This affectionate portrait of Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold is also a love letter to the culinary and cultural wonders of Los Angeles, from Beverly Hills fine dining to strip mall noodle joints and taco carts.
Jonathan Gold is the great democratizer of his profession, placing food truck tacos and Chinese mini-mall noodles on the same gastronomic plane as French haute cuisine or expense account sushi.
City of Gold 2015
There’s no more loving, curious or infectious guide to the city of Los Angeles and its eateries than food critic Jonathan Gold. The first writer to win a Pulitzer Prize for reviewing restaurants, he’s less likely to point you to the hot and the hip than to the authentic, the unusual and the flavoursome. Reviewing street food and the tiny ethnic hybrids he discovers in strip malls and suburban neighbourhoods, he illuminates a wealth of cultural experience and culinary adventure. In a city teeming with options, he opens up new worlds for diners and owners alike.
“Here is a gentle, unassuming film, five years in the making: the filmmakers drove with LA Times food critic Jonathan Gold around the streets of Greater Los Angeles, from mini-malls in the San Gabriel Valley to downtown street vendors, providing a delicious portrait of a thriving city of immigrants. One comes away with a sense of a place with such a breadth of cultural diversity that the city’s reputation for vapidity is quickly buried… It’s a pleasure to ride shotgun on this journey.” — Vicki Robinson, Film Comment