Lifestyle
Meat is central to my cultural heritage. Here's how I gave it up
My earliest memories of food are of family barbecues.
My late father grew up on a cattle ranch in Uruguay, where there are three times as many cows as people. It’s one of the world’s top consumers of beef per capita; Uruguayans eat an average of 200 pounds of meat a year. Meanwhile, my mother is from Kansas City, Mo., which is renowned for its slow-smoked barbecue.
So when I decided to switch to a plant-based diet in 2007, it was an understatement to say that my parents and I were at odds. I wasn’t just cutting out a food group from my diet, but a significant aspect of my cultural identity.
I was born in California in 1989. But when I was three, my family moved to Uruguay. I have an early memory at the butcher where my abuela placed two massive cow tongues — one in each of my hands — and asked me which one felt heavier.
The tongue was for an asado, a cultural tradition started by gauchos (Uruguayan cowboy cattle ranchers) of grilling meat on a parrilla, which is an open-air wood fire outdoor grill. These were occasions where, amid the chatter of our friends and family, my father would encourage me to try bites of mystery meat cuts.
“I grilled these for you with love,” he’d say, leaving me no choice but to try what he’d handed me. Only after I’d taken a bite would he reveal what I’d eaten. A brain, an intestine, a bull testicle.
When we moved to Kansas City about a year later, asados were replaced with sprawling KC-style cookouts. My maternal family is large, so when we go out to eat, there’s usually more than 20 of us. For as long as I can remember, we’ve been loyal to Arthur Bryant’s, a BBQ spot in downtown Kansas City. As a child, I loved eating ribs doused in sweet tangy KC BBQ sauce made with molasses, acidic vinegar and spicy chili powder alongside my cousins.
At 17, I moved to Los Angeles for college. Up until that point in my life, eating meat wasn’t something I questioned. Though I never really enjoyed chicken, turkey or lamb, I consumed red meat often. This delighted my father, who considered that trait to mean I was a good Uruguayan. But despite enjoying red meat, I had no idea how to prepare it. My father was the keeper of the grill, and he held the knowledge of how to select a cut, season and cook it.
The first time I went to the grocery store in Los Angeles, I stood in the meat aisle overwhelmed. It was the summer of 2007 and the U.S. was on the brink of an economic crisis. The slabs of flesh were expensive, and the thought of handling them disturbed me. So I decided not to buy any. That’s how I stopped eating meat. Originally, it wasn’t a decision based on morals, animal rights, environmental conservation or optimal health — I just went with my gut.
I soon found my new dietary choice was a challenge for my family to accept. Two months later, I flew home to surprise my sister for her 14th birthday. When I told my parents and sister I wasn’t eating meat, they were puzzled — my mom had made fried chicken for dinner. They weren’t open to discussing the benefits of a plant-based diet. And their lack of support made me feel misunderstood. But I also decided that it wasn’t their responsibility to cater to my dietary preferences. That night, I filled up on salad and potatoes instead.
I later learned that there were a lot of complicated factors at play in our exchange.
“In Latinx culture, food is central to family and community gatherings,” says Vanessa Palomera, a Mexican-American therapist based in Dallas, Texas. “When someone goes vegan, it can feel like a rejection of the culture or family traditions, which makes it harder for others to accept.”
Food became a pressure point in our relationship. This was especially hard to navigate as a newly independent adult, when I strived to be seen. I wavered a bit in those first few years at family gatherings — especially at Arthur Bryant’s, where I’d give in to the pressure from family and have a single BBQ rib in addition to a heaping plate of beans and fries.
It often felt like my new diet was a nuisance. I felt guilty on Thanksgiving for passing on turkey that had been lovingly prepared as a way to celebrate gratitude. Again, I resorted to side dishes to satiate me. It was hardest to resist my father, who would sometimes tell me how hard he had worked to be able to buy steak for the family. I didn’t know what else to do but have a tiny bite to appease him.
But the older I grew, the better I became about sticking to my plant-based diet. At one family gathering, I attempted to create a vegan-friendly replica of my maternal great-grandmother’s cheese ball — a sphere of cream cheese and ham. Everyone was surprised at how similar my vegan version was to the original, and it was meaningful to me that I could eat something that honored my family’s traditions.
My family members gradually began to accept my diet. At another get-together in my early 20s, I made black bean avocado brownies. One of my aunts bravely ate one with a smile. (Even though they were admittedly disgusting.) But just this small gesture made me feel valued. Years later, one of my cousins even stopped eating meat in my presence out of respect for my diet. These small gestures made a huge impact.
“It’s important for your diet to be respected because food choices reflect your values, beliefs and personal choices,” Palomera told me. “When your community honors your diet, it creates a sense of support, inclusion and acceptance.”
Two years after I gave up meat, I visited Uruguay. My family there couldn’t comprehend my diet. In their minds, eating meat is inherent to our way of life. Their concern came from a place of love. Did I still get enough protein? They asked. It was obnoxious to have my choices questioned, but they weren’t wrong about my protein intake. My vegan options there were extremely limited. I mostly ate fried potatoes and ensalada mixta (a salad of lettuce, tomato and onion). When I could find ñoquis made without egg I would order them with chimichurri sauce.
This diet became unsustainable. And my hunger drove me to take a bite of choripán here and a sándwich de miga there. It felt confusing. These were my favorite dishes as a child and I still enjoyed the taste. At the same time, indulging made me feel horrible. What was I doing this for?
I began to research the principles that drive people to veganism, and it was then that I knew I could not support factory farming’s detrimental impact on the environment. I also wanted to live a life in line with my belief that all animals have the right to live without being raised for human consumption.
Over the last 18 years of being plant-based, my reasoning for not eating any sentient being has been influenced by the Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain philosophy of ahimsa, a belief system that teaches leading a nonviolent life and respecting all living beings. Many folks, myself included, believe that means refraining from consuming animal products.
When I returned to Uruguay a decade later, Montevideo had a burgeoning vegan scene and I was finally able to enjoy plant-based versions of foods typically made with meat such as empanadas, milanesas and even a chivito — the national dish of Uruguay that usually made of mozzarella, steak, ham, bacon and egg.
To have access to my cultural heritage in plant-based form was thrilling — and delicious. And it also helped my family take part in my diet. They joined me at vegan restaurants, where they enjoyed trying our foods in meatless forms. Having culturally relevant vegan food, like vegan chorizos, made it easier to enjoy asados with my family — we could keep the ritual going without sacrificing my personal dietary choices.
I now understand how important that was for my mind, body and spirit. As Palomera says: “Food is tied to our identity, heritage and sense of belonging. It can connect us to our roots.”
Today, many of my family members make an effort to look for vegan-friendly restaurants when we go out to eat and to have plant-based food at home when I visit so I can cook. They’ve come to love the dishes I make, both vegan Uruguayan fare and others I’ve learned how to make while traveling to over 90 countries.
I no longer feel alienated from my culture. Through patience, curiosity and commitment, I’ve found that you can honor your heritage while staying true to your values — one delicious vegan chivito at a time.
He always texted when he was outside. No call, no knock. It was just a message and then the soft sound of my door opening. He moved like someone practiced in disappearing.
His name meant “complete” in Arabic, which is what I felt when we were together.
I met him the way you meet most things that matter in Los Angeles — without intending to. In our senior year at a college in eastern L.A. County, we were introduced through mutual friends, then thrown together by the particular gravity of people who recognized something in each other. He was a Muslim medical student, conservative and careful and funny in the dry, precise way of someone who has always had to choose his words. I was loud where he was quiet, messy where he was disciplined. I was out. He was not.
I understood, or thought I did. I thought that I couldn’t get hurt if I was completely conscious throughout the endeavor. Los Angeles has a way of making you feel like the whole world shares your freedoms — until you realize the city is enormous, and not all of it belongs to you in the same way.
For months, our world was confined to my apartment. He would slip in after dark, and we’d stay up late talking about his family in Iran, classical music and the particular pressure of being the son someone sacrificed everything to bring here. He told me things he said he’d never told anyone, and I believed him.
The orange glow from my Nesso lamp lit his face while the indigo sky pressed against the window behind him. In our small little world, we were safe. Outside was another matter.
On our first real date, I took him to the L.A. Phil’s “An Evening of Film & Music: From Mexico to Hollywood” program. I told him they were cheap seats even though they were the first row on the terrace. He was thrilled in the way only someone who doesn’t expect to be delighted actually gets delighted — fully, without guarding it. I put my arm around his shoulders. At some point, I shifted and moved it, and he nudged it back. He was OK with PDA here.
I remember thinking that wealth is a great barrier to harm and then feeling silly for extrapolating my own experience once again. Inside Walt Disney Concert Hall, we were just two people in love with the same music.
Outside was still another matter.
In February, on Valentine’s Day, he took me to a Yemeni restaurant in Anaheim. We hovered over saffron tea surrounded by other young Southern Californians, and we looked like friends. Before we went in, we sat in the parking lot of the strip mall — signs in Arabic advertising bread, coffee, halal meats, the Little Arabia District — hand in hand. I leaned over to kiss him.
“Not here,” he said. His eyes shifted furtively. “Someone might see.”
I understood, or told myself I did, but I was saddened. Later, after the kind of reflection that only arrives in the wreckage, I would understand something harder: I had been unconsciously asking him to choose, over and over, between the people he loved and the person he loved. I had a long pattern of choosing unavailable men, telling myself it was because I could handle the complexity. The truth was more embarrassing. I thought that if someone like him chose me anyway — chose me over the weight of societal expectations — it would mean I was worth choosing. It took me a long time to see how unfair that was to him and to me.
We went to the Norton Simon Museum together in November, on the kind of gray Pasadena day when the 210 Freeway roars in the background like white noise. He studied for the MCAT while I wrote a paper on Persian rugs. In between practice problems, he translated ancient Arabic scripts for me. I thought, “We make a good team.” Afterward, we walked through the galleries and he didn’t let go of my arm.
That was the version of us I kept returning to — when the ending came during Ramadan. It arrived as a spiritual reflection of my own. I texted: “Does this end at graduation — whatever we are doing?”
He thought I meant Ramadan. I did not mean Ramadan.
“I care about you,” he wrote, “but I don’t want you to think this could work out to anything more than just dating. I mean, of course, I’ve fantasized about marrying you. If I could live my life the way I wanted, of course I would continue. I’m just sad it’s not in this lifetime.”
I was in Mexico City when these texts were exchanged. That night I flew to Oaxaca to clear my head and then, after less than 24 hours, flew back to L.A. No amount of vacation would allow me to process what had just happened, so I threw myself back into work.
My therapist told me to use the conjunction “and” instead of “but.” It happened, and I am changed. The harm I caused and the love I felt. The beauty of what we made and the impossibility of where it could go. She gave me a knowing smile when I asked if it would stay with me forever. She didn’t answer, which was the answer.
I think about the freeways now, the way Joan Didion called them our only secular communion. When you’re on the ground in Los Angeles, the world narrows to the few blocks around you. Get on the freeway and you understand the whole body of the city at once: the arteries, the pulse, the scale of the thing.
You understand that you are a single cell in something enormous and moving. It is all out of your control. I am in a lane. The lane shaped how I drive. He was simply in a different lane, and his lane shaped him, and those two facts can coexist without either of us being the villain of the sad story.
He came like a secret in the night, and he left the same way. What we made in between was real and complicated and mine to hold forever, hoping we find each other in the next life.
The author lives in Los Angeles.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
The art industry is increasingly shaped by artists’ and art businesses’ shared realization that they are locked in a fierce struggle for sustained attention — against each other, and against the rest of the overstimulated, always-online world. A major New York art fair aims to win this competition next month by knocking down the increasingly shaky walls between contemporary art and fashion.
When visitors enter the Independent art fair on May 14, they will almost immediately encounter its open-plan centerpiece: an installation of recent couture looks from Comme des Garçons. It will be the first New York solo presentation of works by Rei Kawakubo, the brand’s founder and mastermind, since a lauded 2017 survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
Art fairs have often been front and center in the industry’s 21st-century quest to capture mindshare. But too many displays have pierced the zeitgeist with six-figure spectacles, like Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana and Beeple’s robot dogs. Curating Independent around Comme des Garçons comes from the conviction that a different kind of iconoclasm can rise to the top of New York’s spring art scrum.
Elizabeth Dee, the founder and creative director of Independent, said that making Kawakubo’s work the “nerve center” of this year’s edition was a “statement of purpose” for the fair’s evolution. After several years at the compact Spring Studios in TriBeCa, Independent will more than double its square footage by moving to Pier 36 at South Street, on the East River. Dee has narrowed the fair’s exhibitor list, to 76, from 83 dealers in 2025, and reduced booth fees to encourage a focus on single artists making bold propositions.
“Rei’s work has been pivotal to thinking about how my work as a curator, gallerist and art fair can push boundaries, especially during this extraordinary move toward corporatization and monoculture in the art world in the last 20 years,” Dee said.
Kawakubo’s designs have been challenging norms since her brand’s first Paris runway show in 1981, but her work over the last 13 years on what she calls “objects for the body” has blurred borders between high fashion and wearable sculpture.
The Comme des Garçons presentation at Independent will feature 20 looks from autumn-winter 2020 to spring-summer 2025. Forgoing the runway, Kawakubo is installing her non-clothing inside structures made from rebar and colored plastic joinery.
Adrian Joffe, the president of both Comme des Garçons International and the curated retailer Dover Street Market International (and who is also Kawakubo’s husband), said in an interview that Kawakubo’s intention was to create a sculptural installation divorced from chronology and fashion — “a thing made new again.”
Every look at Independent was made in an edition of three or fewer, but only one of each will be for sale on-site. Prices will be about $9,000 to $30,000. Comme des Garçons will retain 100 percent of the sales.
Asked why she was interested in exhibiting at Independent, the famously elusive Kawakubo said via email, “The body of work has never been shown together, and this is the first presentation in New York in almost 10 years.” Joffe added a broader philosophical motivation. “We’ve never done it before; it was new,” he said. Also essential was the fair’s willingness to embrace Kawakubo’s vision for the installation rather than a standard fair booth.
Kawakubo began consistently engaging with fine art decades before such crossovers became commonplace. Since 1989, she has invited a steady stream of contemporary artists to create installations in Comme des Garçons’s Tokyo flagship store. The ’90s brought collaborations with the artist Cindy Sherman and performance pioneer Merce Cunningham, among others.
More cross-disciplinary projects followed, including limited-release direct mailers for Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo designs each from documentation of works provided by an artist or art collective.
The display at Independent reopens the debate about Kawakubo’s proper place on the continuum between artist and designer. But the issue is already settled for celebrated artists who have collaborated with her.
“I totally think of Rei as an artist in the truest sense,” Sherman said by email. “Her work questions what everyone else takes for granted as being flattering to a body, questions what female bodies are expected to look like and who they’re catering to.”
Ai Weiwei, the subject of a 2010 Comme des Garçons direct mailer, agreed that Kawakubo “is, in essence, an artist.” Unlike designers who “pursue a sense of form,” he added, “her design and creation are oriented toward attitude” — specifically, an attitude of “rebellion.”
Also taking this position is “Costume Art,” the spring exhibition at the Costume Institute. Opening May 10, the show pairs individual works from multiple designers — including Comme des Garçons — with artworks from the Met’s holdings to advance the argument made by the dress code for this year’s Met gala: “Fashion is art.”
True to form, Kawakubo sometimes opts for a third way.
“Rei has often said she’s not a designer, she’s not an artist,” Joffe said. “She is a storyteller.”
Now to find out whether an art fair sparks the drama, dialogue and attention its authors want.
Lifestyle
They set out to elevate karaoke in L.A. — and opened a glamorous lounge that pulls out all the stops
Brothers Leo and Oliver Kremer visited karaoke spots around the globe and almost always had the same impression.
“The drinks weren’t always great, the aesthetics weren’t always so glamorous, the sound wasn’t always awesome and the lights were often generic,” says Leo, a former bassist of the band Third Eye Blind.
As devout karaoke fans, they wanted to level up the experience. So they dreamed up Mic Drop, an upscale karaoke lounge in West Hollywood that opens Thursday. It’s located inside the original Larrabee Studios, a historic 1920s building formerly owned by Carole King and her ex-husband, Gerry Goffin — and the spot where King recorded some of her biggest hits. Third Eye Blind band members Stephan Jenkins and Brad Hargreaves are investors of the new venue.
Inside the two-story, 6,300-square-foot venue with 13 private karaoke rooms and an electrifying main stage, you can feel like a rock star in front of a cheering audience. Want to check it out? Here are six things to know.
The Kremer brothers hired sculptor Shawn HibmaCronan to create an 8-foot-tall disco-themed microphone for their karaoke lounge.
1. Take your pick between a private karaoke experience or the main stage
A unique element of Mic Drop is that it offers both private karaoke rooms and a main stage experience for those who wish to sing in front of a crowd. The 13 private rooms range from six- to 45-person capacity. Each of the karaoke rooms are named after a famous recording studio such as Electric Lady, Abbey Road, Shangri La and of course, Larrabee Studios. There is a two-hour minimum on all rentals and hourly rates depend on the room size and day of the week.
But if you’re ready to take the center stage, it’s free to sing — at least technically. All you have to do is pay a $10 fee at the door, which is essentially a token that goes toward your first drink. Then you can put your name on the list with the KJ (karaoke jockey) who keeps the crowd energized throughout the night and even hits the stage at times.
Harrison Baum, left, of Santa Monica, and Amanda Stagner, 27, of Los Angeles, sing in one of the 13 private karaoke rooms.
2. Thumping, high sound quality was a top priority
As someone who toured the world playing bass for Third Eye Blind, top-tier sound was a nonnegotiable for Leo. “Typically with karaoke, the sound is kind of teeny, there’s not a lot of bass and the vocal is super hot and sitting on top too much,” he says. To combat this, he and his brother teamed up with Pineapple Audio, an audio visual company based in Chicago, to design their crisp sound system. They also installed concert-grade speakers and custom subwoofers from a European audio equipment manufacturer called Celto, and bought gold-plated Sennheiser wireless microphones, which they loved so much that they had an 8-foot-tall replica made for their main room. Designed by artist Shawn HibmaCronan, the “macrophone,” as they call it, has roughly 30,000 mirror tiles. “It spins and throws incredible disco light everywhere,” says Leo.
Karaoke jockeys Sophie St. John, 27, second from left, and Cameron Armstrong, 30, right, get the crowd involved with their song picks at Mic Drop.
3. A concert-level performance isn’t complete without good stage lighting and a haze machine
Each karaoke room features a disco ball and dynamic lighting that syncs up with whatever song you’re singing, which makes you feel like you are a professional performer. There’s also a haze machine hidden under the leather seats. Meanwhile, the main stage is concert-ready with additional dancing lasers and spotlights.
Brett Adams, left, of Sherman Oaks, and Patrick Riley of Studio City sing karaoke together inside a private lounge at Mic Drop.
4. The song selection is vast, offering classics and new hits
One of the worst things that can happen when you go to karaoke is not being able to find the song you want to sing. At Mic Drop, the odds of this happening are slim to none. The venue uses a popular karaoke service called KaraFun, which has a catalog of more than 600,000 songs (and adds 400 new tracks every month), according to its website. Take your pick from country, R&B, jazz, rap, pop, love duets and more. (Two newish selections I spotted were Raye’s “Where Is my Husband” and Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need,” which both released late last year.) In the private karaoke rooms, there’s also a fun feature on Karafun called “battle mode,” which allows you and your crew of up to 20 people to compete in real time. KaraFun also has an entertaining music trivia game, which I tested out with the founders and came in second place.
The design inspiration for Mic Drop was 1920s music lounges and 1970s disco culture, says designer Amy Morris.
5. The interiors are inspired by 1920s music lounges mixed with ‘70s disco vibes
A disco ball hangs from the ceiling.
If you took the sophisticated aesthetic of 1920s music lounges and mixed it with the vibrant and playful era of 1970s disco culture, you’d find Mic Drop.
When you walk into the lounge, the first thing you’ll see is a bright red check-in desk that resembles a performer’s dressing room with vanity lights, several mirrors and a range of wigs. “So much of karaoke is about getting into character and letting go of the day, so we had the idea to sell the wigs,” says Oliver. As you continue into the lounge, the focal point is the stage, which is adorned with zebra-printed carpet and dramatic, red velvet curtains. For seating, slide into the red velvet banquettes or plop onto a gold tiger velvet stool. Upstairs, you’ll find the intimate karaoke studios, which are decorated with red velvet walls and brass, curved doorways that echo the building’s deco arches, says Mic Drop’s interior designer, Amy Morris of the Morris Project.
Sarah Rothman, center, of Oakland, and friend Rachel Bernstein, left, of Los Angeles, wait at the bar.
6. You can order nontraditional karaoke bites as you wait for your turn to sing
While Mic Drop offers some of the food you’d typically find at a karaoke lounge such as tater tots, truffle popcorn and pizza, the venue has some surprising options as well. For example, a 57 gram caviar service (served with chips, crème fraîche and chives) and shrimp cocktail from Santa Monica Seafood. For their pizza program, the Kremer brothers teamed up with Avalou’s Italian Pizza Company, which is run by Louis Lombardi who starred in “The Sopranos.” He’s the brainchild behind my favorite dish, the Fuhgeddaboudit pizza, which is made with pastrami, pickles and mustard. It might sound repulsive, but trust me.
As for the cheeky cocktails, they are all named after famous musicians and songs such as the Pink Pony Club (a tart cherry pomegranate drink with vodka named after Chappell Roan), Green Eyes (a sake sour with kiwi and melon named after Green Day) and Megroni Thee Stallion (an elevated negroni named after Megan Thee Stallion).
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