Jonathan Gold, Pulitzer-winning restaurant critic, dies at 57
Food reviewer was known for his columns on ‘hole-in-the-wall joints, street food, mom-and-pop shops and ethnic restaurants’ in Los Angeles
Jonathan Gold, who became the first restaurant critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, has died. He was 57.
The Los Angeles Times, where Gold most recently worked, reported that he died Saturday after being diagnosed earlier this month with pancreatic cancer.
“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 Laura Gabbert, who directed “City of Gold,” a 2015 documentary about the critic. “It’s such a loss. I can’t wrap my head around it still.”
Gold’s reviews first appeared in LA Weekly and later in The Times and Gourmet. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 while at LA Weekly. He was a finalist again in 2011.
“There will never be another like Jonathan Gold, who will forever be our brilliant, indispensable guide through the culinary paradise that is Los Angeles,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement. “Jonathan earned worldwide acclaim as a food critic, but he possessed the soul of a poet whose words helped readers everywhere understand the history and culture of our city.”
The Times noted Gold’s reviews, appearing in his column called Counter Intelligence, focused on “hole-in-the-wall joints, street food, mom-and-pop shops and ethnic restaurants,” which he preferred to call traditional restaurants.
Known as J. Gold, he had a distinctive style, wearing suspenders, a slightly rumpled button-down shirt, moustache and mop of feathery strawberry blond hair.
Ruth Reichl, who edited Gold at The Times and at Gourmet, called him a trailblazer.
“Jonathan understood that food could be a power for bringing a community together, for understanding other people,” she told the newspaper. “In the early ’80s, no one else was there. He was a trailblazer and he really did change the way that we all write about food.”
Gold also won numerous James Beard Foundation journalism awards during this career. In May, he received the Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award.
Following his Pulitzer win, he stopped going incognito to restaurants, since his image was widespread and became well-known.
Devastated by the loss of my true love. Overwhelmed by the outpouring. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/YZsRycOqp4
— Laurie Ochoa (@Laurie_Ochoa) July 22, 2018
Most of Gold’s reviews appeared in two newspapers – LA Weekly and The Los Angeles Times, where he had been the chief critic since 2012. He started at LA Weekly in 1982 as a proofreader while working on a degree in art and music at UCLA, and soon after became its music editor. In 1986 he began a column in which he explored Los Angeles’ ethnic neighborhoods, moving the column to the Los Angeles Times from 1990 to 1996. He moved to New York in 1999 to become the New York City restaurant critic for Gourmet magazine, but returned to LA in 2001. He returned to the LA Weekly for a decade and then returned to the Times.
Gold was born and raised in South Los Angeles. His mother, Judith, was a teacher and school librarian who converted to Judaism and his father, Irwin, was a Jewish Los Angeles probation officer. He played the cello from childhood, and pursued a degree in music history at UCLA. He briefly led a new wave rock band called Overman.
He is survived by his wife, Los Angeles Times Arts and Entertainment editor Laurie Ochoa, and two children.
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