Culinary Adventure with Jonathan Gold

THE food writing of Jonathan Gold is so vivid, colorful and at times almost embarrassingly sensual that as a reader, it's not hard to feel you are actually along for the ride with him as he seeks out restaurants dedicated to, say, regional Mexican cuisine, a groovy wine bar or the street food of urban southeast Asia.

But it's even more delectable to be able to follow the celebrated scribe to a meal in a foreign city, as yours truly was able to do during the international book festival in Guadalajara. Somehow I'd spent a day and a half and not had much of what Mexicans call "tipica" cuisine -- some fine enchiladas at the hotel, and some white wines from Baha, both decent but not memorable.

The first excursion came after Gold appeared in a panel on LA writers and humor, which also included writers Jerry Stahl and Paul Beatty. (Gold recalled his days editing the LA Weekly's humor column: "I thought what would make it distinctive," he said, "is that nothing in it would be funny.")

After the panel, a caravan of us followed Gold and his journalist wife Laurie Ochoa to what seemed like a remote neighborhood, Tlaquepaque, for a restaurant called El Parian. The cab driver seemed a bit confused by our request to head there, telling us (we thought) that we'd have to walk a long way after he dropped us off and that we'd know where we were because we'd see, "too many restaurants, too many artistanos, too many mariachis." I could not tell -- as we used to say in high school -- if this was a threat or a promise.

The meal ended up being very good: Many of us, including The Misread City, got birria -- a dish of stewed meat that is usually goat but here was calf. The restaurant's speciality is what may be the largest drink in the world: Mostly fruit, ice, triple sec, with a large shot of tequila on the side, its container is so large it is marked "BAR" -- the quotes are theirs, not mine -- presumably so it is not confused with a large soup bowl. (Across from me was UK-to-LA novelist Geoff Nicholson, an excellent guy whose Psycho-Gourmet blog I am digging.)

Gold said of the day's eating that he had consumed so much beef that he was constructing a cow in his stomach, piece by piece. (Now I know why he turned down the offer of the very fine pickled pig skins I was nibbling on.)

Somehow, by the way, the mariachis never showed up, though Gold, Ochoa, and novelist Mark Danielewski ended up, after the meal, at a bar at which two musicians serenaded them and a couple of drug lords who had footed an enormous bill for the performance.

The second night was longer and harder to explain -- all I will say of it is that Gold led us to a very cool bar at which we seemed to be the only gringos. And I think the man's reputation must precede him, even abroad -- a plate of what looked like pig's feet, served with lime and a chile paste, showed up next to Gold before, I think, anyone had had a moment to even order a beer.

Photo credit: I will not compromise the man's privacy by posting his picture, so here is a cow.

"LA Confidential" in Mexico

THE Misread City just landed in Guadalajara, where an enormous book festival will pack in 500,000 or so by week's end.

Tonight I took in a panel on one of the best movies ever made about Los Angeles -- "LA Confidential." Actually, it was just die-hard Angeleno David Kipen interviewing the film's director, Curtis Hanson, but the conversation was quite revealing.

Hanson talked about his fight with Warner Bros. to cast lesser-known actors in the role of Bud White (which went to Russell Crowe) and Ed Exley (Guy Pearce) and said he almost lost the film because of the casting issue. "But here's the deal," he said. "I want to shoot unknown."

He also described trying to find parts of LA that still existed from the novel's 1950s setting, to capture the city's continuity rather than the fragmented memory that's typically the way old LA is remembered. Hence the use of the Formosa Cafe, near his grandparents' house, and where he took the actors to talk about their roles.

"I didn't want the movie to feel like the snapshot of a period that doesn't exist anymore," Hanson said.

And he talked about the role of "Chinatown" as a precedent for his film, and how he showed the actors the great Bogart film, "In a Lonely Place," as well as Billy Wilder's "The Apartment," to set the tone.

Even then, by the way, Crowe was known -- as the director put it -- as "trouble."

By the way, here is my LATimes piece about films based on Ellroy's work. All in all, a fascinating discussion about one of the great works of art about the city.

This movie came out a month or so after I moved to town and was a very big deal for me and everybody I knew back then. For me, the movie stands as an important step -- as well as Kevin Starr's histories, most of Ellroy's work, and books on West Coast jazz and Central Avenue -- in which this city that often has amnesia began to recover some of its own past.

The Misread City Goes to Mexico

NEXT week I will visit Mexico for the Guadalajara International Book Fair -- the biggest event of its kind in the Americas, second in size only to Frankfurt, and this year dedicated to the writing of Los Angeles. I was invited to moderate two panels partly because I co-edited a book on literary LA, and am in the process of renaming this blog for the book: The Misread City. (You can now get to the blog with themisreadcity.com.)

In his Slate review of my book, critic Adam Kirsch suggested that the title could make a good literary quarterly on the city and its culture, and I've come to think of this blog as the 21st century equivalent. (Even if a few posts on evil Eastern and British subjects sometimes creep in -- LA, of course, welcomes all kinds.)

Anyway I will be running a panel called "The Short Story: LA in a Shot Glass," with writers Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, Ana Menendex and Mary Otis, on Tues. Dec. 1 at 630 pm. And a second panel, "They're From Where? LA Bred Writers Who Live Everywhere But," with Jane Smiley, Dagoberto Gilb and Paul Beatty, on Dec. 2 at 530 pm. (Please note that I did not name these panels.)

Hope to see some of you there. I will be enjoying the tequila, mariachi, Orozco murals and what I hear is a mellow pace of life there, and trying to catch as many writers and panels as I can myself.

HERE is a piece I wrote on my visit to Mexico City and the colonial silver city Guanajuato.

And wishing everyone a great Thanksgiving, with or without cactus salsa.

Postwar German Art, Mexican Printmaking and LACMA

The other day i made my first concentrated trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in a very long time. in the last year or two i'd walked along the campus with architect renzo piano as he talked about upcoming renovations, and i attended the blowout opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, but this was my first visit as as civilian in quite a while. it also may be that only time i've been to lacma ever and wished i had more time to take in what was available. even with a big gallery closed off for installation there was plenty to see.

first stop was the latin-american art collection. this will be old news for some, but cuban-born sculptor's jorge pardo's redesign of the pre-columbian galleries is smartly and crisply modern; that collection has never looked so good. (tho in the contemporary department, probably a bit heavily weighed with work by francis alys.) my favorite of the 20th century latin am art was the prints/woodcuts of the TGP, or People's Print Workshops, a post-revolutionary group begun in 1937. very fine batch of postwar abstraction by artists like joaquin torres-garcia and carlos merida.

museum trips in college brought me to a love of german expressionism, where urban scenes were reframed on a fractured or shattered plane -- to me this was more urgent than most of the genteel-seeming french work i was seeing at the time. my love of german art took me to the "art of two germanys: cold war cultures" show, the first exhibit to be set up in the new BCAM. 

(here is christopher knight's LAT review, and here is the NYT calling the show "a coup for this california institution.")

far too much to say about this very powerful show here, but i'll mention, first, that werner heldt is a painter and draughtsman i hadnt known who embodies everything i like about german art. 

second, sigmar polke and gerhard richter's  "capitalist realism" -- austere germany, after decades of poverty, hitler and war, got hit so hard so fast by consumerism in the '50s that its artists came up with some of the sharpest critiques -- is especially well represented. richter's famous "uncle rudi" is there, and some of his abstractions.

as i said, so much to see i'll have to go back soon.

Photo credit: LACMA and Public domain