When you eat at a restaurant, do you peek over the counter, or behind the curtain, or through the porthole in the padded swinging door to get a sense of who is cooking the food you ordered?
I do this every chance I get. Whether I’m at a nostalgic food-court chain spot or a small bistro with a cute design system, I’m always curious:Who is making the food?
This question is right in the realm of topics I’ll be tackling in my new newsletter. It’s called L.A. Omnivore, launching next week, and you can sign up early here. And since Tuesday marked the start of Hispanic Heritage Month (cue the memes), it’s worth revisiting now. Because chances are the people who are cooking or handling your food anywhere in California are “Hispanic.”
I argued as much during my visit last month to the De Los Podcast when I said: “All of the food you eat in Los Angeles is Oaxacan or Guatemalan or Salvadoran. Why? Because it was made by those hands.”
Cue the deluge in the comments.
Of course, not all the food you eat in L.A. is Oaxacan. In the context of the whole exchange (watch starting here), I am responding to podcast co-host Fidel Martinez, who jokes that Katz’s Delicatessen in Manhattan is like a favored “Dominican restaurant” because of its well-documented Dominican-heavy workforce.
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‘The backbone of the industry’
The idea we’re playing with here is not new. The late Anthony Bourdain in his 2000 book “Kitchen Confidential” wrote passionately about the crucial role that immigrants from Latin America played in his kitchens, particularly workers from the Mexican state of Puebla, who decades ago opened a dynamic migration pattern with New York City.
In the chapter “So You Want to Be a Chef? A Commencement Address,” Bourdain’s second major piece of advice (after “No. 1: Be fully committed”) is to “Learn Spanish.”
“The very backbone of the industry, whether you like it or not,” he wrote, “is inexpensive Mexican, Dominican, Salvadorian and Ecuadorian labor — most of whom could cook you under the table without breaking a sweat.”
Eight out of 10 times you go out to eat in our state, a Latino-identified person cooked your food; 82% of cooks statewide are Latino. This figure comes from an analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California, looking at data from the U.S. Census American Community Survey in 2023 and 2024.
“Eight in 10 is a high chance,” Tess Thorman, a senior research associate at the PPIC, said in an interview. “It seems very likely even if you just start from the farm side.”
Indeed, if you think about your restaurant meal from the farm to the table — as we tend to do here in California — it’s even more likely your food was at some point also grown, harvested and transported by someone identified by demographers as Latino. According to the PPIC, 95% of agricultural workers in California are Latino, and 84% of those are Mexican-born. Many are Indigenous immigrants, including children.
In L.A. County, restaurant workers are 64% Latino. This figure includes managers, servers, chefs, head cooks and food preparation workers, Thorman said. The rest of the workforce is hyper-diverse in every which way, she added, with Asian and white cooks following as the second- and third-largest groups, according to the survey data.
An ‘American Dream’
Why do I insist upon highlighting this? Look no further than the actions of the Trump administration. Trump’s anti-immigrant drive has engendered a climate in which anyone with brown skin can be stopped by masked federal agents and threatened with a state disappearance — uh, “detention” — spreading a generalized state of fear for an unknown number of Californians.
The bitter irony at work here is that many of us are generational natives of the state or have a heritage that goes back thousands of years on the broader continent. It’s actually a beautiful thing, whenever an avid diner like me is able to peek into the kitchen. At base, it shows that the “American Dream” still is working.
Now imagine your next restaurant meal without us.
As the awkwardness of Hispanic Heritage Month arrives this week, I suggest bringing this data to the dining table whenever you can. Try it. Next time you’re sitting at a restaurant with people who you may suspect lean toward an exclusionary view of what it means to be an American, throw these facts out. See how they land. Judge your fellow diners accordingly.
In future editions of L.A. Omnivore, I’ll be discussing more of this and all the touchy cultural question marks that spring up in ever-complex L.A. and Southern California. I’m interested in the intersections between food and art, media, street culture, the environment and agriculture.
And sometimes, L.A. Omnivore will tackle questions we grapple with more broadly. One of those is the eternal enigma of what to call people who look to you to be — or don’t but are! — “Latino” or “Hispanic.” Sign up today.
Top stories 
(Illustration by Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times)
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Riders experience an inversion on Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift at Universal Studios.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
Today’s recipe 
Chilled yogurt soup, featured in Jose Andres’ cookbook “Zaytinya.”
(Photo by Andrea D’Agosto, food styling by Caroline Hwang, and prop styling by Nia Lee / For The Times)
Soups made of yogurt are a particular comfort food in Turkey, served hot in the winter months and cold in the summers. With flavors of cucumbers, raisins and rose petals, this chilled yogurt soup makes a perfect canvas for multiple seasons: peas in the spring, corn in the summer and honeycrisp apples in the fall.
Question for you
What’s your favorite place to see fall colors in California? Email us at essentialcalifornia@latimes.com, and your response might appear in the newsletter this week.
Bill W. says, “My wife and I love to drive along Highway 395, especially the June Lake Loop, for fall colors. With our anniversary on Oct.17, it’s a tradition for us to visit this beautiful area during that time. Convict Lake and the Devils Postpile also dazzle!”
Photo of the day 
Angel Barajas Sanchez hugs girlfriend Jay De Jesus while listening to the live music of the Estrada Band playing on the Main Stage during El Grito, a celebration to kick off Hispanic Heritage Month at Grand Park on Tuesday.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Games 
Here’s today’s mini crossword, plus our other free, daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and jigsaw games.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Jack Dolan, investigative reporter
Hugo Martín, assistant editor, Fast Break desk
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Andrew J. Campa, weekend writer
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.
Dining and Cooking