CITY OF GOLD Review

In director Laura Gabbert’s delightful documentary CITY OF GOLD, Jonathan Gold, the first food critic to win a Pulitzer Prize,  drives around his hometown of Los Angeles, in search of great food in unexpected places, talks about writing, the links between food, nations, neighborhoods and identity. It is a road trip you do not want to miss.

A native of Los Angeles, Gold knows his city and it willing to go to unlikely places in his search for culinary adventure. As the Los Angeles Times restaurant critic, he does not seek out the fancy, trendy, high priced dining spots of the rich and famous to review. Instead, he prowls his beloved city seeking small family restaurants, food trucks and little entrepreneur chef-owned spots offering delicious, affordable food, often that honors a certain country or heritage, or serving innovative fusion cuisines reflecting real neighborhoods. As one commentator notes, Gold is creating a food map of LA.

It is a bit akin to the way film critic Pauline Kael noted that small budget, independent B films often were more original and innovative than Hollywood’s big-budget A films. Gold himself credits writer (and Missouri native) Calvin Trillin for inspiration and setting him on this path of seeking out the authentic and delicious. Trillin is one of a handful of notables who appear on camera, along with TV’s “Bizarre Foods” host and adventurous eater Andrew Zimmern. But mostly it is Gold, and the restaurant owners and chefs who speak, about the food, their goals and dreams, and each other. With the camera and Gold nearly always in motion, the documentary has a restless, adventurous feel to it, far different from the usual talking-head style.

Gold has an unexpected personal charm. A large, overweight man, balding, freckled and red-headed, he is no one’s image of handsome. But as he talks, a magic comes over the listener, with his soothing voice leading us down paths of discovery, in an open, intelligent way. The key is Gold’s willingness to approach new foods, new cultures, new people with an open curiosity and without scorn or snobbery – and to want to take us along on that adventure.

And Gold does know his stuff. As the film notes, what sets real critics apart in an era when everyone styles themselves a critic – whether food, music or movies –  is the willingness to do the research, to have the depth of knowledge or put the work in to gain it, to do it right, to do it thoroughly, to really know what one is talking about. Gold does his research when sampling a new type of cuisine, and visits  restaurants four or five times, and more for cuisines he is new to, as many as 17 times, before writing his review. It is a fairness that restaurant owners admire and respect, and sets his reviews far above Yelp with restaurant patrons.

Gold’s writings are as much about cultural commentary and exploration as about food. Early in the documentary he notes Los Angeles is a city everyone thinks they know from the movies, even if they have never been there. Setting out to dispel the myths, Gold describes the sprawling city as not a melting pot of cultures but a “glittering mosaic,” not spreading out from a core but distinctive neighborhoods that have grown until they touch. His wanderings lead to discoveries like clusters of restaurants with food from particular regions of Mexico, from specific Chinese cities, or a pocket of places serving flavors of Tehran in “Tehrangeles.” Sampling the food traces waves of immigration to the city and adaptation to available local produce, creating culinary geography of the city.

After all, Los Angeles is in California, an agricultural garden of Eden, so one might expect great food with all that great fresh produce close at hand, even from modest eateries. On the other hand, Gold worries about traditional mom-and-pop food shops being replaced by too-precious artisanal cheese shops at a local farmer’s market, even if the cheese is good.

Gold skips the idea of donning disguises when visiting restaurants to review them. He just turns up without warning, a kind of pop quiz that sometimes strikes fear in owner/chefs. The risks are high but so are the rewards, with a good review leading to foodies lined up around the block for a place that usually only caters to a neighborhood.

His reviews have power, not just due to Gold’s fairness, the careful research and repeat visits that underpin them but in the writing itself and turn of phrase. Moved by his environmental activist brother’s arguments to save ocean species, Gold wrote a review about how the fine flavor of a certain seafood dish was not enough to overcome “the bitter taste of extinction.”

Oddly, Gold does not think of himself as a successful food critic but as a failed cellist, the passion of his youth. The documentary delves a bit into his personal life – his long marriage to an editor, their two kids, his two brothers – and his writing process. Before becoming a food critic, he was a classical music critic, then turned to championing hip-hop music. He grew up in L.A. in a working-class Jewish family that treasured education. He notes that where he grew up, you could tell as much about a Reform Jewish family by which deli they frequented as by which synagogue they attended.

The visuals that accompany these discussion often focus on scenes of L.A. streets and neighborhoods, the restaurant owners (who often share their immigrant story) and, of course, beautiful, appetizing food. Not beautiful in the art gallery presentation style of high-end dining but the natural beauty of hearty food that makes the mouth water, or the exotic, colorful, that-looks-good appeal of unfamiliar dishes. Cinematographers Goro Toshima and Jerry Henry paint modest strip-mall restaurant storefronts and busy, colorful streets in loving golden tones. Even highways clogged with traffic but lined with palm trees look good.

Gold is an entertaining, enlightening guide on this food adventure, an exploration anyone can enjoy, foodie or not.

CITY OF GOLD opens Friday, March 25th at the Plaza Frontenac Cinema

OVERALL RATING: 4 1/2 OUT OF 5 STARS