Jonathan Gold

In July 2018, Gold was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He died on July 21, 2018, at St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 57, a week before his 58th birthday.

On July 28, 2018—what would have been Gold's 58th birthday—several buildings and landmarks in Los Angeles were lit in gold as a tribute to his memory. At the annual ceremony in April 2019, Gold was posthumously given his ninth career James Beard Foundation Award. In addition, the Foundation announced that they were renaming the annual Local Impact Award to the Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award, honoring “new writers who are telling stories of their cities and regions, just as Jonathan continually shone a light on his beloved Los Angeles.”

Gold was the subject of the 2015 documentary film City of Gold, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival.

Describing his work in the LAist, Megan Garvey wrote: "It would be difficult to overstate Gold's impact on the culture of food in Southern California. His reviews of L.A.'s restaurants drew international attention." Anthony Bourdain described Gold as "the first guy to change the focus from white tablecloth restaurants to really cool little places in strip malls"—a subject for which Bourdain also became renowned.

In 2007, Gold became the first food critic to win the Pulitzer Prize; the citation referenced his "zestful, wide ranging restaurant reviews, expressing the delight of an erudite eater." In 2012, Gold returned to work at the Los Angeles Times, succeeding S. Irene Virbila as chief food critic for the paper. In 2017, he founded the paper's L.A. Food Bowl festival. Over the course of his career, Gold won nine James Beard Foundation Awards for his writing.

In 2001, when Ochoa was named editor of the Weekly, Gold also moved back to Los Angeles, reviving Counter Intelligence for the Weekly while continuing to contribute to Gourmet. At the Weekly, he published a popular annual best-restaurants list, called Jonathan Gold's 99 Essential LA Restaurants; when he later moved back to the Times, the list expanded slightly to become Jonathan Gold's 101 Best Restaurants.

In 1986, with the reluctant support of Weekly founder Jay Levin,, Gold started his first food column "Counter Intelligence", reviewing under-the-radar restaurants in ethnic neighborhoods of Los Angeles. The column eventually moved to the Los Angeles Times, where Gold worked from 1990 to 1996, while also writing reviews of more upscale restaurants for California and Los Angeles magazines, as well as music stories for Blender, Spin, Rolling Stone, and Details. In 1999, he moved from Los Angeles to New York City to become a restaurant critic for Gourmet magazine. His work at the magazine was twice picked as a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Criticism by the American Society of Magazine Editors.

In 1982, while studying art and music at UCLA, Gold began working at LA Weekly magazine as a proofreader. He met his future wife Laurie Ochoa there, and the couple followed each other to later jobs at other publications. By the mid-1980s, Gold was an editor in the Weekly's music section, initially writing about classical music as well as hip-hop,, during which he covered the early days of gangsta rap, interviewing Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and the other members of N.W.A..

Jonathan Gold (July 28, 1960 – July 21, 2018) was an American food and music critic. He was for many years the chief food critic for the Los Angeles Times and also wrote for LA Weekly and Gourmet, in addition to serving as a regular contributor on KCRW's Good Food radio program. Gold often chose small, traditional immigrant restaurants for his reviews, although he covered all types of cuisine. In 2007, while writing for the LA Weekly, he became the first food critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.