Our local food bloggers are clearly finding their niche on television. First we had former Weekling Eddie Lin (Deep End Dining) and Mexican food guru Bill Esparza (Street Gourmet LA) as guest judges on Top Chef Masters. Now Bill has gone on and introduced Andrew Zimmern of Bizarre Foods to the wonders of Tijuana street food.
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As Squid Ink reported, there was a viewing party for Bill's episode last night at Koreatown's Guelaguetza Oaxacan restaurant, attended by well over a hundred of the foodie cognoscenti.
Attendees snacked on clayudas, rolled tacos with mole coloradito, chapulines (that's grasshoppers to you) and thick fried quesadillas with queso fresco and epazote while we sipped on mescal cocktails and the López family's inimitable micheladas (with maguey worm and chile salt rimming the mugs).
Esparza guided Andrew Zimmern to a stand serving tuna fin, the Mariscos Ruben truck for sea snails and other local delicacies, and a bricks-and-mortar store serving pickled pata (pig's trotters) and cueritos (the cartilage located directly under the porcine skin). It all looked, frankly, delicious.
After the show, the house mariachi band serenaded the group. We will leave names of those caught in a conga line on stage out of print for reasons of plausible deniability.
