NY Post Restaurant Critic Complains That LA Doesn’t Have a Single Food Truck

New York Post restaurant critic Steve Cuozzo has been in Los Angeles for a few days now, and like most New Yorkers traipsing the West Coast he’s getting some pretty crucial food facts very, very wrong. Mainly he just can’t seem to find any food trucks around Los Angeles.

Not as in “a food truck he likes” or “a big collection of food trucks somewhere;” Cuozzo took to Twitter to say he has not even seen a single truck in five days of looking.

The eye-opening exchange went down on social media earlier this week, with Cuozzo sending out the below (apparently sincere) tweet:

While he’s not wrong that much has been written regarding Los Angeles’s food trucks, street food vendors, and overall underground dining scene, it seems Cuozzo has either been going to bed before 8 p.m. every night, not leaving his hotel room, or only sticking to the priciest residential neighborhoods — or perhaps all three. That’s about the only way one person could spend five days in Los Angeles without seeing a single taco truck on the streets.

Asked for clarification by former LA Weekly critic Besha Rodell, Cuozzo doubled down by saying that it was his “view that (the) entire LA food truck narrative is baloney. How can truck sell to nobody on foot?” Eater did reach out to ask whether or not these tweets were sarcastic, but didn’t receive a response back.

This being the internet, others chimed in to discuss Cuozzo’s misinformed opinion, asking where in the city/county he was spending time — Santa Monica and Beverly Hills, if the geotags on his tweets are to be believed — and at what time of day, seeing as how vibrant the late-night Mexican and Central American food scene is around town.

To be clear, Los Angeles is home to roughly 50,000 street food vendors, from trucks to tamaleros to gourmet outfits that do indeed earn plenty of praise in the pages of glossy magazines. They are less commonly found in neighborhoods like the Pacific Palisades, say, but remain a vibrant and crucial part of the dining equation in other prominent areas like East L.A., Boyle Heights, and South LA. Cuozzo may no longer be in town, and perhaps did find a way to not eat at a single food truck while here, but ultimately that’s just fine for the majority of Angelenos — more tacos for everyone else.

• What LA Weekly Critic Besha Rodell’s Departure Means for Los Angeles [ELA]