This week we are exploring the food scene in Los Angeles, California, with my guest Amanda Lanza who works with Cash Only Productions out there.
Cash Only is a collective of culinary and community-minded creatives – most of whom work in different creative worlds outside the culinary world, but who all view food as the building block for their community. Cash Only started as a zine that honoured restaurants in LA that had been around for decades, but often went unrecognized or inconsistently honoured by internet hype machines – I’m sure we all know places like this, and the algorithm doesn’t do them any justice!
The collective has evolved to hold more space in the educational realm, with food-based discussions that provide language for food lovers or hands on workshops. They also help to highlight the various ethnoburbs of LA and the stories that come from them.
Amanda runs most of the operations, production, and creative endeavours for the project. She’s both a chef and a food anthropologist who is doing her MA at CSULA. She loves to work and explore the idea of what authenticity means in cuisine and what that looks like or takes shape as in LA food communities.
Cash Only does a terrific job focusing and honouring culinary heritage and origin stories, and how these have shaped food consumption and creation experiences in LA, and I can’t wait for you to learn more!
Learn More About Cash Only
Instagram: @cashonlyproductions