{"id":417735,"date":"2026-07-30T07:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T07:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/417735\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T07:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T07:42:14","slug":"l-a-times-food-editor-daniel-hernandez-on-mexican-punks-vs-emos-and-finding-the-best-taco-in-l-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/417735\/","title":{"rendered":"L.A. Times food editor Daniel Hern\u00e1ndez on Mexican punks vs. emos and finding the best taco in L.A."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Daniel Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s career has been full of twists and turns. A proud product of San Diego and Tijuana, Hern\u00e1ndez authored his first food story on L.A.\u2019s iconic and once-restricted<\/a> vendors of bacon-wrapped hot dogs \u2014 which garnered praise from legendary food critic Jonathan Gold.<\/p>\n

Long before Hern\u00e1ndez became the food editor of the L.A. Times, the author and editor was a young freelance reporter, an era he recounted to De Los Podcast hosts Suzy Exposito and Fidel Martinez. <\/p>\n

It was 2008 in CDMX when Hern\u00e1ndez stumbled upon one of his most memorable stories. A street clash had broken out between two alternative subcultures: Hard-line punk rockers rallied against the fledgling emo scene, which culminated in violence. As Exposito describes it, \u201cif you were punk or emo, it was like the Berlin Wall fell.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cInitially the mainstream media, myself included, wanted to laugh it off,\u201d said Hern\u00e1ndez. \u201c[But] the core tenet of culture journalism is [that] you have to meet culture where it\u2019s at.\u201d<\/p>\n

As sensationalism spread across multiple news networks surrounding the alternative scuffle, Hern\u00e1ndez returned to L.A. with a newfound approach to journalism \u2014 and pushed to write about culture through topics like art and, eventually, food. <\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like food for food itself. Food should always be a conduit for us as writers and journalists to talk about culture, politics and society,\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez said. \u201cAnything could be seen through the lens of food.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the Inland Empire\u2019s \u201crancho\u201d feel to the L.A. obsession with standing in lines, Hern\u00e1ndez interrogated the social capital that comes from food in Southern California. At the end of the day, said Hern\u00e1ndez, the heart of L.A. is the taco.<\/p>\n

Yet compiling The Times\u2019 101 Best Tacos list was no easy feat, admitted Hern\u00e1ndez, who once served as editor of the blog L.A. Taco. Beyond personal tastes that may cause arguments within the newsroom, what makes an authentic taco itself can be hard to define. <\/p>\n

But, as Hern\u00e1ndez said, it\u2019s more than a taco: it\u2019s a cultural identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cTaco is the primary unit of L.A. El taco. Everyone eats it,\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez said. \u201cWe should always look at street food, and tacos in particular, as the thing that unites us in a place that\u2019s so fractured.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an editor in journalism, a field rife with barriers to Latino representation, Hern\u00e1ndez said he learned to reject any feelings that he didn\u2019t belong.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m acutely aware that there has not been a food editor that looks like me,\u201d Hern\u00e1ndez said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m not ashamed of that. I don\u2019t believe in imposter syndrome. If I\u2019ve ever had an inkling of it, I think: \u2018Hell no!\u2019 Every space that we\u2019re in, we need to act like we own it already.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Daniel Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s career has been full of twists and turns. A proud product of San Diego and Tijuana,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[167057,167053,82898,167056,167059,413,167052,167055,2303,48,52,51,47,50,49,167054,22664,167058,74,28196,4931],"class_list":["post-417735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-blog-l-a-taco","tag-culture-journalism","tag-daniel-hernandez","tag-emos","tag-first-food-story","tag-food","tag-food-editor","tag-good-taco","tag-l-a","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mexican-punk","tag-politic","tag-proud-product","tag-san-diego","tag-taco","tag-tijuana"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}