The Italian Roots of L.A. s European Inspired Cuisine

in all the world, there neither was nor would there ever be another place like this City of the Angels. Here the American people were erupting, like lava from a volcano; here indeed, was the place for me - a ringside seat at the circus. - Carey McWilliams

You probably couldn't mistake an Italian grandma in New York's Little Italy, nor question her Sunday gravy. In Montreal, there's that je ne sais quoi about the Qu b cois and their chocolate-covered confections called Whippets. But Angelenos, whether natives or transplants, carry an amorphous identity, and their culinary badges are just as undefined.

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Los Angeles' disjointed geography makes it nearly impossible to discover where any European expats - the Italians and French, for example - have landed. So where did they all disappear to?

Nearly 10 million people reside in Los Angeles County, making it the second most populated city in the country. But the neighborhoods sprawl across the vast scene, with homes parceled between arteries of freeways, peppered into pockets of canyons and dotting up hillsides that seem to trickle haphazardly down the faces of mountain sides and amass again in the flats. This has had a distinctive and remarkable impact on the way in which Angelenos initially create their restaurants, and how its audience reacts to its food.

Los Angeles' unique mix of ethnic minorities, prominently Mexican (making up a quarter of the region's population), as well as El Salvadorian, Chinese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, Guatemalan and others, create a hefty cultural mash-up within L.A.'s irregular landscape. While these immigrant groups certainly possess the means to establish neighborhoods in any one of the city's locales, they may simply prefer the cultural setting of an enclave even when they have the ability to live elsewhere. And while we can witness the league of little nations across L.A. - including Little Armenia, Little Ethiopia, Little Tokyo, Koreatown, Thai Town, Filipinotown, Chinatown, and where half of the population stemming from Latin America reside - there is no clear corridor where European immigrants have made their mark on the city. But it wasn't always this way.

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Italians were among Californias first immigrants. They began arriving as early as the 1820s and learned to speak Spanish before attempting to learn English. The majority of Los Angeles' Italian pioneers were transmigrants, often appearing after time spent in South America and Mexico, which eased acculturation before settling in the city and feeling the pressures to Americanize.

Nearly 90 percent of Italian immigrants in California came from some type of agronomical or maritime background. Los Angeles' mediterranean climate allowed many to pick up where they left off and become major forces in agriculture once again. By 1869, Los Angeles had definitively become the wine capital for California - with 5,000 acres of vineyards planted to The Italian Vineyard Company, located in then-remote Rancho Cucamonga. An immigrant from Piedmont, Secundo Guasti, established the winery which at one time was the largest in the world, producing more than four million gallons of wine each year. Working at Guasti's was a rite of passage for hundreds of westbound Italian immigrants.

Guasti wine label. | Photo: Courtesy of Rancho Cucamonga Library Services

By the turn of the 20th century, as many as two thousand Italians made up a neighborhood divided into wards that pridefully functioned as an extension of their homeland, and stretched from Elysian Park to present-day Chinatown. Many lived in Lincoln Heights and Boyle Heights, or concentrated around Downtown's North Broadway and North Hill Streets, near where Sicilian-born Frank Capra (famed director of It's a Wonderful Life) grew up selling newspapers on street corners. And the Italian social life was vibrant - weekend picnics popped-up in present day Glendale and Griffith Park, where party-goers often held competitions called il tiro del formaggio, in which revelers hurled 25-pound rounds of cheese down a field.

In the midst of this, a Little Italy began to form. Businesses boomed downtown, as did the Italian Hall, with numerous delectable delis and butchers, general stores, restaurants and hotels. By the 1920s, Los Angeles began to overflow with businesses that would achieve legendary status, but many that once thrived inevitably became swallowed up by an ever-expanding city.

For instance, the beloved Italian Kitchen on Los Angeles Street was demolished in order to construct the Hollywood Freeway. The Paris Inn employed singing waiters who delighted patrons, until the site became present-day City Hall. Little Joe's restaurant began in today's Arts District and nearly survived a century before it faded into obscurity and closed in 1998.

Little Joes Restaurant and Little Joes Groceries, 1939. | Photo: Courtesy of LAPL/Shades of L.A.: Italian American Community

Sam Rodia, creator of Watts Towers. | Photo: Courtesy of LAPL/Herald-Examiner Collection

Among those original hallmarks still (barely) standing is Galco's, located in Highland Park. Selling a nostalgic novelty and offering hundreds of sodas, beers and old-time candies, the old Italian grocery store used to attract the wives of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin as regular patrons of their prolific deli. Then there was the Sicilian family that started Costa Pasta downtown in the early 1900s, selling their homeland's hand-made pasta to local restaurants. Remarkably, at one point they exceeded 20 million pounds in sales annually, but eventuall

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