Today we have a very special episode. Visit California invited us out of our New York City studio and over to the West Coast for a food-focused road trip around Orange County and the San Gabriel Valley. We start our journey at Mercado González at Northgate Market in Costa Mesa, where Aliza and Matt share an incredible afternoon walking around the mercado looking for pozole, churros, and many more surprises along the way.
We hit the road for our next stop, a visit with Sara Lezama, the owner of Rye Goods, an acclaimed sourdough bakery and deli with three locations throughout Orange County in Newport Beach, Tustin, and Laguna Beach.
Next on our road trip, we head to the San Gabriel Valley, where journalist Kristie Hang gives us a tour of some of her favorite new and under-the-radar restaurants, including Banh Mi Hoa Phat, Good Alley, and Bistro Na’s.
We stay in the SGV for a conversation with chef Chris Yang of Yang’s Kitchen, which has firmly become one of our favorite restaurants in all of California. To close, Aliza and Matt share many more discoveries from their road trip around Southern California.
And a great hotel for your future home base in the SGV is the Hilton San Gabriel.
To donate to California wildfire relief, visit Restaurants Care.
This very special episode of This Is TASTE is supported by Visit California. While this episode was recorded before the LA wildfires in January, all of the restaurants featured are open for business, and we can’t think of a better time to pay California a visit for your own food-obsessed road trip. Dining out in LA is one way to help support the city, and these truly were some amazing places. Questions about visiting LA now?
Matt Rodbard is the editor in chief of TASTE and the author of Koreaworld: A Cookbook, Koreatown: A Cookbook, a New York Times Bestseller, and Food IQ, a Publishers Weekly Bestseller and winner of a 2023 IACP Cookbook Award (Food Issues & Matters)
