This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
“Venice reminds me of a beautiful island,” says Antonio Gonzalez, leaning against the bonnet as bouncy, traditional Mexican ranchera music booms out of his truck’s radio. “Plus we’re close to the sea and we liked the song, so we called it La Isla Bonita.”
As any 1980s music fan knows, La Isla Bonita is Spanish for ‘The Beautiful Island’. Antonio, along with his wife, Maria, opened his Mexican food truck business in 1987, the same year Madonna released her Latin-inspired single and shot the video here in Los Angeles. On this balmy May afternoon, Antonio has parked on residential Rose Avenue, just yards away from Venice Beach.
Antonio’s truck is in good company in the City of Angels. There are around 4,000 food trucks here, selling all sorts of meals on wheels — tacos, kebabs, dumplings and fried chicken, to name a few — spanning hundreds of cuisines from all around the world. But Mexican influences dominate the city’s food truck scene, which is unsurprising given around 35% of LA County’s population is of Mexican heritage.
Venice Beach is a thriving hotspot for food truck businesses.
Photograph by Yasara Gunawardena
Antonio and Maria are both from Jalostotitlán, a small town in the central Mexican state of Jalisco, and have been together for almost 40 years. Two of their eight children, Brenda and Joseph, along with Antonio’s brother-in-law, Israel, are busy concocting and serving tacos and mariscos (seafood) dishes from their mobile kitchen.
There’s a scattering of customers around the family’s white vintage Chevrolet truck. Some are queuing, others using the bonnets of parked cars as tables for their zesty ceviche tacos. One customer is slurping his shrimp cocktail, which is swimming in lime and tomato juice and topped with fresh herbs, kerbside; while another is unwittingly spilling mango shrimp aguachile, made with raw shrimp in a marinade of lime, avocado, chilli and onion, all down his crisp white T-shirt. As sizzling pans compete with the sounds of passing traffic, Antonio tells me about his humble beginnings.
“I was polishing shoes in the streets of Mexico when I was eight,” he says. Then, in 1977, aged 16, he followed his older brother to Los Angeles, who, “as any other immigrant, moved here for a better life.”
When Antonio opened La Isla Bonita, his main goal was to run a taqueria that pays homage to his roots and serves “everything that I eat, otherwise I won’t make it for my customers.”
An assortment of tacos, burritos and tostadas can be found within the city’s food truck scene; an ode to the county’s Hispanic population.
Photograph by Yasara Gunawardena
The extensive menu includes tacos made with carne asada (grilled beef), shrimp and scallops, and chicharrón (pork crackling); as well as burritos, quesadillas, chilaquiles (fried tortilla chips topped off mainly with cheese and eggs), tostadas (crispy fried tortilla) and tortas (sandwiches using fresh bread), with the choice of beef, pork, chicken, fish and shrimp. The ceviche, whether it’s tuna, scallop or shrimp, is a customer favourite, I’m told. And everything is dressed to the nines with pickles, fresh salads and homemade salsas and sauces.
The menu hasn’t changed much since its inception, and that’s how customers — some of whom have been eating here for over three decades — like it. Isaiah, an actor/bartender who works in Venice, tells me as he waits in line that he eats here ”literally every day.”
Brenda hands me a shrimp ceviche tostada, which I’m told to eat before the juices seep through and leave me with a soggy tortilla. I can’t get enough. It’s at once crispy, tart and packed with herbs — a glowing testament to the skill inside this humble white truck, which has stood the test of time.
It’s getting hot in here
The next day, I’m at Common Space Brewery in Hawthorne, nine miles south east of Venice. Nashville-born Kim Prince and soul food connoisseur Greg Dulan are busy feeding beer-quaffing customers fried chicken from their food truck.
“Somebody in Hollywood once called me hot chicken royalty, and I never forgot it,” says Kim in a thick Southern accent. “I go to bed thinking chicken. I wake up thinking chicken. Chicken is in my blood!”
The truck’s culinary magnum opus — Nashville hot chicken — is palpable from yards away. It’s a legacy of Kim’s great-great uncle, Thornton Prince, who she tells me introduced hot chicken to Nashville in the 1930s, and a few years later opened Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, which is still in business today. In 2013, Kim brought these flavours to the shores of Los Angeles through popups, with her Hotville Chicken business. Six years later, she met Greg, and soon after the duo launched the Dulanville food truck.
Now, they park up all over Los Angeles County — from the coast to east LA. Their joint venture is exactly what it says on the van: ‘Classic soul food & Nashville hot chicken in one amazing truck’.
“If you’re going to try hot chicken, you have to do it from the hands of a Prince,” Greg tells me as the team inside the truck prepare my lunch.
Much like Kim, many of LA’s food truck vendors serve food that reflects their cultural or familial heritage.
Photograph by Yasara Gunawardena
I’m being treated to a feast. There’s the signature Shaw Chicken Sandwich with a delicious, homemade spicy mayo spread, served alongside crunchy chicken tenders, seasoned French fries, vegan kaleslaw and BBQ baked beans. Southern-inspired side dishes like corn, collard greens, black-eyed peas and mac ‘n’ smokin’ cheese are a nod to Dulan’s on Crenshaw, Greg’s south LA soul food restaurant. In the 1970s, his father, Adolf Dulan, dubbed the ‘King of Soul Food’, opened Southern-style restaurants across the city, and he vowed to continue his legacy.
Meanwhile, at the truck, Kim’s chicken comes in four progressively hotter heat levels: West Coast Plain, Cali Mild, Music City Medium, and the reason why I’m here, Nashville Hot. I ask to try the latter, but Greg interjects: “we gon’ need to have 911 on standby for that”. As a self-proclaimed capsaicinophile, I insist, and Kim brings out two fried thighs dripping in fiery red oil. To create the spice blend, she uses five types of dried peppers: cayenne, scorpion, ghost and Carolina reaper (deemed the hottest in the world) and one more, but that remains a secret, she says.
Crunch. I bite into it, and within seconds the heat moves from my taste buds and into my bottom lip, which pulsates with what feels like the fire of a thousand suns. But I can’t help but go back for more: it’s crispy, filling and dangerously moreish. I’ve had my fair share of hot chicken, I tell Kim, but this one, steeped in a century of Prince traditions, is by far the most memorable.
“Now you’ve been crowned,” says Kim, the hot chicken royalty. And what a coronation this is, I think, taking one last bite.
How to do it:
Stay at the beachfront Venice V Hotel in Los Angeles, which offers sea-view doubles from $285 (£224), room only.
This story was created with the support of LA Tourism.
Published in the Jul/Aug 2024 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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