APASA’s annual Taste of LA, as told from the perspective of one of our APASA interns, Taran Gupta.

After a couple of years of COVID-19, Taste of LA finally came back better than ever as a final event for the amazing year APASA had. Normally an annual event, this event aims to showcase the many ethnic enclaves that LA has through eating the food of the culture and walking through the neighborhoods. This year, our group of 30 students took a trip to LA’s Historic Filipinotown where we saw the neighborhood’s most famous monuments, drank some boba, and ate Filipino food from HiFi Kitchen.

When initially planning this event, my co-runner, Cade Sugiyama, and I had the tough choice to decide which ethnic enclave we would want to explore. After narrowing it down, we ultimately chose to go to Historic Filipinotown (HiFi). Our reasoning for choosing HiFi as our destination was a matter of our attempting to highlight a certain part of LA that a typical USC student would most likely not go to. When choosing between our final two options, HiFi and Thai Town, we ultimately settled on HiFi after rationalizing that an average college student would be more likely to say that they have had Thai food but not Filipino food.

The planning stages for this event were hectic and quick but super rewarding and insightful. Being a freshman on campus and an intern for APASA, I have had very little experience planning a university event designed for students coming from all walks of life. With our planning time sandwiched in between APASA’s Night Market and Cultural Art Expo and the end of the school year, there was very little turnaround time that our committee had. Despite the ups and downs of the planning stages, our committee powered through everything and was able to put on an amazing event.

Our morning started bright and early at the call time of 10:50 AM on April 23rd, 2022. For the first time, we 11 APASA E-boarders and Interns met the wonderful students who joined us for the next 4 hours in HiFi. After our Lyfts dropped us off in the neighborhood, we separated into our little tour groups headed by Taste of LA Committee members who had been studying HiFi’s history. From there we headed to one end of the neighborhood where a large arch designated the neighborhood was put up a couple of weeks before the event. With the words Historic Filipino town proudly emblazoned on the arch, it was a perfect place to start our event.

As we walked through the neighborhood, we looked at the beautiful murals that adorned the walls around the main street, took an impromptu visit to Boba Guys, and acknowledged the gentrification that was occurring in the area. Our tour came to an end at the Filipino World War 2 memorial that was nestled near a community center and skate park. From there we returned to the center of HiFi at Unidad Park where we would eat our food.

Unidad Park is in the middle of HiFi and houses an amazing mural that shows the history of the Filipino people. Before the event, Cade and I invited two Troy Philippines (a member organization of APASA) members to come and talk about their culture and the food we were going to eat. While eating our delicious food, our little group had great discussions about what we saw and our experiences walking through HiFi.

Taste of LA was an incredible experience to plan and execute and I hope everyone who joined us had the opportunity to experience something new!!

Taste of LA 2022 😋