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The Times podcast: Where carne asada is a crime

A man grills food.
Hector “Guero” Garcia grills carne asada over a charcoal grill at Taqueria El Puerto in Anaheim.
(Gabriel San Roman / Times O.C.)
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For more than 140 years, street vendors hawking Mexican food have been a staple of life in Southern California. Horse-drawn tamale wagons turned into taco trucks, turned into hot dog carts, turned into pop-up tents — and, eventually, hipsters caught on and these trends went national.

But even as SoCal has become famous worldwide for its street food scene, government officials have amped up their war on it.

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Today, we examine one city’s crackdown on street vendors. And we also talk to an East L.A. taquero affected by code enforcement.

Host: Gustavo Arellano

Guests: Times O.C. reporter Gabriel San Román, The Times producer Angel Carreras, and Birriería González manager Frankie Tinoco.

More reading:

Column: He’s L.A. food royalty. He began with a taco cart. Let street vendors thrive

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Anaheim teams with county to take down taco stand pop-ups

Where to get beef birria, and a haircut. Seriously.

About The Times

“The Times” is made by columnist Gustavo Arellano, senior producers Denise Guerra, Shannon Lin and Kasia Broussalian and producers Melissa Kaplan, Ashlea Brown and Angel Carreras. Our engineer is Mario Diaz. Our editors are Lauren Raab and Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmín Aguilera and Shani O. Hilton. Our theme song was composed by Andrew Eapen.
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