How Food Became Politicized

Kooks Burritos—a food truck that served patrons in Portland, Oregon—was a smashing success. Its proprietors became local celebrities. In one interview with a Portland journalist, the truck’s owners, Kali Wilgus and Liz Connelly, confessed that they had the idea for their little food truck following a trip to Mexico. There, they fell in love with the cuisine, asked local chefs to share their recipes and techniques, and brought them back to the Pacific Northwest. Soon enough, the phenomenon’s origin story became a subject of outrage. The two women were accused by the city’s identity-obsessed press of being “white cooks bragging about stealing recipes from Mexico.”

Read the rest of Noah Rothman in Commentary magazine.