Every few months, a small part of quiet West 87th Street near the Los Angeles International Airport turns into a scene of nighttime street food. On these evenings, Ayara Thai – a family-owned restaurant that has been around for 19 years – sets up a makeshift kitchen on the street and puts tables out on their sidewalk and the street patio that was originally installed during the pandemic shutdown. Thai hotpot, barbecue and street food popups are among the special events Ayara Thai holds throughout the year, but there is one that is the most unique and perhaps the most popular: the kancha boat noodle. Thai boat noodle is a noodle soup with a rich broth made from pork or beef, dark soy sauce, herbs, and typically thickened with cow or pig’s blood.

It’s Sunday morning in Los Angeles. Behind the white door of a single-story house that blends in with its suburban neighbors, Jalia Walusimbi starts her day as she does every other. Stripping the tough green skins from a cluster of plantains, she plunks the peeled fruit into a boiling pot to prepare a dish of matooke covered in peanut-based binyebwa to pair with the samosas, mbuzi goat soup and luwombo she’ll shortly place before the homesick Ugandan expats and curious culinary tourists who visit the informal restaurant she runs from inside her Van Nuys dining room.

Birria is among the biggest culinary buzzwords across the U.S. today – only it’s not the goat-based Jalisco recipes that get the attention. birria de chivo, the signature dish of the state. Most people, especially Jaliscans, traditionally think of birria as being made from goat. Hector’s version, tatemada, involves a final roast of birria de chivo in the oven, making the skin charred and crisp. When the hour strikes eight on Saturday morning, Hector Ramirez pulls the wooden handle on a cast-iron lid sealing his self-constructed, propane-fueled, cylindrical oven and unveils his birria tatemada.