Today we’d like to introduce you to Bill Esparza.
Bill, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I still consider myself a saxophone player first but became an accidental food writer and Latin-American food expert through my gigs abroad. I began a blog in 2007 to keep track of my adventures, then caught the attention of food TV personality Andrew Zimmern and the LA Times around 2009. I had already begun to bring tour groups to Baja California–a region I helped expose to national and international media–as well as writing professionally, and fixing for food television. By the end of 2012, I’d co-founded Club Tengo Hambre, tapping into my food knowledge, culinary tour experience, and connections in media and the culinary world to bring a new style of food tour to the masses.
After curating the inaugural food tours in Baja California and Mexico City, and expanding our tour offerings, it made sense to serve our guests in my city, where I’d been exploring the Mexican and Latin-American street food scene since I moved to LA in ’95. I’d been traveling to Latin-America frequently, since 2000, which has allowed me to occupy a unique space as both a cultural insider and an outsider, forming a perspective which has led to a second career as a writer, author, restaurant consultant, media personality and fixer, public speaker, and event curator. However, it’s the cooks and chefs in Latin-America and LA that have made this possible, in trusting me with their stories, and sharing their family’s traditions.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The struggles have been in building a brand without any marketing budget and having the patience to push forward in the beginning, when we hardly could fill a car of guests, let along a passenger van. We were very lucky to have entered the market when we did. Since then, many other companies have copied our routes–for me, the challenge remains to continue to add new stops in order to maintain the individuality and freshness of Club Tengo Hambre.
Please tell us about Club Tengo Hambre. What should we know?
Club Tengo Hambre is a tour company, specializing in bringing guests to unique street food, as well as wine and spirits, and chef-driven restaurants in a style that feels like you’re out with dear friends that are in the know. People know that they will get the best insider food experience, and here in LA, our vendors add special items only for our guests. It’s a fast pass to the kind of street food knowledge that’s hard to come by with great customer service. It’s the greatest pleasure seeing guests enjoying the food, and how emotional they get over a taco, torta, or antojito they’ve always wanted to try. What sets us apart is our relationships with vendors, personalized customer service, that we fully curate the experience down to the menu item, and that we are not afraid to introduce popular food items that other tours might not offer.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Restaurateur Bill Chait, Andrew Zimmern, Phil Rosenthal, writer Gustavo Arellano, and my manager Eileen Stringer have all been there to help me carve this niche, and so many of my followers in the Latino community who’ve sent messages and approached me over the years have inspired me to stay on mission. Working with partners Antonio Diaz de Sandi and Kristin Diaz de Sandi on the creative direction, as well as my LA guides and Peter Bernstein, our transportation partner, have made this a lot of fun. But no one has given me more than my Grandma Lupe, who made me fall in love with our cuisine in her kitchen, and the recently deceased chef Patricia Quintana, who really made me feel special, and gave me the confidence to believe that I had something to offer in the food world.
Pricing:
- LA Street Food Essential $90 a person
Contact Info:
- Website: www.clubtengohambre.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clubtengohambre/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClubTengoHambre/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ClubTengoHambre
- Other: https://www.instagram.com/streetgourmetla/
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