Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold dies at 57
Jonathan Gold, alumnus from the UCLA Department of Music History, '82, pioneered a different approach to food criticism in Los Angeles. His reviews—which appeared first in L.A. Weekly and later in The Times and Gourmet—were predominantly positive and focused on off-the-beaten-path traditional restaurants (he disliked the phrase “exotic food”). He began working at L.A. Weekly as a proofreader while still a student at UCLA. He started his column "Counter Intelligence" a few years later and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2007. Gold died of pancreatic cancer on Saturday, July 21. He was 57.
"Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times restaurant critic who richly chronicled the city’s vast culinary landscape and made its food understandable and approachable to legions of fans, has died. He was 57.
Jonathan Gold in Laura Gabbert's "City of Gold." (Courtesy of Goro Toshima / Sundance Selects) Gold died of pancreatic cancer at St. Vincent Medical Center on Saturday evening, according to his wife, Times arts and entertainment editor Laurie Ochoa. The disease was diagnosed in early July.
One of the most widely admired voices of Los Angeles, Gold wrote about restaurants for four decades and became indelibly linked with the city in which he was born and raised.
“He, more than any chef, changed the dining scene in Los Angeles,” said longtime friend, chef and Mozza co-owner Nancy Silverton. “He really was the ambassador for our city.”
Food criticism before him — and even during his time — focused on the austere, the high-end, the Michelin stars. Gold redefined the genre, drawn more to hole-in-the-wall joints, street food, mom-and-pop shops and ethnic restaurants than he was to haute cuisine. Although he appreciated and wrote beautifully about fine dining, he revered the taco truck more than the tasting menu.
“While most people might not go to places I write about, they know all the kinds of food that are available,” he said in a 2012 interview. “They get that this one place has really good soup dumplings, one has Shandong-style beef rolls and another has fantastic beef noodle soup. Even if most people don’t go eat it, I think there is a greater awareness.”
Gold’s death is the latest devastating loss for the food community, which is still reeling from the suicide last month of Anthony Bourdain, another acclaimed food writer. And it was a shock because Gold’s decline was so rapid that many of his friends and colleagues didn’t even know he was ill.
“I can’t imagine the city without him. It just feels wrong. I feel like we won’t have our guide, we won’t have the soul,” said filmmaker Laura Gabbert, who directed “City of Gold,” a 2015 documentary that followed the legendary critic as he ate his way through and reflected on Los Angeles. “It’s such a loss. I can’t wrap my head around it.”
Peter Meehan, a family friend and former editor of the now-defunct food magazine Lucky Peach, said he had shared more restaurant meals with Gold than anyone else outside his immediate family since meeting him six years ago."— Andrea Chang, Jul. 21, 2018
This post is an excerpt. Read the full article on the Los Angeles Times website.
Read an interview with Gold from the Daily Bruin.
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