Nyesha is an expert at fusing food and place and then building narratives around that fusion. Most of her stories are about Los Angeles, which meant that I tried to pick an LA story also. That sparked a memory of the first time I visited California, back in the mid-eighties, and specifically a memory of Toddy Tee’s “Batterram,” an early hip-hop song about the LAPD’s use of a modified Army tank to break down doors in search of crack dealers. That’s a completely different kind of cooking, but that’s not why I picked it. To me, it was one of the first true signs that there was distinct a West Coast culture that wasn’t making its way back east unless people brought it.