's reflected in our new statewide 101 essential restaurants project, which went live this morning. This list isn't full of super-secret, 'undiscovered' amazements hidden in the furthest regions of the state. No. It's built from fantastic restaurants of all kinds — the standouts, telling a collective story about who we are and what we eat. Did I rank them? No, though of course I'm aware plenty of people crave stars and status to argue over. The No. 1 reason to take the time to read over the guide is to see that, in the spirit of usefulness, the 101 restaurants are jumping-off points. There is too much brilliance to highlight at every level in California. So along with many of the write-ups, you'll find 'extra helpings' of restaurants similar in style or cuisine or geography. For instance, you might glance down the list of places in San Francisco — the U.S. capital of fine dining, full-stop — and say, 'These are out of my budget!' Keep reading, and you'll see I've also included more affordable dining recommendations in the city. Eating well in California has outgrown simplistic notions of perfect fruit on a plate. For almost 50 years, the architects of the modern California-wide dining culture drove the ethos of 'seasonal' and 'local' into eye-glazing cliches, and we know who farms all our beautiful produce. But over the last decade, the foods of the state's longest-standing immigrant communities — Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino and Middle Eastern, among others — have become engines of creativity for a new generation of chefs cooking from their heritage. At the stove, each person could choose to hue close to tradition or veer wildly into innovation. Someone could re-create their grandmother's pozole, another could infuse the dish's broth with Asian herbs and garnish it with edible flowers. If it was delicious, it found an audience. It was a big element when, in the early 2010s, media and food lovers finally began acknowledging Los Angeles on the world map as a dining destination. That approach — it can go by 'third culture cuisine' or 'identity-based cooking' — is no less thrilling these days, but it's become a welcome part of our culinary consciousness. The reaction isn't so much, 'Whoa, this take on mapo tofu is wild' as it is, 'Ah, this is what you bring.' It's the closest I have to a modern, working definition of the overly broad term 'California cuisine.' Staying in John says, 'I was thinking about leaving a promising career in the corporate world working 50-60 hours a week to become a teacher. My dad asked me why. One reason was that I would be able to spend more time with my kids. He was retired from a job where he worked 50-60 hours a week and said that he wished he had worked less because he missed out on so much of my and my siblings' lives. He told me to never put work before family like he had done.' Katie says, 'I grew up in Washington, DC, and was lucky to have a father who loved to take me out to eat at all kinds of restaurants. My father taught me from a very young age to always read the dessert menu first, so you could plan your meal accordingly.' Email us at essentialcalifornia@ and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. On June 12, 1967, the Loving vs. Virginia decision deemed bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional. In recent years, the anniversary of that decision has been informally celebrated by multiracial families across the country. In 2016, The Times invited readers to share their Loving Day stories and how interracial relationships have affected them. Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
'Landman' Cast Reflects on the Show's Success and Season 2 Excitement
'Landman,' Paramount Plus' hit series about the high-stakes world of West Texas oil, has quickly become the platform's most-streamed show worldwide. In a recent Q&A on June 7 at the Culver Theater, the L.A. Times' Greg Braxton spoke with Billy Bob Thornton, Ali Larter, Jacob Lofland and Andy Garcia about their thoughts on the show's success, their on-screen chemistry and what fans can look forward to in Season 2. Ali Larter reflected on the moment the show felt like a hit, saying, 'Nobody's phoning it in. Everyone is really committed to telling this story in a real and authentic way.' Jacob Lofland also added, 'It's still kind of surreal how big this has become.' Meanwhile, Billy Bob Thornton described the experience as working with a family, he said 'it's just fun when you're with a group of people who are really into it.' The television series was created by Taylor Sheridan and Christian Wallace, which was inspired by the podcast 'Boomtown' hosted by Wallace. Andy Garcia praised Taylor Sheridan's writing style, explaining how it pushes boundaries by portraying raw and real conversations. 'He's a fearless writer,' Garcia said. Thornton added, 'Taylor doesn't take sides. He just shows the realities of the oil world and lets the characters be unapologetically themselves.' On-screen chemistry is a huge part of the show's appeal. Larter described her character's relationship as a 'beautiful, messy, complicated love story' that is filled with vulnerability beneath the tension. Lofland called the chemistry across the cast 'a lucky situation,' noting, 'Everyone just clicked right away.' Garcia, who joined the cast as a powerful cartel head, spoke about his debut scene with Thornton. 'It was intense, but there was also a subtlety to it. Billy Bob and I really found a rhythm, respecting each other's space and keeping it authentic,' Garcia said. Thornton praised Garcia's professionalism, saying, 'He's generous and knows how to bring depth without overdoing it.' The actors also shared how they approach their characters' emotional depth. Larter said, 'Angela's strength comes with a lot of vulnerability. Filming those intense scenes for long hours is challenging but rewarding.' Lofland added, 'A lot of the emotion is real. You're surrounded by these huge landscapes and the gravity of the story seeps in.' Looking ahead to season two, Garcia teased that his character has a surprising side, saying 'he runs a ballet studio as a front, which adds an interesting layer.' Thornton also hinted at more family drama and identity struggles, promising, 'Season two will dive deeper into these complicated relationships.' With authentic storytelling and powerful performances, 'Landman' continues to captivate audiences and set high expectations for what's next.
Los Angeles Times
23-03-2025
- Sport
- Los Angeles Times
Complete coverage: The L.A. Times' 2024-25 All-Star basketball teams
Eastvale Roosevelt's Brayden Burries and Ontario Christian's Kaleena Smith headline the L.A. Times' 2024-25 All-Star boys' and girls' basketball teams. Here's complete coverage.
Los Angeles Times
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
LA Times Today: The ‘Love Boat' faces a tragic ending in a lonely California slough
'The Love Boat' was a hit romantic comedy-drama which aired for nine seasons beginning in the late 1970s. The cruise ship M.S. Aurora was one of the real-life inspirations for the show. But there's no love for that boat now as it sits neglected and abandoned in Northern California. L.A. Times' Jessica Garrison wrote about the heartbreaking demise of the ship and joined Lisa McRee to talk about it.
Los Angeles Times
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
The Inland Empire is a hotbed for Latino culture. De Los wants to tell its stories.
In the more than four years since launching this newsletter — and in the year and a half since helping launch De Los, the L.A. Times' vertical focusing on Southern California's Latino community — something that has continued to strike me is just how much the Inland Empire is a hotbed for culture. Not only is the region home to the Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture in Riverside — the country's first art institution dedicated entirely to Chicano art — but it has also produced a lot of musicians that are leading the next wave of música Mexicana. Cumbia pop queen Estevie (Beaumont); sadboi crooners Ivan Cornejo (Riverside) and DannyLux (Coachella Valley) and mega band Fuerza Regida (San Bernardino) all claim I.E. roots. And who could forget Jenny69, the self-proclaimed 'chingona que salió de Riverside,' who still remains one of my favorite internet celebrities? The I.E.'s cultural output shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone. After all, this neighboring community occupies a land area and has a population that's larger than many U.S. states. The I.E. is also very Latino. According to the Pew Research Center, Riverside and San Bernardino counties are the sixth- and eighth-largest Latino counties in the country, respectively. To put this into perspective, there are more Latinos living in the Inland Empire than there are in Orange and San Diego counties combined. And yet the region's stories often go untold in the media. Though outlets like the San Bernardino Sun, The Press-Enterprise in Riverside and The Desert Sun in the Coachella Valley have long served the community, their staffing has been diminished as local journalism across the country continues to decline. Outlets like The Riverside Record, founded by journalist Alicia Ramirez, are working to fill that void and the local journalists that remain are doing heroic work with insufficient resources. But the region deserves more. And now you can count De Los as part of the effort to shed more light on the I.E.'s Latino stories. Thanks to a partnership between De Los and the Cultivating Inland Empire Latino Opportunity (CIELO) Fund at the Inland Empire Community Foundation, we'll be expanding our coverage into the region. Our goal is to report pieces that explore the region and its people with nuance, respect and an understanding that the I.E. is a complicated place with countless issues and stories. We aren't going to fully fill the void, but we will do our part to help paint a more complete picture, and we'll do it with journalists with deep connections to the region. There will be no parachute journalism here. It'll be stories about the I.E. from and for people from the I.E. Spearheading this effort will be my colleague Paloma Esquivel, who joined the De Los team a few weeks ago as an assistant editor. A native of the I.E., Esquivel has spent 17 years at The Times, covering various beats including immigration, education, housing and — for four years — the Inland Empire. I can't stress how excited the De Los team is to do this work. Not only is it necessary, but it also brings us closer to our lofty, aspirational goal of covering as many Latino stories as we possibly can. And if you're reading this and are from the I.E., we'd love to hear from you. Have a story idea you think we should pursue? Send us an email at LatinxFiles@ or DeLos@ A quick housekeeping note: the newsletter will now publish on Fridays. Yes, I'm very aware that the Latinx Files has already been reaching your inbox on Fridays — and in some cases, Saturday, which ugh! — but now it's official. As I wrote in the first newsletter of 2025, one of my biggest goals for this year is to be more consistent and to continue building this space into a varied, robust digest of stories that highlight Latinidad and modern Latino life in the United States. Pushing back the publication of the newsletter by a day gives me an opportunity to devote more time to it. Thank you as always for your continued support! If you're looking for something to do this coming Monday and find yourself in L.A., I recommend catching 'Sleep Dealer' at the Academy Museum's Tedd Mann Theater, as part of its 'Cyberpunk: Envisioning Possible Futures Through Cinema' film series. Despite being released in 2008, the low-budget, ambitious dystopian science fiction film by director and MacArthur Fellowship recipient Alex Rivera (disclosure: Alex and I are friends) feels as timely as ever. 'Sleep Dealer,' which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, tells the story of Memo Cruz, who was forced to flee his home in Oaxaca and moved to the Tijuana/San Diego border, which has been completely militarized and shut down. Despite restricting the flow of people, the powers that be have figured out a way to extract labor from the laborer without having them set foot on American soil. The plot feels a little too prescient, doesn't it? ''Sleep Dealer' is a wondrous thing to behold, with its saturated cinematography, its unnervingly realistic vision of the future, its singular focus on U.S.-Mexico border politics and its supremely taut storytelling,' wrote my former colleague Carolina Miranda in 2014. You can find tickets for the screening here, and if you do go, come say hi! Column: Forget 'Emilia Pérez.' Its parody, 'Johanne Sacreblu,' is the real work of art Without getting too much into how the sausage gets made, I'd been trying to no avail to get De Los contributing columnist JP Brammer to write a take on 'Emilia Pérez,' the polarizing narco-musical from France about Mexico that doesn't feature any actual Mexicans in its main roles. That all changed this past week with the release of 'Johanne Sacreblu,' a parody short film made by filmmaker Camila Aurora that lambasts the source material in a way that only Mexican humor can, by being over the top and bordering on the absurd. JP's column doesn't disappoint. I might be biased, but in my opinion it is one of the funniest and most thoughtful takes of 'Emilia Pérez' out there right now. In a Long Beach parking lot, charros put on 'El Show de los Caballos' You should click on the story by contributor Laura Anaya-Morga above not just because it chronicles how rancho culture is being preserved and thriving in Long Beach, but also because of the beautiful photography by contributing photographer Jilly Connelly. Decades later, 'El Norte' returns to its Sundance roots Among the marquee screenings at this year's Sundance Film Festival was 'El Norte,' the 1983 Oscar-nominated saga that follows two Indigenous siblings from Guatemala who are forced to flee to the United States because of a civil war. De Los contributor Manuel Betancourt spoke to Nava about bringing the film back to its roots — he developed the film at the first Sundance Lab in 1981. '[Everything] that the film is about is once again here with us,' Nava said. 'All of the issues that you see in the film haven't gone away. The story of Rosa and Enrique is still the story of all these refugees that are still coming here, seeking a better life in the United States.' Column: Are we asking the right questions about Hilaria Baldwin? Earlier this month, a video that showed Hilaria Baldwin cooking went viral because of the fitness influencer's insistence on speaking Spanish despite her not being Latina, Spanish or even a native speaker. The proliferation of the clip was enough for contributing columnist Alex Zaragoza to explore what this says about how Latinos 'value language, race and ethnicity.'
