(In the book.) The menudo is part of “my family’s trifecta,” Avila says. “For a while we were putting Beurre de Baratte on the waffles on the truck,” he says, maybe with wistfulness, maybe with relief that those days were done.įor now, the future looks like another party, pozole or a vat of Avila’s dad’s menudo. “Now I’m going to put it on the menu,” Avila says of the yam tortillas - but with the French cultured butter Beurre de Baratte and a little sea salt. (Ricardo DeAratanmha / Los Angeles Times) This is in answer to one of his friends asking for the recipe for the sauce he’s just made and is spooning over a warm tamale, but it could be an answer to most things, including the pozole he’ll make for yet another holiday party.Ĭhef Wes Avila making yam tortillas for drought-friendly vegetable tacos. Want more? “It’s in the book,” says Avila, referencing his debut cookbook, “Guerrilla Tacos: Recipes From the Streets of L.A.,” which came out last year. (Turns out, Avila and I graduated at about the same time, though I didn’t know this until recently.) Then fine dining stints with chefs Walter Manzke and Gary Menes, and then a kind of street food epiphany, in which he swapped white tablecloths for a sometimes illegal taco cart. By his own account, Avila ate and smoked his way through his teenage years, becoming a DJ and driving a forklift until he quit to go to cooking school at the now-defunct Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena. The story goes like this: Avila grew up in a Pico Rivera family, with a Teamster father who took over the cooking after Avila’s mother died. When asked what area of Mexico the dishes are from, Avila grins and says: “L.A.” On the wall: a Thomas Guide map of Los Angeles and Orange County that Avila found in a thrift store a steampunk tin wild boar from Popotla, outside Rosarito in Baja (“It’s a mascot for parties.”) and Mexican artwork jigsawed around shelves loaded with cookbooks and tiki paraphernalia. A Christmas tree fills the window that looks down onto the communal area, the site of many previous parties. Sara Kenas and Amy Lebrun are both chefs Martha and Joaquin Pinto are longtime members of the group. “The green onions: Cut them like you would for ramen, nice and thin,” Avila says. Today will be four friends rather than 40, old friends to share a homey meal that looks back to food from Avila’s Pico Rivera childhood.įriends arrive and slide behind the kitchen counter, picking up knives and bottles. “So I can act and be myself.” Last night was their Christmakwanzakah, with the theme - they’re always themed - of Havana Nights. “They’re never professional,” says Avila of the personal party circuit he and Mueller have created over the last dozen years. Avila cooked a fairly traditional, old-school Mexican Christmas meal to his friends and family. Chef Wes Avila and his wife Tanya Mueller, enjoying the Christmas party at their home.
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