Jonathan Gold taught us all how to talk about restaurants. The best restaurant critic of his generation, and no one, since his death, has surpassed him. A kind, giving man was well. When I first came across his writing, long before the Pulitzer Prize, I immediately sensed the way he wrote the story not just of food but of L.A. — and I columnized on it. Many years later, when Jonathan Gold came to speak to my course on Food and Media at USC — a major schlep, a major favor — he left the students, and their teacher, astounded by his impromptu description of a meal at Noma in Japan. Read his works, and listen to an on-stage discussion we had in 2017.

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