The story goes like this: Avila grew up in a Pico Rivera family, with a Teamster father who took over the cooking after Avila’s mother died. By his own account, Avila ate and smoked his way through his teenage years, becoming a DJ and driving a forklift until he quit to go to cooking school at the now-defunct Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena. (Turns out, Avila and I graduated at about the same time, though I didn’t know this until recently.) Then fine dining stints with chefs Walter Manzke and Gary Menes, and then a kind of street food epiphany, in which he swapped white tablecloths for a sometimes illegal taco cart. “It’s in the book,” says Avila, referencing his debut cookbook, “Guerrilla Tacos: Recipes From the Streets of L.A.,” which came out last year.

Source: Los Angeles Times December 14, 2018 18:35 UTC