It's been a rough time for food writers (and the readers who follow them). First Anthony Bourdain, now Jonathan Gold. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 2007, at the ripe young age of 46, when he was writing for LA Weekly, Now he's gone, taken by pancreatic cancer. Gold had a good run as the intrepid chronicler of Tinseltown's sparkling underbelly of taco trucks and holes-in-the-wall, As Pete Wells, the former restaurant reviewer for the New York Times put it:
In more than a thousand reviews published since the 1980s, Mr. Gold chronicled his city's pupuserias, bistros, diners, nomadic taco trucks, soot-caked outdoor rib and brisket smokers, sweaty indoor xiao long bao steamers, postmodern pizzerias, vintage delicatessens, strictly omakase sushi-yas, Roman gelaterias, Korean porridge parlors, Lanzhou hand-pulled noodle vendors, Iranian tongue-sandwich shops, vegan hot dog griddles, cloistered French-leaning hyper-seasonal tasting counters and wood-paneled Hollywood grills with chicken potpie and martinis on every other table.
As you might expect, the aggregator site Eater.com has assembled a list of notable obituaries, remembrances, and excerpts from Gold's columns. Read it here.
Alas, there's no one in Seattle with that kind of an eye (or belly, for that matter). Ah, you say, but we have no Iranian tongue-sandwich shops in Seattle. Or proper Jewish delis, either. More's the pity.
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