There's a juicy and quintessentially LA battle going on right now between Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold and celebrity chef Rick Bayless in the OC Weekly's "Stick a Fork in It" blog, written by the paper's managing editor, Gustavo Arellano.

The crux of the debate is, "Does Bayless really think LA doesn't have restaurants (besides his) that serve authentic food from all over Mexico?"

Here's the long version of my interview with Gustavo, to which I've added clips from Bayless' NBC interview.