by Jonathan Gold
July 19, 2006

One of the reviews that won Jonathan Gold his 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism

Today’s subject: the potato taco or, to be more specific, the wonderment of civilization that is the potato taco at El Atacor #11, a taquería chain’s grungy outpost on the fringes of Glassell Park. You have, no doubt, tasted a potato taco, perhaps the basic model of the starch bomb tricked out with chopped onion and a bit of salsa, or perhaps one of the fancy examples of the breed, cooked with the roasted-chile mixture called rajas or embellished with all manner of sautéed vegetables. [Read more…]

by Jonathan Gold
September 23, 1998

Jonathan gold famously ate his way down Pico Boulevard and wrote about it in this 1998 story for L.A. Weekly.

For a while in my early 20s, I had only one clearly articulated ambition: to eat at least once at every restaurant on Pico Boulevard, starting with the fried yucca dish served at a pupuseria near the downtown end and working methodically westward toward the chili fries at Tom’s No. 5 near the beach. It seemed a reasonable enough alternative to graduate school. [Read more…]

Perhaps Jonathan Gold’s final contribution to criticism was not on food, but art. Check out this wonderful piece in Artillery Magazine, where Gold and Artillery’s Editor-in-Chief, Tulsa Kinney, walk the streets of LA exploring galleries — and food, naturally. Gold does indeed compare food to art, and amongst other small but resonant gems, when asked by Kinney “if he sees a correlation between food and art, he pauses, ‘They both turn to shit the next day?’ Then more seriously, again, a question to an answer, “They are both ways of looking at the world?’”

Thank you, Artillery, for this last glimpse into the heart and mind of a most soulful and truly beautiful man.

Jonathan Gold | Artillery

[Read more…]

by Ruth Reichl

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

Jonathan reveled in flouting the rules. In the ’80s, when I first met him, he cheerfully drove around without a driver’s license. He wore what he wanted — in the early years his constant costume was a slightly too small black motorcycle jacket — lived where he wanted, and spent his time indulging in the pursuits that interested him. Those included music of all kinds, a voracious appetite for books, and a deep interest in art of the weirdest sort. (If you haven’t heard the chicken story, ask me some time.) [Read more…]

by Andrea Chang

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times

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 on Saturday evening, according to his wife, Times arts and entertainment editor Laurie Ochoa. The disease was diagnosed in early July. [Read more…]