Javier Cabral skyped in during the Taco Literacy class. He is the West Cost editor of Munchies, Vice’s food website, and has been writing about food for 11 years. He told us how he started food writing. He was very into punk in his teenage years and thought that getting paid for writing about food was more punk rock than anything else. Food and writing are his two favorite things in his life and he has been pursuing them by finding his passion early in his life.
One advice he gave us to be a food writer is to continuously write about food, asking for tips from local food writers. This is very similar to the advice that Gustavo Arellano told us. As they both said, writing about food persistently having a personal blog and let editors and writers know about you is probably the way to start the path of food writing.
Among many topics he talked about, his view about authenticity was something I wanted to mention here. He said authenticity suffers when you take it out of the region. You can’t have 100% same traditional tastes from a dish made in “out of the region”. But the dish evolves and become its own unique one adjusting to the circumstances. So who is to say this dish is more authentic than others? I understand his point of the view and somewhat agree with it. However, I still believe that there are food that can be considered more authentic than others. A dish can evolve and be recognized as a different type of the dish but authentic food would refer to something that the dish was originated embracing the region’s uniqueness and characteristics.
Another perspective of Javier I want to write about is exotic foods. He said not being familiar with a certain ethnic’s dish doesn’t mean that it’s an exotic food. You just didn’t know about it. It’s the dish daily eaten by someone and it’s not exotic to them at all. This is the topic that one needs to think think about and should relate to her attitude and perspectives in treating other ethnic foods.
Taco Literacy 