TACO USA Book Launch at LA Plaza De Cultura Y Artes Tuesday at 7pm

WHAT:Talk + Book Signing with Gustavo Arellano, author of Taco USA

WHEN: Tues, April 10 7-9pm

WHERE:La Plaza de Cultura y Artes (501 N Main St 90012)

Meet the other Gustavo Arellano. Maybe you know him from his visits to us here at Good Food where he shares his take on where to eat in Orange County, his homeland. But Mr. Arellano is so much more. Editor of the OC Weekly, he is a fascinating, fast-talking opinionator. Gustavo knows he’s doing his job when he walks a line where he is equally embraced and vilified. He is most (in)famous for his Ask A Mexican !column, now syndicated in over 37 newspapers across the country, where he serves up acute jabs at cultural stereotypes alongside pithily accurate statistics and well researched nuggets about Mexican culture in the US and how Americans respond to it. I love that he is now referred to as a pundit. So rare that one of those should have such fearless intelligence and wit.

The fact that he believes, much as we do, that food is a prism through which cultural idiosyncrasies and appropriations are revealed is just a bonus. So his new book TACO USA, which launches tomorrow, is not to be missed. Whether it’s outing Glen Bell’s inspiration for Taco Bell, following the ancestry of Chicago’s tamale men, or sticking up for the authenticity of Texas’ Queso (unapologetically pronounced kay-so) Gustavo turns slavish appreciation of the authentic on it’s head. You will never view your relationship with Mexican-American food, or America for that matter, the same way again. Join me at La Plaza tomorrow.