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Jonathan Gold, Legendary L.A. Times Restaurant Critic, Is Dead at 57

DEVASTATING

One of America’s most influential writers about food has died of pancreatic cancer.

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Jonathan Gold, the legendary restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times, has died, the paper reported on Saturday evening. He was 57 and had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer earlier this month, according to his wife, Laurie Ochoa, an arts and entertainment editor who worked with him at the Times. Gold, who was the subject of the 2015 documentary City of Gold, is credited with transforming the food scene in Los Angeles by championing small, ethnically diverse restaurants across the city’s vast landscape. More than 20 years ago, he set out on an ambitious journey to eat at every restaurant on L.A.’s Pico Boulevard and succeeded. “My job is enjoyable,” he told The Daily Beast just over two months ago. “I love going out to eat in the way a theater critic loves theater. I love going to farmer’s markets. I love sticking my hands in pots. And it turns out that food is a pretty good prism through which to view humanity.” — Matt Wilstein

Read it at Los Angeles Times