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The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters

798: On the Road – Orange County, CA with Gustavo Arellano, Daniel & Brenda Castillo, Kenneth Nguyen & Patricia Huang

The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters

American Public Media

Arts, Food

4.22.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, we’re bringing you a show we recorded with LAist in Orange County, CA, one of the richest food scenes in the US. We talk to award-winning journalist Gustavo Arellano about the evolution of OC’s culinary scene, the immigrant influences, and how its diverse foodways continue to be embraced by the different generations. Gustavo is the Los Angeles Times columnist and author of Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America and his latest, A People’s Guide to Orange County; then, Chefs Brenda and Daniel Castillo of Heritage Barbecue join the stage to talk about making Texas barbecue in CA and making it their own and then, Kenneth Nguyen, host of The Vietnamese Podcast and Patricia Huang, former general manager of the famous Asian 626 Night Market, talk about Orange County's Asian street food culture.




Broadcast dates for this episode:



  • February 23, 2024 (originally aired)







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Transcript

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0:00.0

I'm Frances Lamb and this is the splendid table from APM.

0:07.0

Every once in a while we get the chance to record a live show on stage somewhere outside of our

0:18.3

new studios and a few weeks ago we were honored to get to spend the afternoon talking about the fascinating and

0:24.9

very American story of food in Orange County, California.

0:29.3

We were at the beautiful South Coast Repertory Theater in front of a terrific crowd to do an event with

0:35.1

Elieist Southern California Public Radio.

0:38.4

Now, we were just an hour outside of Los Angeles and you have to know that if Orange County was a city at 3.1 million people,

0:46.5

it would easily be the third biggest city in the country just behind LA.

0:52.1

But it's essentially in LA's shadow.

0:55.0

And most people's impression of the place is formed by a 20 year old soap opera or a sordid reality show.

1:01.0

And we think it's just millionaire beach towns or the ultimate in suburbia,

1:07.0

but boy isn't more than that, especially for food.

1:11.0

Joining me on stage where Brenda and Daniel Castillo, owner for more importantly inventors of their own style of California barbecue and we talked with

1:24.8

Kenneth Wynne and Patricia Wong who had stories from their days selling all kinds of food

1:30.1

at an utterly massive local Asian night market.

1:34.0

But first, we started the afternoon with a living legend,

1:38.0

Gustavo Ariano.

1:40.0

Now, when I think of the great restaurant critics that I came up reading, I think of people like Ruth Richell, Jonathan Gold, and Gustavo.

1:49.0

For years, Gustavo was the restaurant critic for the O.C. weekly.

1:52.0

He later graduated to being that paper's

1:53.9

editor-in-chief and is now a columnist at the LA Times covering corruption in

1:58.5

City Hall which is probably a lot less fun. But as a critic what he shared with the roots and Jonathan's of the world was that in writing about a restaurant, he was really writing about the world that restaurant belonged to.

...

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