The Brief

In L.A., we tout ourselves as having one of the best food scenes in the world, with cuisines from nearly every corner of the globe available to sample.

And yet a few still occasionally fall through the cracks. Blame geography, or the lack of a sizable population to sustain such establishments. Either way, the gap is real.

Puerto Rican food is one of those cuisines. Despite a handful of restaurants scattered throughout the Southland, cocina criolla remains largely underrepresented. For me, it's personal.

My grandfather was Puerto Rican, born on the island and eventually settling in El Paso, Texas, where he met my grandmother — who was Mexican — before shipping out to fight in the Korean War. He came back, but the family didn't hold. He and my grandmother split when my dad was young. And yet his spirit has always loomed in the family background.

Harry Chabrán and Angie Chabrán, Gab's grandparents.

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Courtesy Gab Chabrán

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I'm always looking for ways to connect with that side of my heritage, which is why, when I heard chef and writer Monti Carlo was writing a cookbook called Spanglish: Recipes & Stories, I invited her to appear at our next Cookbook Live event on May 21 as an opportunity to dig deeper.

Speaking in Spanglish

Monti Carlo has been working in food media for the past 15 years, first appearing on Season 3 of MasterChef, where she placed fifth. Since then, she's served as an advisor for the James Beard Foundation.

Monti Carlo, author of "Spanglish: Recipes & Stories," will be in conversation at The Crawford in Pasadena on Thursday, May 21.

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Rafael N Ruiz Mederos

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Courtesy Simon Element

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Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she spent much of her youth in Texas — navigating what many of us know as a hybrid identity, that particular life lived between cultures. Hence the title: Spanglish is a term used by many whose families come from Latin American countries but who grow up speaking English, often mixing both languages in the same sentence, sometimes in the same breath. For Carlo, it's also an act of reclamation — taking back a word that's long been used to marginalize Puerto Ricans in the diaspora.

Understanding the food

When discussing the recipes in her book, Carlo keeps coming back to one dish in particular: pastelón.

It's a dish that encapsulates the cuisine — sweet fried plantain slices layered with picadillo, a beef mince made with raisins and olives, bound together with egg, and blanketed in cheese.

"It's salty and sweet," she said. "That's our favorite flavor."

And that distinction matters. Puerto Rican cuisine, she's quick to note, isn't built around heat the way Mexican food is. It's subtler than that, rooted in a balance of contrasts — and no ingredient embodies that better than the plantain, which Carlo describes as the most foundational ingredient in the cuisine, even though it wasn't originally native to the island, having been brought by enslaved people from Africa.

"Spanglish: Recipes & Stories" by Monti Carlo, with a foreword by Gordon Ramsay, is available now.

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Courtesy Simon Element

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"My goodness, what a plantain can do," she said. "From being eaten green to being eaten while it's surrounded by fruit flies."

To her, that full arc — starchy and firm at one end, deeply sweet and soft at the other — is a portrait of Puerto Rican cooking itself.

Carlo's version in the book is vegetarian, using mushrooms instead of ground beef, while keeping two of the cuisine's foundational bases intact: recaíto and sazón. Recaíto is a pureed aromatic blend — green peppers, herbs, and recao (also known as culantro) — that gives dishes their distinctive green hue. Sazón is a dry seasoning made up of garlic powder, oregano, coriander, annatto, and ground turmeric.

Finding sazón in the Southland

Puerto Rican food exists in SoCal — you just have to know where to look. As someone who's always on the lookout for a plate of pasteles or a bowl of mofongo, a few spots have stood the test of time, including Señor Big Ed's in Cypress and Mofongos in North Hollywood.

Señor Big Ed's

Señor Big Ed's has been open since 1982 — though it didn't start as a Puerto Rican restaurant. It opened as a Green Burrito, a local Mexican fast food chain that was later purchased by the company that owns Carl's Jr. The name comes from an item on the original menu, and it stuck even after the previous owner, Rafael Rodriguez, originally from San Juan, added Puerto Rican food to the menu in 1990.

A spread from Mofongos in North Hollywood featuring an alcapurria, a mofongo with broth, and pique, shot on an El Gran Combo record.

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Gab Chabrán

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LAist

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Yolanda Coronado has cooked at Señor Big Ed's since day one and bought the restaurant in 2003. Her daughter Veronica, who helps manage day-to-day operations, said the name still catches people off guard.

"The restaurant is named after a burrito," she laughed. But the food is unambiguously boricua — and Coronado makes sure of it, offering free pastelillos to anyone who walks in looking for a taco. "As soon as I see someone trying to order a taco or a burrito, I'm like, hey, have you tried the Puerto Rican food?"

For the Puerto Ricans who find them, the reaction is often immediate. "They get emotional when they see the flags," she said. "They start smelling the sofrito and the garlic. It reminds them of grandma's cooking."

Mofongos

In North Hollywood, Augusto Coën, the owner of Mofongos, has been making the same case since November 2009. "When I started the business, there weren't any Puerto Rican restaurants in Los Angeles County," he said.

Nearly 17 years later, he's built a following that includes Jimmy Smits, Luis Guzmán, and Cardi B — though Coën is quick to note the restaurant is as much for an electrician as an actor. Awareness, he says, is growing slowly, with some help.

"The popularity of people like Bad Bunny has made people curious about things that are Puerto Rican — that really helps out," he said.

A tray of empanadas from Olga's Empanadas, a Puerto Rican cottage kitchen operation run by Olga Gonzalez out of her home in Perris.

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Photo courtesy Olga Gonzalez

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Olga's Empanadas

And the search extends further than you might expect. Out in Perris — some 70 miles from downtown L.A. — Olga Gonzalez runs a cottage kitchen out of her home, selling homemade Puerto Rican empanadas fried or frozen for pickup. Olga Gonzalez inherited the business, Olga's Empanadas, from her late mother Ana, who started it in the San Gabriel Valley. While also working the graveyard shift at a warehouse, Gonzalez has grown the menu to 16 flavors, drawing customers from Beaumont, Temecula, and Hemet — and as far as Watts and Compton, making the reverse trek.

"I have so many customers just saying like, we don't have any of this out here," Gonzalez said. "That's why I'm cooking."

Come hungry

Carlo comes to The Crawford on Thursday, May 21, at 6 p.m., and she's not coming empty-handed. She'll be cooking — a passion fruit hand cake, to be exact — and if you're wondering what that means for me, she's already warned me that it's arms day (those egg whites don’t whip themselves). Tickets and more information at laist.com/events.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is suspending a requirement that foreign visitors from countries that have qualified for the World Cup and have bought tickets for the soccer tournament pay as much as $15,000 in bonds to enter the United States, the State Department said Wednesday.

The department imposed the bond requirement last year for countries that it said had high rates of people overstaying their visas and other security issues as part of the Republican administration's broader crackdown on immigration.

Travelers to the United States from 50 countries are required to pay the new bond, and five of those countries have qualified for the World Cup — Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Tunisia.

Citizens from those five countries who have purchased tickets from FIFA are now exempt from the visa bond requirement. World Cup team players, coaches and some staff already had been exempt from the bond requirement as part of the administration's orders to prioritize the processing of visas for the tournament.

"The United States is excited to organize the biggest and best FIFA World Cup in history," Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar said. "We are waiving visa bonds for qualified fans who bought World Cup tickets" and opted in to the FIFA Pass system that allows expedited visa appointments as of April 15.

The waiver is a rare loosening of immigration requirements under the administration and will ease travel burdens for at least some visitors to the U.S. for the World Cup, which begins June 11 and is co-hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The administration has taken dramatic steps to restrict immigration in ways that critics say are incongruous with the type of unifying message that a global sporting event such as the World Cup is supposed to project.

For instance, the administration has barred travelers from Iran and Haiti, though World Cup players, coaches and other support personnel are exempt. Travelers from Ivory Coast and Senegal, face partial restrictions under an expanded version of that travel ban, even without the visa bond exemption.

Foreign travelers also had faced potential new requirements to submit their social media histories, although that policy from U.S. Customs and Border Protection had not gone into effect. Also, the administration had deployed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at airports recently when Transportation Security Administration personnel were not being paid during a partial federal shutdown.

Those measures prompted Amnesty International and dozens of U.S. civil and human rights groups to issue a "World Cup travel advisory" that warns travelers about the climate in the U.S.

In a report this month, the main advocacy group for U.S. hotels blamed visa barriers and other geopolitical issues for "significantly suppressing international demand," leading to hotel bookings for the soccer tournament that are far below what had initially been anticipated.

The American Hotel & Lodging Association said travelers are concerned about potentially lengthy visa wait times and increased fees, along with uncertainty about how they're being processed to enter the U.S.

The bond requirements are part of the administration's larger effort to clamp down on migrants who travel to the U.S. on temporary visas but then overstay them. Visa applicants from the affected countries are required to pay $5,000, $10,000 or $15,000 in bonds, which will be refunded if the traveler complies with the terms of the visa or if the visa application is denied.

As of early April, the number of World Cup fans affected by the bond requirement was believed to be relatively small, perhaps only about 250 people, according to U.S. officials who were not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. But they said that number was changing rapidly as more people buy tickets and some with tickets opt against traveling.

FIFA had requested the waiver, which had to be approved by the State Department and Department of Homeland Security, and was the topic of discussion at multiple meetings at the White House and elsewhere in Washington for several months, the officials said.

Copyright 2026 NPR

The California governor’s race has forced a couple of mea culpas.

Former U.S. Rep. Katie Porter apologized for yelling at a staffer in a years-old incident revealed in a viral video that fueled blowback about her temperament. Investor Tom Steyer said he was wrong to have made his billions in part by investing in fossil fuels and private prisons.

But for frontrunner Xavier Becerra, facing criticism about elements of his long record in state and federal government, the answer is to dodge.

He bristled in recent debates when opponents criticized the way he handled a surge of unaccompanied migrant children when he was U.S. health secretary under President Biden. He dismissed the attack as a “MAGA talking point” even though the allegations are based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation on child labor. In a television interview this week with KTLA, he sought to convince a reporter not to ask “only tough questions” and produce a “profile piece … not a ‘gotcha’ piece.” The reporter later asked about the migrant children.

Becerra, a former health secretary and former California attorney general, shot into the lead among Democrats after ex-Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out in early April over sexual assault allegations. Since then, opponents have spent weeks criticizing his record and questioning his judgment as an executive.

The attacks are coming during a sensitive time for Becerra. Democratic strategist Dana Williamson is due in federal court Thursday on charges that she conspired with other strategists to steal $10,000 a month from Becerra’s dormant campaign account to pay his longtime former chief of staff Sean McCluskie on top of his federal government salary.

Becerra has not been implicated in the federal indictment and prosecutors have considered him a victim in the case, but opponents have criticized his judgment and said his connection to it makes him unfit for office. Asked by reporters about the case over the past several months, Becerra has said he approved the payments believing they were for account maintenance and legal compliance.

“It doesn’t pass the smell test,” former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said during a CNN debate last week. On the same network this week, Porter said the unsettled case makes Becerra a risk for Democratic voters.

McCluskie pleaded guilty to fraud in the case and is scheduled for sentencing in June — after the primary election. Williamson is in talks with prosecutors about a possible plea deal.

Becerra’s dismissals and dodging of tough questions reflect a confident position at the top of the polls as the long-winding primary election nears its end. An Emerson College poll released Wednesday finds Becerra tied for lead with Steyer and Republican former Fox News host Steve Hilton. Another poll found he and Hilton have far outstripped Steyer.

Becerra’s fundraising has also surged. He brought in just over $500,000 in campaign donations in the first three months of the year; since Swalwell dropped out on April 12, he’s received at least $2.3 million.

Democratic voters, anxious to rally behind a candidate to prevent two Republicans from winning the top-two primary election on June 2, are largely coalescing behind Becerra as a “safe choice,” said Menlo College political science professor Melissa Michelson. Because he’s in the lead, Becerra has been able to avoid discussing the criticism in detail — and unlike for other candidates who have faced attacks, it’s working, Michelson said.

“The attacks just aren’t hitting,” Michelson said. “He can go to the public and say, ‘They’re only doing this because I’m in the lead,’ and yes, that is true. … It makes it hard for the public to know, how seriously should I take these claims?”

Serious questions about migrant children

No criticism has dogged his campaign more than the 2023 New York Times series detailing the surge in children working dangerous, exploitative jobs in meatpacking plants, construction sites and factories around the country. The report attributed the rise to a record number of unaccompanied children arriving at the southern border from Latin America in late 2020 and 2021, the first year of Becerra’s term as Health and Human Services secretary.

According to the report, Becerra, whose agency had custody of the children, was under pressure from the Biden administration to get them out of crowded shelters near the border and undo a Trump-era practice of holding the minors in detention centers. He pushed for them to be placed quickly in the homes of adult sponsors, who were sometimes distant relatives or unrelated to the children and who sent them to work. The investigation found Becerra’s agency missed or ignored warning signs of labor trafficking and failed to stay in contact with the minors.

In one video in the Times report, Becerra is seen telling staff to speed up the placements.

“This is not how you do an assembly line,” he said.

Opponents have seized on the report repeatedly during debates. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has run ads about it since last fall.

“The experience we got from Secretary Becerra didn’t lead to better outcomes,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said during a CNN debate last week. “It led to 85,000 migrant children who were lost.”

Becerra has repeatedly called that a “Trump lie.” On Monday, in a brief press conference after a town hall in Sacramento, he again dismissed the criticism and said he wasn’t responsible for the children’s treatment after they left his agency’s care.

“What employers did after they left our care, after they left our jurisdiction, where the exploitation of children may have occurred, was not on my watch,” he said. “When people tell these Trump lies about kids that are lost, when Democrats repeat those lies, I just say, this campaign is better than that.”

Some Republicans who were critical of Biden’s handling of immigration did claim there were hundreds of thousands of “missing children,” which immigration advocates called misleading at the time.

But a 2024 audit by an independent watchdog validated the Times investigation and concluded Becerra’s agency did miss critical safety checks before releasing children to adult sponsors.

The report by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General found that caseworkers had in 16% of cases failed to document background checks and other vetting of the adults. In other cases they failed to conduct required home visits.

In more than one-fifth of cases the inspector general reviewed, Becerra’s agency failed to contact children one month after they were placed with sponsors, as required by agency policies to ensure the children were safe. In those cases staff didn’t call until four months later, on average, and at times as long as a year after the children were released from federal custody.

Becerra’s campaign did not respond to a CalMatters inquiry about the watchdog report.

Pressed about the warning signs detailed in the investigation, Becerra told a reporter after the town hall this week that she had “conflated a lot of different things that are unrelated.”

He also refused to answer when CalMatters asked whether he was certain Williamson couldn’t implicate him in the campaign fraud case during her court appearance this week.

“I’m moving forward,” he said.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

After reaching a tentative agreement with University of California negotiators Wednesday night, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3299 has canceled a strike that was set to start at all campuses on Thursday.

Why it matters

The union represents some 40,000 service and hospital workers across the UC system. Members include custodians, food service workers, patient care assistants and hospital technicians. The workers— some of whom are parents of UC students — said their wages had failed to keep pace with inflation, and that they’d been priced out of local housing markets.

The backstory

AFSCME 3299 has been negotiating with UC for over two years. Prior to the looming open-ended strike, the union had staged a two-day strike and filed unfair labor practice charges with the Public Employment Relations Board, formally accusing the UC system of violating California labor law. UC disputed the charges.

What AFSCME said: “[We] have reached a tentative agreement ... that makes historic progress and delivers long-overdue security to the frontline service and patient care professionals who make UC run,” said Michael Avant, president of AFSCME Local 3299, in an email statement. “Under the terms agreed upon [last night] the lowest paid workers in the UC system will have won their largest wage increase ever and the most affordable healthcare rates at UC.”

What UC said: In an email statement, Missy Matella, UC’s associate vice president for systemwide employee and labor relations, said: “We’re glad to have reached an agreement with AFSCME that recognizes the important work these employees do every day ... This contract delivers meaningful pay increases and addresses some of the real affordability pressures our employees are facing, while allowing us to move forward together focused on UC’s mission of patient care, teaching and research.”

What's next

Union members will vote on ratification May 19-21. Union leaders are encouraging members to vote yes.

Editor's note: Julia Barajas is a part-time graduate student at UCLA Law.