Regarding Mexican food on downtown's calle de turistas...

No good Mexican food to be had on Olvera Street? I beg to differ. La Luz del Dia, the cafeteria-style restaurant at the plaza end of the street, is one of the treasures of Los Angeles Mexican cooking, serving the kind of carnitas, hand-made tortillas, champurrado,stewed pigskin and fresh cactus salads that I suspect locals ate in this neighborhood 150 years ago. I sometimes dream of those chicharrones...

Best,
Jonathan Gold
Gold is the award-winning food columnist at the LA Weekly and answers reader questions at Ask Mr. Gold.