LA Food

So Saveur Magazine columnist Jonathan Gold says that LA is the best place in the world to eat right now.  And, as a very frequently traveler to LA (specifically, West LA, Santa Monica, Venice), I am inclined to agree for all the reasons Gold sites.  

So how did this happen?  Did it take "leadership" in a conventional sense?  Did the city do a strategic plan that had as a goal becoming the world's greatest cuisine site?  Unlikely.  Did civic booster organizations campaign far and wide to attract restaurant entrepreneurs to the LA basin?  Nope.  Was it the result of massive federal or state funding?  Hardly.

Notwithstanding the fact that location blesses LA even more than it is a curse, what seems to be a magical ingredient is that the city is a place where energetic, mobile, and creative people want to live.  And with them comes a desire for unfettered access to a cornucopia of experiences, include those of a culinary nature.  In short, there is a market for incredible food in LA, at least in part because of the people who choose to live there.  Willing buyers and sellers seem to find each other.

Could, say, Omaha or Cleveland or St. Louis replicate this synergy?  Probably not.  And not because they are smaller cities, but rather because they lack the building blocks necessary for success in the same way that life itself would not have emerged (or emerged very differently) absent a few amino acids in the primordial soup.

There's a lesson here for all of us trying to catalyze change in communities large and small.  Never mind the strategic plan; do we have the right building blocks in place?