L.A. is in mourning. Jonathan Gold, Pulitzer Prize-winning
food critic for the Los Angeles Times (and
the first food writer ever to receive this honor), has just passed away. Not
long ago, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It’s a cruel disease,
painful and unstoppable. Gold heard the bad news a mere three weeks ago. Now,
at the age of 56, he is gone.
Not many critics inspire movies. When they appear as
characters, they are usually snobs and snots, though sometimes they’re redeemed
by the final fadeout. I’m thinking particularly of the stuffy food critic,
Anton Ego, voiced to a fare-thee-well by Peter O’Toole, in Pixar’s animated Ratatouille. Ego’s over-educated palate
leads him to sniff at haute cuisine
that is less than perfection. But one of the film’s key twists comes when Ego
is served a simple eggplant dish that reminds him of his mother’s long-ago
kitchen. Suddenly he’s a boy again, savoring the flavors of home.
Jonathan Gold, though a discerning gourmand, was far from
being a snob. He could appreciate lavish top-drawer cooking, but he gave his
heart to the mom-and-pop eateries of ethnic Los Angeles. In fact, he’s been
credited with inventing a whole new style of food reviewing, one that involved
ferreting out those neighborhood cafes, strip mall bistros, and food trucks
that bring to the hungry public the joys of authentic cuisine from SoCal’s many
cultures. Roaming the L.A. basin in his gas-guzzling old green truck, he was a
welcome presence wherever he went. Small-time restaurateurs loved him, and he
loved them back. What he possessed more than anything was an appreciation for
the ways in which food—cooking it, eating it—brings communities together.
Gold was a big man, with long, scraggly, greying locks. His
larger-than-life presence made him a natural on a movie screen. The only other real-life
critic I can think of who starred in his own movie was Roger Ebert, whose
man-of-the-people approach to film criticism (along with his heroic acceptance
of his own mortality) led to a 2014 documentary, Life Itself. Ebert’s populist
inclinations are probably what made movie fans identify with him so
passionately that a film was warranted. Likewise Gold was the star of City of Gold (2015), a cheerful tribute
to an oversized sprite who is seen happily roaming the streets of his native
city in search of his next unexpectedly great meal. Though City of Gold features on-camera appearances by some giants of the
food world, all of them praising of Gold’s dedication to his craft, the soul of
the film is his interplay with the foreign-born chefs whose native flavors he
samples with such gusto.
In the course of City
of Gold, we’re also introduced to the wife and kids who lovingly support
his food obsessions. From everything I’ve heard, their loss is immeasurable.
This morning I was treated to a KPCC-FM interview with Gold’s brother, Mark, who
teaches environmental science at UCLA. Clearly the household in which Gold grew
up was a place of intense enthusiasms of all kinds. Mark described how he once
was treated by Jonathan to a foodie jaunt back to their parents’ birthplace,
Chicago. In the name of journalism, they sought out and sampled the homey restaurants
their parents had once loved, and also spent a glorious afternoon at Wrigley
Field, cheering on the Cubs. In Mark’s words, the trip was an adult version of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
I’m also both cheered and saddened by Mark’s memory of
Jonathan’s final days, when friends and family saluted him with pastrami
sandwiches from Langer’s Deli. Alas, he couldn’t join in.
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