Los Angeles is a paradise of flavor. Thanks to its car-centric culture, the city has reached into the hills and cleaved independent communities in its endless valleys. The region’s culinary overtones are decidedly Mexican, from street tacos to Alta California cuisine, made all the richer thanks to charred chiles and smoke and heat from the grill. This is the birthplace of salsa empires, with a dense culinary history that’s thicker than the tourist crowds on Olvera Street. But to only include Mexican flavors in any conversation about LA’s history with heat would do a disservice to too many other communities, from the San Gabriel Valley to South LA to Thai Town. Many of the moments that have made LA the cross-cultural capital of American spice have roots in larger issues and systems, including post-World War II Black migration from the South and changing national immigration laws in the 1960s. Those timeline points, combined with the work of entrepreneurs like David Tran of Huy Fong Foods and the inimitable writer Jonathan Gold, have kept LA well stocked in spice for generations, and likely will for many more to come.