A Taste of Los Angeles with Jonathan Gold 'City of Gold' takes a delectable look at the life and work of a famous food critic
Written by Megan Scanlon
Director Laura Gabbert’s City of Gold is a living, breathing atlas of Los Angeles via the medium of celebrated Pulitzer Prize winning food critic Jonathan Gold. The film explores the role of the critic, and in the context of Gold’s relationship with Los Angeles, what surfaces is his impact on the thriving immigrant culture of L.A., a city that did not grow from it’s center, but one that is realized by its converging fault lines.
City of Gold features interviews with prominent food critics and restauranteurs; the influencers and influenced of Gold’s élan. He writes about “things that other people weren’t writing about; he gave it value,” said Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern, commenting on Gold’s fondness for reviewing Mom and Pop spots characterized by tradition and personality, including restaurants of Ethipioan, Oaxacan, Burmese, Korean, Sichuan, Thai, and French cultures.
Gold’s reviews transcend appreciation; they demonstrate discovery and presence, and his use of second person brings his readers along for the adventure, and all of a sudden, it’s “food that makes you feel plugged into the city just by eating it,” said KCRW radio host and chef Evan Kleiman. His words are colored with animated hues of understanding, and scintillating specks of detail that make a meal an experience. In doing so he opens a door to the culture behind the recipe.
An admirer of composer Richard Wagner, Gold appreciates “a tune that keeps showing itself in all these endless ways.” The engagement between Gold and the chefs of his reviews is this tune, and it reverberates in endless ways throughout LA. The chefs interviewed in the film have full hearts for Gold, sharing that his reviews not only ushered in new business that augmented a strong local base of customers, but that he articulated the essence of each chef in ways that they had not yet understood or articulated for themselves.
Gabbert, Gold, and Lucky Peach editor Peter Meehan were present for a Q&A after the screening. An audience member asked Gold to come back to New York City, and though his affection for the Big Apple was evident, he said of his work with Gourmet Magazine, “I got tired of covering rich people—instead of 1000 cultural contexts there’s just one.” Later Meehan emphatically underscored Gold’s dedication to approaching cultures in their own context. Regarding a Thai restaurant, “he didn’t like it, and didn’t like the food but he went there to understand it.”
Megan Scanlon works at the American University of Beirut. She has written for the DOC NYC blog, the Stranger Than Fiction documentary series, and the Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship. Megan was a prescreener for the Margaret Mead Film Festival, and is a volunteer at the Bronx Documentary Center and DOC NYC. Follow her on instagram and twitter @
