Chez Panisse in Berkeley, an originator of California cuisine.
(San Francisco Chronicle / Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images)
Fancy foods and political divisions
The gourmands behind California cuisine had far more than politics on their mind. To them, the time and the place felt like destiny, wrote Joyce Goldstein in “Inside the California Food Revolution.” You had a generation of rebels obsessed with fresh, local and seasonal food, living in a state with “rich soil and ideal climate to grow a wide variety of ingredients,” she wrote. “People took their food seriously. Using fresh, local, ‘politically correct’ produce and artisanal products and having a philosophy behind the food were of primary importance.”
You see their influence everywhere — in the plethora of organic produce and olive oils on your supermarket shelves and the obsession with ingredients and nutritional values.
California cuisine’s legacy is vast but also mixed. Critics say foodie culture can easily devolve into elitism. Does America really need celebrity chefs and an expertly sourced $300 dinner?
“As Ronald Reagan enshrined trickle-down economics, kneecapped the federal regulatory regime, and unleashed Wall Street’s rapacious id, those who thrived in this greed-is-good era feasted on smoked salmon pizza at Spago in Los Angeles and truffled chicken breast at Jams in Manhattan,” Brent Cunningham wrote in an essay about the political weaponization of food.
Fresh produce is piled at a stall at the weekly farmers market in downtown San Luis Obispo.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The limits of Trump’s McDonald’s politics
Ironically, the culinary movement fomented during the Reagan Revolution may have contributed to the rise of MAGA. Trump’s lionization of McDonald’s is part of a larger conservative meme that casts Democrats as arugula-loving elites completely out of touch with average Joes.
But it’s hard to look at the tumult of 2024 America and find the secret sauce to be fast food. Because, after all, good food is good food no matter its origin story.
Goldstein recounts an early triumph of California food rebels in 1983. Queen Elizabeth was here for a state visit, and the Reagans hosted her at a gala dinner in San Francisco. The menu was über California cuisine: salmon poached in zinfandel, lamb salad with lentils, radicchio, enoki mushrooms, etc.
“The dinner featured many ingredients that were so overused in the early days of California cuisine that they became clichés: raspberry vinegar, walnut oil, and the newly available imported balsamic vinegar, which were poured with impunity on everything,” Goldstone wrote.
Everyone loved it. The California theory of food eventually won the day — and it started not with the mind but with the stomach.
Today’s top stories 
A building with a weak first story collapsed on cars during the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
(U.S. Geological Survey)
Despite an active year for earthquakes, some California suburbs refuse to fix vulnerable buildings.
Several suburbs closest to the widely felt earthquakes that struck Los Angeles County this summer and fall have no active plans to require retrofits for seismically flimsy “soft-story” apartment buildings.In these soft-story buildings, the ground floor has room for a carport, garage or retail shop. They are held up by flimsy, skinny poles that can collapse with side-to-side shaking in an earthquake.
The bird flu virus was detected in raw milk in California.
State health officials confirmed Sunday that H5N1 bird flu virus was detected in a retail sample of raw milk from the Fresno-based Raw Farm dairy, which has issued a recall. The news comes as 29 people, almost all dairy workers, have tested positive for the virus in California. So far, there have been no reports of illness associated with the Raw Farm recall.
Traveling in California ahead of Thanksgiving? Expect rain.
What else is going on
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This morning’s must read 
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
California is now producing so much solar energy that the state must increasingly ask solar farms to stop producing to prevent overloading the electric grid. In the last 12 months, power that would have fueled 518,000 California homes for a year has been curtailed or thrown away.
The solar glut raises questions about the state’s plan to generate all its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045.
How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to [email protected].
For your downtime 
Cynthia Erivo is Elphaba and Ariana Grande is Glinda in “Wicked.”
(Giles Keyte / Universal Pictures)
Going out
🧹 Why is “Wicked” two parts? And what changes were made from stage to screen? The creative team behind Universal’s blockbuster musical breaks it all down.🍿 “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” jolted the box office over the weekend with a combined $170 million.🎶 From Billie Eilish to Metallica, here are 10 must-see concerts this holiday season.
Staying in
A question for you: What’s your favorite Thanksgiving dish?
There’s always at least one dish that really hits the spot. What do you enjoy eating on Thanksgiving?
Email us at [email protected], and your response might be included in the newsletter this week.
And finally … your great photo of the day 
Today’s great photo is from Brian Brady of Seal Beach: Lake Manly as viewed from Dante’s Peak in Death Valley.
Brian, who visited the area with his wife for their 35th anniversary last year, writes: “The lake was revitalized by Hurricane Hilary.”
Show us your favorite place in California! Send us photos you have taken of spots in California that are special — natural or human-made — and tell us why they’re important to you.
Have a great day, from the Essential California team
Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on latimes.com.
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Publish date : 2024-11-25 03:20:00
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