The LAst Bite

At a time when takeout -- a style of order typically designated to sloppy boxes of lo mein on a lazy Tuesday night or a low quality pizza invited in after too many vodka sodas -- had become a pandemic-inspired norm, moving 200 miles south seemed like a daring if not ridiculous idea. However, after a brief hiatus, this food blog is being served up once again, this time from a small apartment pitted squarely between a vegan Jamaican food joint and a roving Puerto Rican food truck in Los Angeles. From its humble beginnings as ChewSLO, which highlighted the delectable eats of the Central Coast, to its still very humble existence in LA, this blog is now shifting focus and taking on the moniker LAst Bite.

To an outsider, Los Angeles may seem simply like a larger version of any other city, such as Columbus, OH or Miami, FL or even Phoenix, AZ. That's true in the sense that LA appears on a map in one giant designated zone and it's referred to broadly in countless pop tunes, old and new. But in truth, for the people who call LA home, the city is really an overarching nomenclature for a number of smaller neighborhoods, like a family of nine children who all share the same last name but take pride in their own individuality. From Long Beach to Compton to Pasadena to Woodland Hills, everything from architecture to demographic is vastly different across this nearly 5,000 sq ft county. And within those many miles of streets exists endless possibilities of unique flavor, like the vegan chili fries shown to the left. It's an opportunity to not only take a flavor tour of LA but a chance to taste the buffet of cultures that makes this city stand apart from the rest.

Would you eat this tofu donut? Even an adventurous eater could set out with a goal of ordering from a new restaurant every day of the week and still, given the sheer volume of establishments and the ever-growing tally of new eateries popping up, it would take 68 years to visit every restaurant in town. No, really. A 2016 government study identified 24,884 unique restaurants across LA County. To a person with an appetite to discover new and exciting menus, this segment of the world is like a long and winding thrill ride full of excitement, adrenaline and even, perhaps, a few episodes of queasiness. But that's part of the fun, right?

In a city inundated with opportunities for breakfast, lunch and dinner, social media becomes a nightmare for the indecisive Libra. Spend too much time observing the landscape of options within a 5-mile radius and your thumb may lose its fork-wielding abilities after an arthritis-inducing scroll session. Photos of steaming dumplings, the "Thanksgiving dinner sandwich" with cranberry bread and onion stuffing shown right, and even cotton candy burritos litter the internet, spinning naive scrollers into a tornado of uncertainty. As a result, many Angelinos might resort to deliveries from menus of the mainstays that dangle from the refrigerator door, sometimes secured by a magnet with the phone number and address of an entirely different diner altogether.

The point is, LA's food scene is too complex to be taken lightly. The opportunity cost associated with a "bad meal" is one that may haunt you in ways you never knew existed when gas station hot dogs and Little Caesars were the source of meal time tug-of-war in your tiny home town. This blog is taking the risk, going out on a limb, to bring you the finest samples of cuisine sourced from food trucks to small shops to well-traversed restaurants, all in an effort to offer the most toothsome taste of the LAst Bite.