Food Blogging in Los Angeles, the Life and Times of Javier Cabral: an Interview
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Via Sapientiae: The Institutional Repository at DePaul University Diálogo Volume 18 Number 1 Article 16 2015 Food Blogging in Los Angeles, the Life and Times of Javier Cabral: An Interview Gabriel Chabrán Echternacht Whittier College Javier Cabral Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/dialogo Part of the Latin American Languages and Societies Commons Recommended Citation Chabrán Echternacht, Gabriel and Cabral, Javier (2015) "Food Blogging in Los Angeles, the Life and Times of Javier Cabral: An Interview," Diálogo: Vol. 18 : No. 1 , Article 16. Available at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/dialogo/vol18/iss1/16 This Interview is brought to you for free and open access by the Center for Latino Research at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in Diálogo by an authorized editor of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Food Blogging in Los Angeles, the Life and Times of Javier Cabral: An Interview Gabriel Chabrán Echternacht Whittier College INTRODUCTION avier Cabral is a reporter who specializes in food West Side of L.A., and he had the money to take me out Jculture and punk rock. He was born in East Los to expensive restaurants at first. I started realizing that Angeles, California, in 1989 and grew up in the San this happened at the same time I was reading Jonathan Gabriel Valley. He is also an official restaurant scout Gold, and when I was older, my brother bought me my for Jonathan Gold at the L.A. Times and a producer for first MacBook, the old-school MacBook. I eventually KPFK’s “Pocho Hour of Power” with Lalo Alcaraz. He started doing food blogs and I started posting things on began writing professionally at the age of seventeen, and Chow Hound. But Chow Hound can be pretty snarky and gained a following with his adolescent food blog, “Teenage there can be some jerks on there. There would be some Glutster.” At age eighteen, he served as a judge on an epi- posts on like: “It’s my birthday, where should I go eat?” sode of “Hell’s Kitchen.” The next year, he was featured in a Los Angeles episode of the Travel Channel’s hit TV show, GC: I remember those! “Bizarre Foods,” for his knowledge of Mexican cuisine. He calls journalists Jonathan Gold and Gustavo Arellano JC: I discovered blogs and started reading food blogs of OC Weekly his mentors. In 2011, Cabral published his [after] I started reading online menus: I’d collect take-out first cover issue for Saveur magazine, where he discussed menus and then I’d just look at and research restaurants, Mexican (Zacatecas) cooking, which featured over a and then I found food blogs. Some of the first bloggers dozen of his own family’s recipes. He is the co-founder were old-school bloggers like Eddie Lin [from Deep End of Mexico Feeds Me, an ethnographic food tour service Dining],2 and then there were others like Eat, Drink, that visits Puerto Vallarta seasonally. Presently, he is a and Be Merry.3 I began to read these blogs when I was freelance writer for KCET, Saveur, Cooking Light, and in school. I would be in typing class and I’d be reading Serious Eats. He is currently working on his first book. food blogs. Well, you could say I was looking at food porn [because] they called me out of class and gave me some Gabriel Chabrán (GC): How did you get into the food detention. When I started blogging, I realized that food scene? could be really cool. Food is also what I wanted to do in life. I just wasn’t into what my friends were interested in. Javier Cabral (JC): It started when I was in high school, I really wanted to get into food. If I’m going to do some- at Garfield High School in East L.A. Back then, it was a thing, I might as well get paid to eat, and add a punk rock pretty bad school. I remember going there and I wasn’t approach from my teenage years. He [Jonathan Gold] gets learning much, you know? I wasn’t really into the cholo to go out to eat for a living, so why can’t I? So I wrote to life, nor was I into the school life. I was into the punk Jonathan Gold about this interest of mine and he replied rock life, which meant a lot of drinking and ditching and and I started an internship kind of thing. I had to learn smoking weed. So I transferred to Alhambra High School how he got into it and I learned how to do blogging and because that’s where my family was originally from. I then, as you know, everything else is history. didn’t really have any friends in Alhambra. I would just start reading L.A. Weekly. At first, I read it for punk shows GC: Where did your interest in food begin? What about but then I started reading Jonathan Gold1 and I started cooking? realizing, “Wow, he actually writes about places I can actually experience in my area.” What I liked the most JC: You know, that’s the funny thing. My family went about it was going to the restaurants with my brother. through all the financial hardships when I was in third He would take me out to Venice and Culver City, on the grade. My dad lost the house and there was a bankruptcy Diálogo Interviews 149 Gabriel Chabrán Echternacht Volume 18 Number 1 Spring 2015 and we had to move to East L.A. behind a furniture store. such as thick soy sauce and pan fried turnip cakes that It wasn’t even a house—it was just a room. I ended up are amazing. I really think that half the battle of being a eating a lot of fast food every day. I liked the kids’ Happy food enthusiast in Los Angeles is having a well-stocked Meal® from McDonald’s®, from Burger King, from Taco pantry. There’s really no excuse not to have an amazing Bell, from Wienerschnitzel, [and] Jack in the Box. I was pantry because in our area we’re about fifteen minutes familiar with every one of those foods, every single day. away from an Asian market or a Mexican market. We It didn’t help that back then they would reward you with often commute to Artesia (California) and get a bunch vouchers that would let you go eat at places like In–N- of Indian spices. There are so many cool things that can Out Burger or Shakey’s, so that’s what I grew up on. My build your home repertoire of cooking. I realized all these mom cooked at home, but since we were going through things as I got older. Now I have all this knowledge and a lot of stuff, she didn’t cook as much as she could have. I try to include it in my writing. Later on in life, I discovered I had an interest in restaurant food and in particular chef food. The natural thing for me GC: Are there any family traditions that fueled your in- to think was: you’re going be a chef, especially since my terest, or any of these interests that you are talking about? older brother was a big role model of mine and he was a bartender and the first college educated one in the family. JC: I think every American family is definitely the most And he said, “Well, my little brother loves food so I’m food-heavy during Christmas. I definitely think now that going to send him to the CIA [The Culinary Institute of I’m still growing up and I’m experiencing knowledge America] in New York. And so I signed up and registered about these things that people want to know about, I’m to go there. Luckily, we took a trip before I actually started trying to find new ways to write about them. I ended up going there and then I realized that the chef’s life wasn’t [publishing in] Saveur (food magazine), which featured for me. As much as I like to cook, I don’t like to cook for a one of my mom’s recipes and it was really neat!4 I grew lot of people and the pressure of it all. I think I’m more of up eating a chile covered turkey, which my mother would a writer. So if I’m going to write about chicken wings and make with a chile paste made from roasted red chiles, I’m going to talk about them, I’m going to make chicken which she then rubbed on the turkey. As it cooks, all the wings at home first and try to figure out what could go fat drizzles down the turkey. Then she makes chile gravy of wrong. If it’s something that could go wrong easily, then sorts and I thought that was what other families did. But I’m going to carry that approach into my writing. Just to [when] I found out that what our family did was unique, be a little more fair, you know? Because there’s definitely I wrote about it, and it’s in a national publication and a lot of critics out there and so you should know what it people loved it.