Danny Trejo Stars in California Eating Issue 3

WORDS AND PHOTOS BY TAMARA PALMER

Issue 3 of California Eating is here, and I am in love! It’s a heartfelt tribute to several OGs that one might not expect to see in a conventional food magazine, including actor-turned-food superhero Danny Trejo, rapper/chefs Snoop Dogg and E-40 and food humanitarians Homeboy Industries.

My feature on Danny Trejo takes up 20 of the magazine’s 60 pages, and I’ll forever be indebted to him for giving an independent magazine that he’s never heard of a chance to interview and photograph him. I’ve interviewed a lot of entertainment luminaries in my career, but our brief moments together were particularly thrilling and special for me. For the past three years, I’ve been following and photographing the rise of his food empire in Southern California closely and I am proud that this man is my first human cover star. I don’t know how I’m going to top it, but his blessing has inspired me to try!

I won’t spoil the details revealed the magazine feature here, but the story behind how this interview even happened is both wild and accidentally a little bit X-rated, a flight by the seat of my pants that I think will help to define and maintain a renegade spirit with this magazine.

Meta moment: Issue 3 at Trejo’s Cantina in Hollywood, where the cover was shot.

We’ll be surprise dropping more free copies at Trejo’s Cantina soon.

We’ll have more at Trejo’s Coffee and Donuts soon too — thank you to the staff for letting us have a little fun there!

Order a copy of Issue 3 of California Eating to see more (and to support the independent efforts of this one-woman band over here)!