la.foodblogging

Los Angeles Downtown News reporter Chris Coates just filed an enterprising story about tagging along during a multi-agency bust of illegal vendors downtown. The online version of Police vs. Pirates also carries a photo, by photojournalist Gary Leonard, of cops hauling away felonious jugs of agua fresca in shopping carts.

The most action-packed food-related excerpts:

As the uniformed officers rush into the alley, there are a few screams, the sound of shopping carts flipping over and the sudden smell of burning oil. When the officers appear, many of the food vendors simply abandon their wares, which are stocked in old shopping buggies and baby carriages. Some attempt to stash their goods on store roofs.

Others try to grab as much as they can carry in their arms and run, though several vendors drop some of their goods. Packages of meat, sour cream and green peppers fall to the pavement. The result is a trail of smashed food. “It doesn’t smell too good, does it?” Smith says after the mass exit.

No, officer, it sure doesn’t!

As things calm down, the group of burly police and BID helps load the “product,” as it’s called, into an open-topped truck that will take it to a dump. First in are the vats of grease, followed by the flattop stoves and then the coolers packed with chunks of ice. Food, some of it rotten, is spilling everywhere.

How hungry is everyone right now? Coates also wrote an interesting story last week about the Daily Grill’s $2M investment in it’s new restaurant on Flower downtown.

Photo credit: Gary Leonard, Los Angeles Downtown News