Can We Please Stop Comparing LA and NYC’s Food Cultures?

Hello! Before I get into today’s newsletter, my critically acclaimed cookbook Amrikan is currently on sale for basically the price of two matcha lattes. If you want to learn how to make Keralan Egg Curry and Rajma Nachos and silky mango pie and the best masala chai of your life, you need a copy immediately. And if you already own the book, thank you! Would really appreciate a review on Amazon.

There’s a new documentary out called The Best Pizza Is In LA. In it, filmmaker Peter Ferriero spends 70 minutes making the case that Los Angeles, not New York City (or Chicago, or Naples, but namely NYC), is home to the greatest pizza options.

My immediate reaction to hearing about the doc was simply, “Why would someone make this?” Then it was, “Who is even going to sit through 70 minutes about this?” Then it went right back to, “Why?”

It is yet another project/headline/story/conversation that insists on pitting Los Angeles against New York City. And why do we continue to do this? (Ragebaiting aside.) Are we not collectively over this relentless need to compare the two cities, especially when it comes to their respective food and restaurant cultures? There is not actually a heated rivalry between New York and LA. It is mostly just made up by people bored on the six hour flight that separates the two cities.

As a food writer who has lived in both places and has spent my career covering the national (and international) food scenes, there are few questions I am asked more frequently than, “which one has better food, NYC or LA?” I’ve never like the question and it makes me want to tear my own head off. I find it to be a deeply boring line of inquiry that flattens both cities. Why must one city be superior to the other? What do any of us gain by picking either NY or LA to be the ~more~ delicious city?

Everyone goes crazy for Weiser Family Farm melons, Andy’s Orchard stone fruits, Masumoto peaches when they hit both the farmers market and restaurant menus. I’ve put more effort into hunting down a Wong Farm Valencia mango during its tiny growing season than people put into trying to purchase a Birkin bag. Restaurants go out of their way to showcase in season produce, bragging about the cases of fruit or potatoes or peppers they’ve picked up on their Instagrams, and name dropping the farms on the menus.

In New York, there is a respect and love for produce — but there isn’t the same level of obsession with the farms themselves. It’s not a defining pillar of the food culture. In my 11 years living there, I remember the giddy excitement around tristar strawberry season (especially when Superiority Burger would drop it’s first batch of gelato), or when the Union Square Greenmarket finally had sour cherries, or that brief window where ramp mania would take over every restaurant menu and you had to pack breath mints. But there isn’t this same fascination with the farms themselves.

Both cities are also incredibly international and diverse, but the way we experience these cultures and their cuisines are vastly different. Los Angeles tends to be set up in enclaves and neighborhoods. Want incredible Armenian food? Head to Glendale. Japanese food that isn’t sushi? Little Tokyo or Sawtelle. Platters of Persian food? Westwood. LA’s Koreatown is unbelievably expansive and jam-packed with an incredible range of restaurants, cafes, and grocery stores, but finding excellent Korean food outside of K-town is a challenging task. There are of course exceptions to all of this — e.g. Azizam for Persian homecooking in Silverlake, Ototo and Tsubaki for insane Japanese cooking in Echo Park — but generally, you must head to a specific area of the city. (The largest exception case to this? Mexican food, which is foundational to LA’s identity and available everywhere.)

This is not to say there aren’t enclaves in New York, too. Jackson Heights is the best place to find the highest concentration of Nepalese restaurants and piping hot momos and some of the best Thai food can still be found in Elmhurst. But you can also find incredible Thai cooking in NoHo or the East Village, next to the hottest Indian restaurant in town and down the block from a Georgian restaurant. Cultures are more interspersed amongst each other and co-mingled in NYC. You can find dozens of cuisines in just a handful of blocks.

The city in many ways is about the act of discovery as you walk down a stretch of blocks. You never know what you might stumble upon or what you missed the last time you walked down it. To really unlock the best eating experiences in LA, you need a car and a destination. You might stumble upon an excellent surprise of a business when you pull into the random strip mall or city block or mall, but it’s best to have an anchor destination. It determines the type of restaurant or cafe or bakery that thrives.

The density and walkability of New York means it’s possible to open smaller, tinier concepts that have zero seating, and specialize in one thing or something more obscure. LA has specialists, but there must be parking or seating, or it must be incredibly car-friendly (or travel well) for it to succeed.

Expecting to find the exact same things in each city is only going to lead to disappointment. It reminds me of this “influencer” who keeps making videos of her eating at beloved LA bagel spots like Layla and Courage, but finding herself disappointed, and going so far as to call these places “scams” because she cannot find the New York bagel experience there. But she has a fundamental misunderstanding of what these popular bagel spots in LA offer — bagels that are long fermented and made from sourdough so they have real chew, instead of the fluffier, more pillowy bagels that exist in NYC. And instead of thick amounts of cream cheese (or “schmears”), LA bagel spots tend to specialize in toppings, typically driven by the farmer’s market, as mentioned earlier.

Locals and visitors alike benefit from both cities having different bagel experiences. I don’t want to be able to get the best version of everything, everywhere. I love that Los Angeles is home to so much regional Mexican food that when someone says they want to go out for Mexican food, you have to ask, “what kind?” And as much as I love a great Pierogi and a good pickle, I appreciate that LA will never feel like Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, with it’s glorious range of Russian and Ukrainian grocery stores and purveyors of pelmeni.

I am uninterested in each city turning into the same cookie cutter food court. If I want a consistent homogeneous experience, I will head to a chain restaurant — that is the point of them after all. I think it’s necessary for NYC and LA to be drastically different, while also being home to some of the best food and the most talented brains and cooks in the country. How else would culture and food continue to evolve and thrive? These cities are best when they are in conversation, not competition.

If you really insist on comparing compare two cities, it would make more sense to put NYC up against a place like London. They are both cities designed for pedestrians and public transportation. The buildings are much, much closer together. There is such a thing as winters and summers and seasons which affect what you really want to eat and cook and consume. And if we are talking structural comparisons, it would almost make more sense to compare LA and Houston, with its endless sprawl and dependence on highways, its warm weather, and its international enclaves and neighborhoods. (But in that comparison there is a clear winner: sorry Houston.)

The food of a city tells you who it is. I am not sure who benefits from saying one city’s story is better than another? Especially when you’re comparing two powerhouses. There is something worth learning — and many things worth eating — in both NYC and LA.

The real answer to that annoying question, “Which city has a better food scene, NYC or LA?” is, “whichever one you’re in.” As long as you’re armed with curiosity and an appetite.