Jonathan Gold, Pulitzer-winning restaurant critic, dies aged 57

Jonathan Gold (pictured below), who became the first restaurant critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism, has died. He was 57. The Los Angeles

Times, where Gold most recently worked, reported that he died on Saturday after being diagnosed earlier this month with pancreatic cancer. “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, who directed City of Gold, a 2015 documentary about the critic. Gold was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 while at LA Weekly.

He was a finalist again in 2011. “There will never be another like Jonathan Gold, who will forever be our brilliant, indispensable guide through the culinary paradise that is Los Angeles,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said 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.” The Los

Angeles Times noted Gold’s reviews, appearing in his column called Counter Intelligence, focused on “hole-in-the-wall joints, street food, mom-and-pop shops and ethnic restaurants,” which he preferred to call traditional restaurants. Known as J Gold, he had a distinctive style, with a moustache and a mop of feathery strawberryblond hair, braces and slightly rumpled buttondown shirt.