Canto CDIII: The Haitian Fried Goat That Launched My Thousand Tacos

Gentle cabrones:

As you probably remember, I was a Pulitzer Prize finalist this year for my columnas (Canto CCCXXVIII) — but there was another important connection to the Pulitzers that I had this year:

In late February, I served as a juror in the Criticism category, as evidenced by this cool photo of me on their website.

Won’t say more other than it was an honor that no cholo nerd from Anacrime could’ve ever imagined for himself, namely because he never had any aspirations to become a reporter in the first place.

The site was Columbia University, which administers the prizes. Gotham is one of my favorite cities (Canto IX), not just because of its vitality and history but for food that’s not that ubiquitous in Southern California that I summarily gorge on. Bodega cuisine — like, actual bodegas, not the fake-ass ones hipsters in SoCal are trying to create (SoCal is about mercaditos/tienditas/corner stores, Jack). West African. Ecuadorian. West Indian. Street pizza. Halal carts. The delight that is Cositas Ricas in Jackson Heights.

And Haitian.

If you really, really know my story, you’ll know that Haitian food is the reason for my status as the guy who wrote the book on Mexican food and everything that followed. If you don’t know my story? Refry this:

In 2008, I met my book agent and my then-book editor at a fancy restaurant to celebrate the debut of my barely read Orange County: A Personal History. The meal was going to be whatever, and I knew it even before I got there by reading the restaurant’s menu online, so I decided to try a cuisine beforehand that I had never tried before.

When my agent and editor wondered why I wasn’t ordering, I described the meal that I had earlier that day: fried goat at a Haitian restaurant. Pickled Scotch bonnets. Pigeon peas. Black rice. With a big bottle of vinegar on the table that I poured over everything.

They were so entranced by my description of what I ate that my agent suggested I write a book about the history of Mexican food because I knew how to talk about food so well.

I said no.

(See, jefa y jefe? I’ve always rejected EVERYTHING good for me at first because that’s who I am)

I said no because I didn’t want to be typecast as a writer who only wrote about Latino stuff. I didn’t tell them that then, because the main reason I declined was — and what I told them then — is that I don’t like to do things that others have done before (see, jefa y jefe?) and there was a lot of books about Mexican food on the market.

We — rather, they — enjoyed the fancy restaurant meals, and I went back to my hotel. But there’s a reason why everyone should have an editor: sometimes, they have good ideas!

Their idea stuck with me, so I went on my laptop to Amazon and typed in “Mexican food.” Must’ve gone through dozens of titles. Not one was about the history of Mexican food in the United States.

The next day, I began to type out the book proposal that became Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America.

That book, of course, became a thing. Never out of print. Led to the best pitch of my life, the one that got rejected because years earlier I had told off the network exec who would decide its fate (Canto CXCVII). Travels across the country that begat friendships. #tortillatournament. A columna for the Southern Foodways Alliance that mysteriously ended at the beginning of this year. TV appearances and interviews for stories, gigs that haven’t ended in the 13 years since Taco USA debuted.

None of this would’ve happened if I hadn’t eaten at that Haitian restaurant.

Every time I’ve gone to New York, I’ve thought about how my passion for that one meal changed my life — the power of food, the WERK that pays off, chance occurrences, the puckish luck that has defined so much of my adult life (quick aside: how did I get my book agent? He called me at the office of the Infernal Rag the Thursday after Los Angeles Times front-page story about The Former Columna. I told him he had two minutes to tell me why I shouldn’t hang up on him, because I was annoyed at all the calls from strangers who all of a sudden wanted a piece of me. He talked his way out of my insouciance, and I nearly had a heart attack after we hung up and I Googled him and found out what a big deal he was. Pinche Guti, I swear).

My New York visits are always about business, with schedules more tightly wound than a baseball. But this past February when I was there on Pulitzer jury business, I vowed to visit the Haitian place that started it all — if it was even still around.

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I couldn’t remember the name of the place, except it was in Manhattan. Near Midtown, I thought, because I remember eating there after a visit to my editor at Rockefeller Plaza. So I went to the only source I trust on New York food in its entirety: Robert Sietsema.

Longtime food critic for the Village Voice. Longtime food critic for Eater NY. Before and after, his own publisher — he now has a Substack everyone should follow. The Jack Lemmon to Jonathan Gold’s Walter Matthau in my second-favorite Mr. Gold review, which caught them getting flashed by an Okie bartender in Bako.

After I finished with my Pulitzer jury day, I typed “Robert Sietsema Haitian food” on my iPhone and found a Sietsema review. Le Soleil Restaurant — that was it! His writing was so evocative that it dislodged the place’s name from the catacombs of my mind.

I walked from Columbia to Le Soleil, which was now in Hell’s Kitchen and not in its original location, per Sietsema. It was far smaller than the original spot, long and narrow. Faded yellow walls. I was the only customer there, but dining app workers kept coming in to pick up orders, speaking to the owner in Spanish.

The Haitian fried goat dish is called tassot gabrit, and each chunk was fried so that it looked like a Brazil nut in its shell. A mound of black rice, tinted because of a mushroom it’s cooked with, and pigeon peas. Some accra fritters. A side of pikliz, which is like curtido except with Scotch bonnet thrown in. A bottle of Couronne, Haiti’s own style of Champagne cola. And the bottle of vinegar — man, how I love vinegar in my food! Mexicans don’t use it enough.

Tart and crunchy and filling and savory (as I’ve said before, only the world’s superior cultures eat goat). The price wasn’t cheap but could’ve fed me for three full meals. I ate it all at once. I told the owner I had visited long ago and complimented him on the delicious food, although I didn’t tell my whole tale because I’m shy like that.

As I walked back to my Holiday Inn Express, my smile was as wide as my panza. I’m not one for nostalgia, as I’ve said many times before — but I definitely believe in #respect. Go back to the places and people that made you and marvel at how life works. Visitas, basically (Canto CCXCIX). No one was sui generis, not even Jesus.

And give that #respect before it’s too late. Le Soleil is sadly no more — as I was writing this and Googled the place, I found that it has rebranded as Le Soleil Brillant. I caught the end of an era.

I’ll have tassot gabrit somewhere in SoCal in its honor.

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: Me in conversation with Jeff Pearlman, the many-times bestselling author of multiple sports books but whose current Substack is actually about Orange County politics, The Truth OC. Photo taken by the great food writer Jeff Gordinier at Le Hut Dinette in SanTana. The plate before me was Other Jeff’s patty melt; I went with the DELICIOUS crispy chicken sandwich.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “We must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature — or go insane” — Charlie Chaplin

LISTENING: “Ruby, Are You Mad at Your Man?,” Carolina Chocolate Drops. Made famous by the Osborne Brothers, this song is all about the delirium of lust. This cover ups the tension even more with lead singer Rhiannon Giddon’s high lonesome growls and a banjo she strums with the force of a raker — such a talent. Hence added to Gustavo Arellano’s Weekly Radiola of Randomness YouTube songlist, where I’ve included every song I’ve ever featured in a canto — give it a spin!

READING: “Goodbye Surfing, Hello God!”: Ever heard that quote that Beach Boys genius Brian Wilson wanted his follow up to Pet Sounds to be a “teenage symphony to God”? This is the article that first reported, in the late, great Creem. The type of journalism that isn’t done enough anymore: sprawling, messy, detailed and documented over months. Man, wouldn’t it have been great to read the Saturday Evening Post article mentioned in this piece that never came to be because this piece captured and predicted Wilson’s fate?

BUY MY NEW CO-BOOK! People’s Guide to Orange County tells an alternative history of OC through the scholarship and reporting of myself, Elaine Lewinnek, and Thuy Vo Dang. There’ll be signings all year — in meanwhile, buy your copy TODAY. And, yes: I’ll autograph it!

JOIN MY FOOKIN’ INGRATE BOOK CLUB!: My sometimes announcement that I run a book club called Guti’s Fookin’ Ingrate Book Club, and if you’re not signed up for it, you’re missing out. We just read a book about the Titanic — yeah. Sign up TODAY, because the next newsletter is coming out TOMORROW.

Gustavo in the News

“Friday’s Headlines”: Streetsblog LA shouts out a columna of mine

“SB 782 is No Longer "For the Kids...”: Stephen Sach’s excellent Altadena rebuilding Substack shouts out a columna of mine.

“How Trump’s Tariffs Promote Hate at Home”: A plug in the The New Republic.

“The forgotten man who was California’s original king of deportation”: An L.A. Times newsletter you should subscribe to plugs a columna of mine.

Gustavo Stories 

"Trump estaba ganando con los latinos. Ahora, su crueldad lo está descarrilando”: The Spanish-language version of a columna of mine from last week or so.

“Susanna MacManus, doyenne of Olvera Street’s Cielito Lindo, dies”: My latest L.A. Times obituary talks about a Cal-Mex legend. KEY QUOTE: “Blessed with a palate that could catch even the slightest tweak, she made sure that the restaurant’s hallmark meal — beef taquitos in a small paper boat or plate, two to an order and floating in steaming, piquant avocado sauce — always came out crunchy yet supple.”

“In an L.A. park, Trump unleashed his latest show of farce: The Battle of the Photo Op”: My latest L.A. Times columna talks about the charade that happened this week with la migra at MacArthur Park. KEY QUOTE: “What’s happening reminds me of the concluding line Lisa Simpson sang when Springfield Nuclear Power Plant workers went on strike against Mr. Burns and his heavies: They may have the strength, but we have the power.”

“‘La migra, la migra’: Inside Huntington Park’s long deportation summer”: My next latest L.A. Times columna finds me on la Pacific and beyond. KEY QUOTE: “Yet the longer ICE agents sweep through town, the more residents are doing something about it.”

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