The Guardian of L.A.'s Biggest Sunday Ritual: Zach Brooks of Smorgasburg LA

We slowly, because this was sort of the way Smorgasburg started off and the way we were, we became this incubator for small businesses.

If you go back and look at interviews that first month, we weren't like, this is an incubator for small businesses.

We didn't know what we were.

All we knew is we wanted to be the best collection of food in LA on Sundays.

Yo, welcome to another episode of In A Minute with Evan Lovett, coming to you live from the IM Studios in the heart of Los Angeles.

And I am here with Zach Brooks, the general manager of Smorgasburg, LA, which takes place every week, rain or shine, at The Row, which has a lot of history that we'll be getting into, but is the largest weekly food festival in Los Angeles.

I read that it might be the largest anywhere, but isn't Smorgasburg New York weekly? Yeah.

I mean we start – so Smorgasburg in general is

the

largest weekly food festival that happens in the country.

But LA, you guys got the biggest one here, Smorgasburg.

Well,

weekly because we're kind of the only one.

I mean that's the thing is that it's every single Sunday in downtown

LA.

And we will get into details.

But what it is, is a fantastic, awesome festival.

And, you know, Zach has actually been described as, quote, the gatekeeper to a coveted corner of L.A.'s culinary world.

I know.

Who said that? How do you like that one? Who said that? Who called me that? What kind of pressure is that, right? And I don't want to paint him as a gatekeeper because he's an awesome guy.

He was the founder of Midtown Lunch during the blogging era, one of the most influential New York food blogs.

But it got nationally – national renown and that – uh springboarded him into a podcast called food is the new rock so he's accomplished he knows food and he's here in la we're gonna talk everything smorgasburg and food los angeles welcome man thanks for having me dude absolutely thanks for being here um first thing tell us what smorgasburg is i've been there it's fun it's awesome but lay it out for anybody who doesn't know