iTunes Exclusive Episode City Of Gold
Rob and Don review the documentary City of Gold, directed by Laura Gabbert, which profiles Jonathan Gold, a food critic for the LA Times and LA Weekly. The film explores Gold's approach to restaurant criticism—visiting hole-in-the-wall eateries, food trucks, and strip mall establishments across Los Angeles—and features interviews with respected chefs who revere his work. Gold became the first food critic to win a Pulitzer Prize.
About this episode
Key takeaways
- Jonathan Gold visits restaurants multiple times before reviewing, sometimes up to 17 times, sampling different menu items across several days
- Gold is equally comfortable dining at high-end restaurants and taco stands, often discovering places through social media posts about new menu items
- The documentary demonstrates the tangible impact of food criticism, including a story of an Ethiopian restaurant owner whose business was transformed after Gold's review in LA Weekly
- Gold is a multi-talented individual who plays cello and has performed with a punk band, transcending the typical food critic stereotype
Q&A
What makes Jonathan Gold's approach to food criticism different?
He doesn't visit restaurants just once before reviewing; he frequents them multiple times across different days, sampling various menu items, and covers all types of establishments from food trucks to fine dining.
How much do chefs respect Jonathan Gold?
Highly respected chefs like those featured in the film will go out of their way to prepare special dishes when he visits, and some frame copies of his reviews on their restaurant walls.
What major achievement did Jonathan Gold accomplish as a critic?
He was the first food critic to ever win a Pulitzer Prize.
How does the documentary balance its focus?
While it showcases food and Los Angeles dining, the film emphasizes Gold as a person more than the food itself, exploring his character and background.
Read Transcript
The following is a sooner orgator production. Noons! Good!
Stop! I said I already was a jam. Oh j-he-it!
Getting the boyfriend Can't fight Can't fight Read全部. Greening, Sympire, Member, andumbers. Members, if you are hearing the sound of my voice, it means the following conditions have been met.
At least once in your life, you have listened to the clubhouse podcast live every Sunday night. Seven Eastern for Pacific Yor, one stop shop for all-things, sports, and entertainment. But it also means you listen on iTunes and subscribe there, and if this time for another time, I don't have a voice box, I'm sorry, I have a voice box and I have a talk box.
Welcome to the one hundred and ninety-nine one of these things. So if you subscribe and you can do math, it's almost time for a very big milestone. My name is Rob, I am the executive producer of the clubhouse podcast, and I like to fancy myself a bit of a foodie.
So joining me for this particular episode across the desk is my co-host. And a man that will light up a grill on you if you let him. He is Chad, welcome sir.
I'm having a really hard time talking over this song because I love it so much. But you know what time of year it is sir? I am making a pledge.
We are going to be more active in grill use this summer. You promise? I'm putting it down right now.
Okay. There's we've been very lacks in our duties. Yeah, you can't do these.
So joining us is the official fact checker of this show. And a man who does like to critique food everyone's in again. You may know him is fondong though, but his mom and name him down for it I'm a column down for it.
Welcome sir. If it's edible, I like it. Now to the grilling.
You saw that Jared's barbecue sauce that you said would share one time together with that you know, remember that? I don't know if there's any left of that I don't know. We were supposed to crack it together.
Well, crack a new one. I'm sure they can get another one. You tell us like what?
Three years ago. Wait in the barbecue with you that long. Oh, we're doing this summer, brother.
Okay. Whatever we do one of these, it is always to review something. This is no exception.
I still have a bottle of I think today we are reviewing for you said listener the brand new documentary from documentary in Laura Gabbert. It is called City of Gold. Before we start this whole thing.
Sir, we got to think our best friends. We love it. Everybody now I did a great marketing.
Thank you so much Josh when the invite guys are awesome. You rock, we love you guys. As I said, this is a documentary.
Runs right out of our mouth. Roughly. And the subject of the documentary is one Jonathan Gold hence the name.
He is a critic for the LA times as well as the LA weekly, which is kind of a subsidiary they're in. But he's not the kind of restaurant critic or food critic that's good to spend a long time a small go. My kill go there.
And he likes to find these out of the way places, trucks, trucks, strip malls, strip malls, carts and front of stores that haven't opened yet. Exactly. And it's not just mainstream food.
I'm just going to go ahead and say it at one point. There are fried grasshoppers. Yeah, it's all I'm saying.
I try it. It's on my brother. Why not?
I'll tell you why not. It's freesty. But Chad was not able to join us for this one.
He is here for moral support and ask any questions. Not really much to discuss when it comes to documentaries, but I kind of want to go into this a little bit. Go, Hitzer.
If you go to my written review at www.theclubospacas.com, that is our website. It reminded me a lot of that documentary we critique also for our like supermish. The legend of the show.
That is what we were walking on. I thought it was a very interesting view on it. Go ahead.
Because it's a guy who's well respected in their field. He's like, you know, Gordon isn't his field, but you have so many people of importance who of different realms who respect this person. Now, Chad can I drop a name on you when he talks about that?
Sure. Andrew Zimmern is one of the interviews in this film that doesn't surprise me when you mentioned grasshoppers. He was the first person I thought and he is featured in this thing.
So it's kind of like it had a lot of the field, just like the one we saw in Shep Gordon there, which really impressed me because it's everybody who they put in this film respects the guy. He's a simple looking guy. He's a very simplistic, drives a truck, but he reminds me a little bit of David Crossby.
Yeah, you could say that too. The look there. But the thing is when he went to load his restaurant, this guy is like a judge on the on the taste on ABC, well respected chef, and he goes, oh, he's coming in when he comes in.
I give this guy something super. Chad, that's him. Okay.
Yeah. So you have these well respected chefs when he walks in the door, they will bid over backwards for him. Like the same time the next day, he's going to go hit a food truck.
Yeah. And can I drop another name on you, Chad? Roy Choi isn't this.
Does that name anything to you? Not quite sure. He was the guy that was the technical advisor on Shep.
Okay. He's the guy at the end that's teaching him how to do the grilled cheese sandwich. Oh, God.
I saw this guy's name and I'm like, done. I still aspire to make a grilled cheese sandwich. It looks that good.
But it just reminded me of the respect that this guy has. And he's more than just a food critic, just like we saw in a supermanch where it's more than just what you see of a food critic, this guy can does the cello, does a bunch of other stuff on this. So it's a guy with a lot of stuff you never expect in a very simple guy, but with that ton of race and can I reference your review at www.theclubhousepodcast.com.
That's our website. Something that maybe you and I differed on, what's up in your review, you talk about how this kind of did the same thing for your hunger pains that Shep did. Yeah.
For me, it didn't. Let me tell you what. Okay, go ahead.
Where to me, Shep was more about the food. In this film, there was a balance between the food and the man, but it was more about the man. So kind of the food came secondary, like what I walked out of Shep, I was like, I need to go somewhere and get something right now.
Yeah. With this, I was comfortable. I was like, you know, some of that was cool, some of it was a little creepy.
But it didn't affect me in that way, Shep did. You know what I mean? I can see your point, but for me, it did, and to make a point, because I learned this from watching Shep, is when there's certain times I got to the point where you actually budget me thinking I was asleep.
I had to close my eyes so much during this film, because if I kept on looking at the food, I would forget what the guy is saying. So there was time, so I'm going to ask, just close my eyes to this side, because I just wanted to hear what they were talking about, and I kind of, I like that. You know what I'm saying?
That's interesting take on that. Yeah, that's why I go, I'm up, I'm up. You know, the food took that me to that level, watching some of the stuff, yes, I got hungry, and a lot of people who watch this will probably get hungry watching this.
So, eat before you go in to be fair warned. And can we do a minor spoiler alert here? Yeah, and I think Chad will be interested in this.
Don says how he was a musician, he paid the cello. You want to hear something that he was present for the recording of? That Don was present?
No, that the subject of this was present. Oh, okay. You're ready?
What? He was there. And they talk about it a little bit in the film.
Interesting. Yeah, he played with, he played cello in a punk band for a while, like, this dude has levels. It's just like a super big, yeah, it's Jonathan Gold.
It's a great study of a person, because he doesn't, he's not one of these food snobs, he drives around, he has a brother who's an environmentalist. And he talks about how, you know, my brother is trying to save the world, and I went out and bought the probably the worst car for the environment you could have five years ago. He drives around this Dodge pickup truck.
And what I really kind of dug about the way they tell the story is they give you this big map of LA. And then one point they'll zoom in, sometimes on a specific street in a section of LA. And you really don't understand the power of critique as much.
I think I got a better, of even better understanding, even though we are critics. Sometimes we don't understand how we affect people. And one of the stories they tell in this thing is about a lady that owns an Ethiopian restaurant.
And basically her son was helping keep it open because they weren't getting any people in the doors after 9-11. She says, went to bed one night, woke up the next day, and I had people wrapped around the block. And I didn't know what was going on, and somebody told me that Jonathan Gold had written a review of my restaurant in LA Weekly.
She goes on. She goes on. She goes, I haven't been able to keep people away ever since.
You're just what I like times. Well, this was also featured in LA Weekly, because I think the weekly is a subsidiary of times. Kind of like if the observer worked for the Dallas Marine, that's what I mean.
And it shows you the power of your words. If you have a following, and there are people that are going to rely on your opinion of what to go, where to go, and what to see, I mean, these people, there are people, and you see it all through this film, that frame have matted and framed copies of his reviews of their restaurants on their walls, his word is gospel. And when we went to the screening, Allied was awesome enough to give us a little booklet of his top 100 restaurants in LA for 2015.
And if we can only get him to come here, believe me, he's got plenty of work to do in LA. I mean, he's all over the map. He's in Hollywood, then he's in, you know, he's, he's in Alhambra, and it's kind of cool because they show you the areas, and he kind of gives you a brief history of some of the areas.
And I don't, don't quote me on this, but I could have sworn, I saw the car wash from car wash at some point in film, but pretty sure I saw he said he will eat their multiple times. The most was 17. Yeah, so he's there.
He won't just eat their ones before he reviews. He'll eat a few times. He said the most of the several things on the menu.
It's several different days. Yeah, back in this half of the watch I filmed 17 times and I view it. Hands on the film.
Not a couple. But I thought that was really neat how he just doesn't eat somewhere once and right to review. Now granted, that's a get that does that does tend to annoy his editors because they're waiting for the article.
He's a real procrastinator, he missed that. But I really, really, I wasn't sure going into this what I was going to think, but I really, really enjoyed this documentary. Of course, we talk about time on our normal show on Sunday nights, how as I'm getting older, I'm getting a better appreciation for documentaries, and this is a prime example of that.
Yeah, and then the thing that really sunk to me, which I said earlier, but how he'll walk to the taco stand, but then he'll walk into a restaurant owned by, like I said, Ludo, who's on the taste. He'll show it him in there. Oh, he goes.
Yeah, he was a guy with a beard and stuff and he showed him that little like the little bull thing. It says, when he walks in, I give him the whole thing or whatever he's talking about. He's getting.
They're cooking. I didn't know that he was on the taste. Yeah.
He's a well-respected chef who owns the lion restaurants, and these are a high dollar restaurants. He goes, when Jonathan walks in, I give him a him the five star. Oh, absolutely.
Then the next night, he's, you know, he's spending that place that's, you know, fifty dollars a plate, then goes to a taco stand on the corner. The next next day. Yeah.
And when he goes to the taco chance, then Chad, the reason he goes to the taco stand is because they tweeted something out that morning of a brand new thing called the Poseidon that they were trying. He's like, I want that. You put the tweet up.
I want that. Like, and you mentioned earlier, you know, I kind of want to piggyback or something you said just a moment ago, where you wish he was in Dallas, there's a guy from New York in this that says, I would kill to have him come to New York. Like that's how, well, he's the first food critic to ever win a Pulitzer Prize.
Yeah. Really? Yeah.
And yeah. I mean, this, it's, and he's not, he doesn't like, look at my Pulitzer. It's like everybody else talking about his Pulitzer and then they show it in his house.
He's like, he's very, he's just very cool about everything. And that just made my enjoyment of this documentary that much deeper. He seems really accessible.
He, he's out there walking the street with his wife and kids and, oh, he's married with kids. I didn't realize that. Yes.
It is wife works for the, the times also. It is life as an arts and entertainment editor, I believe that they meet while they worked on the paper, while he, well, they were interning. That's how they met.
Anything else we want to go before we to final analysis? No, no, no, no, you've got to be intrigued. You've got to be sold the way we do the final analysis on the show.
We're not going to give you thumbs up thumbs down. We're not going to give you one to 10. We're not going to give you letter grade stars.
Anything like that, our audience, whom we affectionately refer to as the empire. They like us to go deeper than that. So we're going to don't and I are going to answer up to two questions.
Question number one, is would you see this film again? The answer is no, we're done here. The answer is yes.
Then it's how far are you willing to go? Full price is the top ranking. Right below that twilight, not the movie, the time.
Matt and A, early morning weekend, second run at the dollar theater, red box rental, Netflix streaming cable. Dawn, would you see this film again? Oh, yeah, how far are you willing to go?
I'm, I'm going to recommend it as something like in a mid or late afternoon in what I'm technically a Matt and A, you can say, or twilight in what I'm saying is, eat once before you go in and maybe wait a couple hours, but then go and see that because when you leave you're going to want to have dinner after see, I'm going to agree with you, but flip to script. Okay. I would definitely see this again, see it at a twilight and then go find dinner.
Yeah, so say, because what you're going to need what I'm saying is this film may inspire you to seek out a different style of food that you're used to because he goes to all these different styles of food and it may make you go, you know what, maybe I want to try that tonight. Yeah. But you see, I can find that in my area.
Yeah, I don't see any cats running around the kitchen. So let's give it a shot. Easy, killer.
It is called City of Gold. It is directed by Laura Gabbert. Again, before we end this thing, thank you so much to Josh and everybody at Alite for inviting us to this thing.
Some of our favorite people in the world, they take care of us more than they ever have to. Go check out this film. It is called City of Gold.
Let's do the plugs. Visit our website, www.theclubhousepodcast.com. Find out everything you need to know and some stuff you don't.
Like our Facebook page. Look up the Clubhouse podcast on Facebook. The word podcast on the end or it's something completely different.
Follow us on Twitter at Clubhouse Show. You can follow me on Twitter if you'd like. I am a guest of that Rob Urban that has spelled ERVI and I am a chat in PG69.
I'm at Fondango and he could email me at Don at theclubhousepodcast.com. Are you mocking me? Yes.
Email Dom with all hate mail. As well as any kind, maybe we could do a live remote show, you know what the deal is. I was, I was stuttering in my speech patterns because there's something I've realized that we have to correct before we get off air.
You can email me if you like questions, comments, go search it so I'm going to go up on sand. I'm Rob at theclubhousepodcast.com. I am Chad.
Clubhousepodcast.com. Charlotte Parker is on Pinterest because we're morally obligated to say that. Jules Walmick.
She in. It's more than likely she would be. By the way, made a clerical error at the beginning of the show.
This is episode 200. 200. We got there, kids.
Our normal show every Sunday, night, 70s from Fort Pacific, your one stop shop for all things, sports entertainment. So until next time, for Don, for Chad, for the Empire, I'm Rob, clubhouse is closed. Hi Brittany Palmer.
200. The preceding was a sooner or later production. Get a go, get a go.
Why? Because I have to.