Tamales, Los Angeles’ first street food
Tamales were a natural to become L.A.’s first street-food fad, given their utilitarianism, cheap pricing and irresistible taste. The origins of the city’s tamale sellers remain murky, although newspaper accounts place them as far back as the 1870s, and by 1880, a Los Angeles Herald article commented, “The experience of our Eastern visitors will be incomplete unless they sample” a Los Angeles street tamale.
