Gourmet Magazine September 2007 Special Issue: Latino Food

"Every major American city now has a Latino enclave, and you don't need to travel more than a few blocks to find Latino culture," explains Ruth Reichl in "Food Without Borders" (page 24), her editor's letter for Gourmet's special issue on Latino food, America's fastest-rising cuisine. "There are few places in America where the influence of the people who have come here from Mexico, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru is not being felt."

Gourmet Travels: Gourmet's writers tell us about communities in which they were raised: NY, L.A., Miami, and Chicago

In "He'll Take El Alto" (page 150), Dominican-American writer Junot Diaz undertakes a tour of his neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, profiling restaurants and street food that are well worth a trip uptown. Diaz, a professor of creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the soon-to-be-released The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, writes: "We Domos have Upper Manhattan on lock. Hard to walk anywhere without being tempted by something delicious." A recipe for Dominican Sancocho is on page 159. A glossary of Dominican food terms is on page 158. "Address Book" (page 198) lists Diaz's favorite Dominican restaurants.

Gourmet magazine September 2007 Special Issue: Latino Food - On Newsstands August 21, 2007 (Photo: Business Wire)