Jonathan Gold is a large affable red-headed food-critic with a mustache who trawls the byzantine streets of Los Angeles looking for the best tacos. He is so in love with tacos that he has begun to think of taco as a verb; “the single motion from fry pan to counter to my mouth.” For Gold, tacos—the right tacos of course—are an ecstatic quasi-religious experience; they have become in a very real way: an ethical code of conduct to live by.
I like tacos as much as the next guy, but after watching the documentary City of Gold (Laura Gabbert), concerning Gold’s ebullient love of the food of LA, I have now been converted and I too want to believe and practice the Beatitude of Tacos. I want to eat tacos right now.
Lord heavenly tacos!
Gold’s enthusiasm is catching. This seems to be the purpose of his food reviews; (the movie never mentions if he writes any bad ones) he means to sing the unsung, to celebrate those back alley taco stands, and corner pho joints, in order to, as Virgil has it, “bring the muse back to my own country.” His love of LA is boundless, and not the glamorous LA either but the disparate, far-flung, strip mall LA that takes an hour to drive to. He began his career as a professional eater by eating at every restaurant on Pico Boulevard, stretching for fifteen miles from downtown to the beach. It was that revelatory experience which lead him to develop what could be called the Civic Duty of Taco Eating. It was his ability to eat at any restaurant with an open mind, no matter the culture or cuisine, from eating grasshoppers to hagfish, which allowed him to meet and appreciate otherwise segregated people groups. In this manner, and over the course of his career, he has become known in LA a kind of cultural binding agent, an evangelist for the hundreds of diverse immigrant cuisines hidden in relatively isolated neighborhoods.
The movie does not shy away from current politics, and immigrants are celebrated not just as a part of LA, but as what LA is. Nor does it shy from long shots of LA skyline, hills and valleys, and at least a third of the movie takes place in Gold’s pickup truck while he drives around talking. An abiding love for the mundane work-a-day LA is manifest in the film and in Gold’s whole project.
Gold’s total empathy method of criticism is heroic. That he’s willing to give anything a chance no matter how unseemly its circumstance, nor how overlooked by the larger food culture, is a feature of absolute compassion for immigrant cooks. His 2007 Pulitzer awarded for the first time to a food writer is a testimony to same. He’s an LA Walt Whitman who celebrates the cow-eyeball taco just as much as Korean BBQ pigs feet.
Forest is a carpenter/writer living in Minneapolis. He writes a weekly horoscope for Revolver. Those can be found here. Follow him on Twitter @interrogativs
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