Gold review of all time was, of all things, a Tex-Mex spot: Arturo’s Puffy Tacos in Whittier: Gustavo Arellano, writer, columnist, author So I was always in awe of him for that, and that was even before I understood what his real project was: not just to make us understand ourselves more clearly, but to make us understand each other more clearly, to bring humanity closer together. This was one moment, of thousands, where Jonathan made us understand ourselves more clearly. It was weird and primal and breathtakingly good, and I don’t want to do it again.Ī great writer sees things and makes us see ourselves differently because of them.
I bit into the animal, devouring all of its sweetness in one mouthful, and I felt the rush of life pass from its body into mine, the sudden relaxation of its feelers, the blankness I swear I could see overtaking its eyes. I thought about the Hindu cabby who had driven me back into town from a Singapore seafood restaurant years ago, lecturing me the entire way on the spirituality inherent in a single prawn, and I thought about my vegan friends who refuse to eat anything that once had a face. not by proxy, not from a distance, not with a gun or knife, but intimately, with your teeth.
In order to eat, you must first rip into living flesh. But this was the first time I had ever come up against one of the most basic of nature’s postulates: You live your prey dies. I had, I thought, come to terms with the element of predation inherent in eating meat - and I am thankful to the beasts that have nourished me. I have consumed thousands of animals in my lifetime: seen lambs butchered, snipped the faces off innumerable soft-shell crabs, killed and gutted my share of fish. When I think of Jonathan purely as a writer, as someone who sees something about the human experience and articulates it in the most perfect way, I always think of this passage about eating live shrimp: Here now, writers share their favorite passages from Gold’s oeuvre.įrancis Lam, writer, editor, host of The Splendid Table Writers and editors from across the country were touched by Gold’s empathetic, excitable reviews, all of which contained references that reached far beyond food: British punk, Beyoncé, immigration, the Dodgers, jazz standards, Kobe Bryant, the sculpture artist Charles Ray, and “ your late Uncle Morris” all had a shot of popping up in one of his pieces. He was really writing about the people more than the food,” she told the New York Times critic Pete Wells. “He really got that food was a gateway into the people, and that food could really define a community. His longtime colleague and friend, the writer and former critic Ruth Reichl, wrote to Eater that she “can’t sleep” and is “devastated” by the loss. He was a husband, father, and critic at the Los Angeles Times many, especially fellow writers and those in the food world, are still bereaving. Jonathan Gold, the Pulitzer Prize-winning restaurant critic known for his way with words, multifaceted mind, and dogged dedication to Los Angeles - the city he loved and lived in - died on Saturday at 57.
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