Elina Shatkin is the LA Times’ content producer for The Guide. Most importantly, she’s been keeping close tabs on what she calls “nouveau food trucks,” the likes of which we’ve been covering here on the blog.

I checked in with her for a fiver, and she replies:

“Let me just state up front, that these are strictly my personal opinions. I don’t claim to speak for anyone but myself. I don’t claim to be an expert about food or about taco trucks. I’m just someone who like to eat. A lot.”

With that aside, here we go:

1) So, what’s with your obsession with new LA food trucks? How do you find out about new ones? Why is LA obsessed with them all of a sudden?

1. When I moved to L.A. from the sheltered suburb of my youth and discovered street meat, I was in love. It was probably my one experience with love at first sight. I find out about new food trucks the same way most people do: from friends and food blogs. I have the added bonus of receiving tips and press releases because I write about food.

I think there are probably lots of reasons L.A. is currently so obsessed with what I call the Nouveau Food Trucks. They’re new. They’re inexpensive as compared with even the cheapest sit-down restaurant. (In a bad economy, they’re an affordable indulgence). Food and the discussion around it is a super-hot trend right now. (I suspect that desire was latent in the gen pop for a long time, but it’s been fueled by review sites like Yelp & Citysearch, by food blogs, by Twitter and other social networking apps. Basically, all of these avenues give “ordinary people” an avenue to express and argue their opinions.) And, not to be underestimated, NFTs represent a cultural fusion that’s a perfect fit for L.A.

2) Do you worry about the hipsterization/gentrification of taco trucks at all?

2. Nope. There are about 2 dozen Nouveau Food Trucks roaming L.A. In contrast, there are roughly 7,000 taco trucks in the city of L.A. (This number comes from Erin Glenn, CEO of the Asociación de Loncheros L.A. Familia Unida de California. I interviewed but didn’t quote her in my story about L.A. food trucks. She warns that this is a VERY rough estimate. The actual numbers may be much higher.) It’s not like these two dozen Nouveau Food Trucks are pushing out the thousands of traditional taco trucks. If anything, these Nouveau Food Trucks are really competing against each other for the same market segment.

Cultural influence is very fluid and hard to track, but it rarely occurs in a linear fashion. Rather, it’s an octopus-like creature that reaches out in all direction, sucking in and expelling matter. (Is that what octopi do? I wish I was a cephalopod expert so I’d know if my analogy was apt.)

Territorialism is another issue, but I haven’t seen the kind of food truck vs. food truck turf wars in L.A. that have occurred in N.Y. That may yet come to pass.

3) What are your top three new favorite trucks/dishes?

3. Because I write about food, I’m going to take the fifth on that.

4) Why do you think that these trucks haven’t caught on in other parts of the state/country as fast?

4. On the contrary, food trucks have been a big part of NYC street food for a long time with new ones rolling out all the time. They’re catching on big in San Francisco which has a crème brûlée cart, a clam chowder truck and plenty of others. Seattle has Maximus Minimus. Austin has Mighty Cone and Hey Cupcake. I think it’s just that when it comes to innovative culture, food, art and fun, Los Angeles leads the way and other cities follow.

5) What item would you NOT want to see sold from a truck?

5. Eggplant. I hate eggplant. I hate the way it looks, I hate the way it feels in my mouth. I think it is evil — except when it’s ground up, dosed with garlic and made into baba ganoush. That’s the only way I can eat it.

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