Pulitzer Prize-winning restaurant critic and former SPIN writer Jonathan Gold has died at age 57 of pancreatic cancer on Saturday at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Los Angeles.
He became the first restaurant critic to win a Pulitzer for criticism in 2007 and was the subject of Laura Gabbert’s 2015 documentary “City of Gold,” that showed the Los Angeles food scene through the eyes of the L.A. native.
“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 Laura Gabbert, the director of ‘City of Gold’, “It’s such a loss. I can’t wrap my head around it still”.
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.
“There will never be another like Jonathan Gold, who will forever be our brilliant, indispensable guide through the culinary paradise that is Los Angeles,” said he city’s mayor, Eric Garcetti in a statement.
“Jonathan earned worldwide acclaim as a food critic, but he possessed the soul of a poet whose words helped readers everywhere understand the history and culture of our city”, he added.
Gold was raised in West Los Angeles and started out as a music writer and punk musician before turning to food writing. He wrote for the L.A. Weekly, L.A. Times and Gourmet before returning to the L.A. Times six years ago.
“While most people might not go to places I write about, they know all the kinds of food that are available,” the critic said in a 2012 interview.
> Shatabdi Sarker Poushi
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Critic Jonathan Gold Died of Pancreatic Cancer
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