Last December, former LA Weekly food editor Katherine Spiers and longtime contributor Tien Nguyen came up with a plan to publish a restaurant guide for LA. The idea was to recapture the spirit of one of the oldest LA food guides around, created by Jonathan Gold at the LA Weekly in 2005, and re-shape the model for today.
They reached out to us at LA Taco about hosting this guide. Spiers and Nguyen were going to figure out a way to publish it anyhow, they coolly warned us. Noted, so we said hells yeah. In the ensuing months, Katherine and Tien, along with the LA Taco team, began building the page that is now the very first, and your very own, Rogue 99.
LA Taco had zero editorial veto or control on the content. We wanted Nguyen and Spiers to be totally free in their pursuit of the perfect list on the universe of Los Angeles dining, and serve as a platform for them. Rogue 99 features reviews by writers Sarah Bennett and Bill Esparza, as well as photographs by Gabriel Carbajal.
“If you wanted to understand LA, this list would be a great place to start,” Tien told me.
So true; food has always been a chief conduit to culture, space, geography, and politics. At LA Taco we fundamentally believe that the true language of this city is its food. It is the one language that everyone speaks.