Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold dies at 57
LOS ANGELES_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.
Gold died of pancreatic cancer at St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles Saturday evening, according to his wife, Times arts and entertainment editor Laurie Ochoa. He was diagnosed with the disease 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 a crushing loss for the food community - and a shock because his 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
