Skip to main content

EVENT: Tamale Festival


Via Erin's Kitchen and Daily Candy

This weekend, starting Friday at 3:00 p.m., The Second Annual Tamale Festival will take place at MacArthur Park by Mama's Hot Tamales Cafe.

The festival will feature a bunch of live entertainment, a tamale eating contest, tamale making classes, and a biggest tamale contest.

If you've never had a tamale, you are missing out on one of the tastiest and most convenient foods around. Tamales are little packages of warm soft masa, mixed with water and steamed in a corn husk. It can be filled with meats, vegetables, cheeses and any combination thereof. It can even be filled with fruit, and can be made in as many beautiful colors as there are colors of corn. And it's portable!

And if you've never been to Mama's Hot Tamale Cafe, you are also missing out. You may have seen Mama's work if you've ever driven by MacArthur Park on 7th St. and noticed a whole row of stands dedicated to tamales of different Latin American countries. Mama's not only is an eating destination, it's a training ground, where local residents can apprentice and learn and prepare for a career in the food service industry.

Tamales are an ancient food that have been served in the Americas for around 5,000 years across several cultures. If you're interested in food, and in Los Angeles, or hispanic culture, you could do worse than head down there and check it out.

Comments

"Mama's Hot Tamales"

"Biggest Tamale Contest"

Why does everything turn dirty in my head? As I've said before, I need therapy.
KT said…
I think you're totally sane. After all, I am pretty sure that "biggest [X] contests" were invented by men for reasons that are totally along the lines you are thinking.

Men are obsessed with having the biggest [X].
Okay--I'll spare your readers and end this now

**hanging head in shame and leaving**
Unknown said…
Ooooh, I heart tamales!
Jeremy said…
I'm gonna keep banging this "next big thing" drum.

Deep fried tamales.

Fusion tamales. Particualrly Indian versions sound good.

Tamales are the new wraps.

Serve it with a vanilla bean.

Sorry.

Popular posts from this blog

NEWS: Angeleno Magazine's Chef's Night Out

Brad A. Johnson of Angeleno magazine, and The Tasting Panel 's Anthony Dias Blue are co-hosting the annual Chef's Night Out and Restaurant Awards to honor local chefs and resterauteurs and to celebrate the release of Angeleno 's food issue. The dinner benefits the Children's Institute, an organization that works with children and families affected by violence, abuse, and trauma. Tickets are $150 for the event (food from the featured chefs with wine and spirits pairings), and $250 for VIP tickets which includes access to a special reception and the awards ceremony. The event will be held at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel and Bungalows this Sunday, July 26. The chefs at the event include: David Myers from Sona, Comme Ça and Pizza Ortica Lee Hefter and Thomas Boyce from Spago Lee Hefter and Ari Rosenson from Cut Susan Feniger from Street Anthony Zappola from Craft Brian Moyers from BLT Steak Ray Garcia from FIG Restaurant Santa Monica Warren Schwartz from Westside Tavern Evan

ABOUT THIS BLOG

I've been evaluating my blog and have realized that, while I have lots of nifty posts, I don't really have a good overall explanation of what exactly this blog is all about, and what one can expect to find here. So I'm creating this post and will link to it in the sidebar for anyone who's interested. I am not a professional chef. I have not been cooking for years. I am not an expert who is going to make beautiful and amazing and complicated dishes to "wow" you. I am, in fact, quite the opposite. I am a total beginner. I've always lived in places with miniscule kitchens and concerned myself with schoolwork and studying and working and not paid the least bit of attention to what I was eating every day. And that's what this blog is all about. It's about me learning where my food comes from, how to make it properly, and how to enjoy it to the utmost. It's no fun to learn by myself, so I started the blog to keep track of what I learn, kind of like a

RESTAURANT: Ristorante Belvedere, Monterosso al Mare, Italy

We started off our second-to-last day in the Cinque Terre by taking the train to Vernazza for breakfast: There was supposed to be a market that day, but since the weather was threatening, there were only a few meager stalls, mostly selling non-food items. We had our breakfast and walked around the village a bit. Vernazza used to have a river flowing all the way through it, but now the river has been shunted underground at a certain point. If you walk to the top of town you can see it, along with some ducks and geese that hang out there to get fed by whoever comes along. J. and I then went to sit and have an espresso and wait for the train to Corniglia, the only town we hadn't yet visited. Corniglia is home to the local nude beach (which we skipped) and is the highest of the towns, elevation-wise. We had to walk up a buttload of steps to get there. Look at me go: That's actually me going down (a lot faster than I came up), but I did come up them as well. There is a bus that ta