Jonathan Gold

Jonathan Gold (July 28, 1960 – July 21, 2018) was an American food and music critic. He was for many years the chief food critic for the Los Angeles Times and also wrote for LA Weekly and Gourmet, in addition to serving as a regular contributor on KCRW's Good Food radio program. Gold often chose small, traditional immigrant restaurants for his reviews, although he covered all types of cuisine. In 2007, while writing for the LA Weekly, he became the first food critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Career

In 1982, while studying art and music at UCLA, Gold began working at LA Weekly magazine as a proofreader. He met his future wife Laurie Ochoa, a fellow journalist, there, and the couple followed each other to later jobs at other publications. By the mid-1980s, Gold was an editor in the Weekly 's music section, Gold started his first food column "Counter Intelligence", reviewing under-the-radar restaurants in ethnic neighborhoods of Los Angeles. In 1999, he moved from Los Angeles to New York City to become a restaurant critic for Gourmet magazine.

In 2001, when Ochoa was named editor of the Weekly, Gold also moved back to Los Angeles, reviving Counter Intelligence for the Weekly while continuing to contribute to Gourmet. the citation referenced his "zestful, wide ranging restaurant reviews, expressing the delight of an erudite eater". In 2012, Gold returned to work at the Los Angeles Times, succeeding S. Irene Virbila as chief food critic for the paper. In 2017, he founded the paper's L.A. Food Bowl festival. Over the course of his career, Gold won eight James Beard Foundation Awards for his writing.

Describing his work in the LAist, Megan Garvey wrote: "It would be difficult to overstate Gold's impact on the culture of food in Southern California. His reviews of L.A.'s restaurants drew international attention". Anthony Bourdain described Gold as "the first guy to change the focus from white tablecloth restaurants to really cool little places in strip malls". which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Personal life Gold was born in Los Angeles into a middle-class family as the eldest of three boys. His father was Jewish and worked as a probation officer, and his mother was a high school teacher and librarian who converted to Judaism. While a freshman at UCLA, he worked briefly at a kosher restaurant owned by Steven Spielberg's mother, Leah Adler. He married Laurie Ochoa, currently an editor at the Los Angeles Times

Jonathan Gold's younger brother Mark Gold was the long-time president of the Santa Monica-based non-profit organization Heal the Bay and then moved on to become associate director of UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, His remains were interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, with the epitaph "Tacos Forever".

On July 28, 2018, the fifty-eighth anniversary of Gold's birth, several buildings and landmarks in Los Angeles were lit in gold as a tribute to his memory. In October 2018, the James Beard Foundation announced that they were renaming the annual Local Impact Award to the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award, honoring "new writers who are telling stories of their cities and regions, just as Jonathan continually shone a light on his beloved Los Angeles". At the Foundation's annual ceremony in April 2019, Gold was posthumously given his ninth career James Beard Foundation Award.