When the Times announced this week that it was moving food critic Frank Bruni to a new assignment writing for the Times Magazine, foodies immediately began speculating as to whom the paper would replace him with. The Associated Press says LA Weekly's Pulitzer-winning critic Jonathan Gold is one of the "obvious contenders," while Eater has him as a "dark horse," with 250-1 odds. Eater also pegs Village Voice critic Robert Sietsema an "underdog," giving him 1000-1 odds. Meanwhile, the Times staffer who will lead the search says she hasn't started thinking about who will be named for what the AP calls "what's widely considered the most important restaurant critic job in the country."
AAN members are once again well-represented in the list of nominees for this year's James Beard Foundation Awards for Journalism. The finalists: L.A. Weekly's Pulitzer-prize winning critic Jonathan Gold in the Restaurant Reviews; Kristen Hinman of Riverfront Times in Newspaper Feature Writing Without Recipes; and the Chicago Reader's Mike Sula in Multimedia Food Journalism. Winners will be announced at a May 4 gala in New York.
Mark Gold is executive director of Heal the Bay, a Southern California environmental nonprofit, which can lead to some interesting exchanges with his brother, LA Weekly's Pulitzer-winning food writer. "I am already anticipating the nasty glare I will inevitably get from my marine-scientist brother," J. Gold wrote recently in a report on eating whale in Korea, "[who] has dedicated his life to pretty much the opposite of this." On his blog, M. Gold wonders: "If only Jonathan focused on sustainable seafood for a year, imagine the positive impact he'd have on local restaurants and the dietary choices of the food obsessed." But the food writer (who recently signed on for a column at Gourmet) gets the last word (thus far) in his brother's blog comments. "I stress the local-sustainable-organic trope in my columns almost to the point of self-ridicule," he writes, "and I would as soon amputate a toe as buy meat or fish from a supermarket."
"Every high school has its nerdy soft kid who brings his cello to class, and that would have been me," the L.A. Weekly food critic tells This American Life's Ira Glass. He talks about one particular bully who picked on him quite a bit: "In my most notable instance, I was walking down the hall to history class, and he hip-checked me ... I went sailing down the stairs with my cello," Gold says. "He was laughing about it with his friends. I suspect he forgot about it five minutes later. I didn't." Years later, Gold says he felt vindicated when that same bully -- Jack Abramoff -- became a criminal felon, his corruption case splashed on front pages across the country. "It's just beautiful; it's more than I could have wished for," he says. "Who wouldn't feel satisfied that he was getting his comeuppance?" An Abramoff spokesman denies the incident: "Mr. Abramhoff does not know Mr. Gold and he has no idea why Mr. Gold would fabricate such a story."
"Pulitzer recipients almost always are employees of established daily publications," notes the San Diego Union-Tribune. The paper also points out that Gold's Pulitzer was the first awarded to a food critic. "I always thought you had to have a grown-up job doing something like reviewing operas at The New York Times to get a Pulitzer, not writing about taco stands for the (LA) Weekly," Gold says.
The newly minted Pulitzer-winning LA Weekly food critic talks process with On the Media's Brooke Gladstone, saying he doesn't take notes and shies away from fancy food vocabulary and Latinate synonyms. "It must be said that there is only one word that means 'salty,' and if you try to get beyond something being salty -- you know, briny or oceanic -- you're overwriting, and the prose suffers," Gold says. Noting Gold's "intense" devotion to meat, Gladstone asks the critic if he receives letters from vegans demanding equal time. "Yeah, I get letters from vegans, usually more in sorrow than in anger," he says, adding that he also gets a lot of letters from Jewish people complaining that he writes "an awful lot about pork." Over a meal of huaraches with a succulent beef brain and more, Gold tells the Washington Post's William Booth he's eaten at somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 restaurants in LA, and that he finds new haunts by scouring ethnic newspapers. "I don't understand a word of it, but they list an address and I go," he says.
Co-host Michele Norris praises the Pulitzer-winning LA Weekly food critic for having "a very expansive view" of what being a restaurant critic is all about. "You wouldn't believe how many bad meals I eat in order to find the ones I review every week," Gold says. He visited a particular Taiwanese restaurant 17 times -- "until I figured out what the aesthetic was," he says -- even though he despised the food. "I described one dish there as being bitter -- not bitter like coffee, but bitter like cancer medicine," Gold says. "But I meant it in a good way."
"The Pulitzer Prize is something that, when you're a food writer, you don't even dream about," the LA Weekly food critic says. The AP says Gold's win boosted morale at the paper, which has "weathered several layoffs" since the Village Voice Media merger with New Times. "Maybe this means they won't fire me this year," Gold jokes. His wife and Weekly editor Laurie Ochoa says the Pulitzer is "especially sweet" and adds: "Now it's official: There is no conflict of interest when I say he's a great critic." VVM executive editor Michael Lacey tells the AP the Pulitzer win shows "alternative papers are beginning to get the respect they've earned."
