Los Angeles restaurant reviewer Jonathan Gold was awarded the Pulitzer Prize earlier this week. He is the first food critic to win a Pulitzer.
Gold has written for the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times and Gourmet Magazine. Gold's "Counter Intelligence" column in the Weekly is well-respected and manages to cover Southern California's tremendously varied culinary world with wit and insight. He has an uncanny knack for uncovering the best in out-of-the way eateries from a noodle house in Chinatown to the best place in Los Angeles for Peruvian chicken (Pollo a la Brasa in Koreatown of all places).
And a Gold review gives you the whole experience from soup to nuts. You feel like you've tagged along with him on his outings. It's a rare gift to be able to learn a city through its food and to be able to translate that to the printed page.
NPR interviewed Gold on Tuesday, and he explained how he often has to turn over a lot of stones to find that certain treasure.
The Weekly's website also features Gold's "99 Essential L.A. Restaurants," which covers just about every price range and ethnic cuisine. Rain is forecast for the weekend, maybe some comfort food, no? How about a trip to Langer's for America's best pastrami sandwich or just across the street to Mama's Hot Tamales Café? What else can get you out to MacArthur Park these days?
Gold, incidentally, spoke at Pitzer College back in the spring of 2005. Afterwards, the Courier ran a nice column by the late John Murphy, who captured the evening and Gold perfectly:
Must have been an evening to remember.There is a Swiftian delight in Gold’s voice and prose when he reels off the astounding excesses of recent upscale dining: one orders tea and a variety of living plants are brought to table and the leaves are pruned with solid silver scissors; one orders mineral water and the “water sommelier” brings 16 varieties and suggests which size of bubbles will go well with the foie gras; a chef in Paris centers his recipes around perfume fragrances—the physics and chemistry of food offer a world of experimentation. Gold is not overtly judgmental, however, because he’s also fascinated by people’s obsessions with food. Recently, he spent several days in the hills of Kentucky talking with bacon makers who are completely taken by the nuances of their craft. “You want people who are a little bit nutty about food.”
Where are the good eats in the L.A. area these days? The San Gabriel Valley for Chinese, Silverlake and West Covina for Thai, Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima for Mexican, and many of the 700 regional restaurants in Koreatown. When the talk ended, Mr. Gold said he’d like to eat somewhere ethnic, so on the advice of Steve Glass, former restaurant reviewer for the COURIER, some of us migrated to Tropical Mexico on East End in Pomona. There was much good food, drink and conversation amidst families out for a tasty, modestly priced meal. Jonathan Gold had high praise for the albondigas soup.
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