Jonathan Gold

Jonathan Gold in his natural habitat: a restaurant; Credit: Anne FIshbein

Jonathan Gold: The Year I Ate Pico Blvd.

For a while in my early 20s, I had only one clearly articulated ambition: to eat at least once at every restaurant on Pico Boulevard, starting with the fried yucca dish served at a pupuseria near the downtown end and working methodically westward toward the chili fries at Tom's No. 5 near the beach. It seemed a reasonable enough alternative to graduate school....
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Jonathan Gold's 60 Korean Dishes Every Angeleno Should Know

See Also: A Google map for all 60 of the Korean dishes Jonathan Gold says every Angeleno should know, read "5 Koreatown Restaurants Open 24 Hours: Hangover Soup," learn about "5 Koreatown Beer Joints: Hite Requirement," or just look at more of Anne Fishbein's beautiful Koreatown food photography. I had......
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The Gold Standard

Have you ever been to a food event? I mean the grown-up kind? The ones where you've paid a couple hundred bucks to get in, and everyone kind of looks like your mom, and you're wandering around with a glass of chardonnay in your hand, wondering whether there was a......
Sichuan-style chicken "ribs"; Credit: PHOTO BY ANNE FISHBEIN

Jonathan Gold Reviews Baco Mercat

Click here for Anne Fishbein's slide show. Bäco Mercat is Josef Centeno's new bar down in the Old Bank district, a dim, close space just south of Pete's. It has been getting some attention lately for the crunchy, paper-thin Catalan pizza called coca, and for its many cocktails based on......
Jonagold apples; Credit: F. Friesema

Golden Deli: A New Restaurant, in the Style of Chipotle

Golden Deli has been the default Vietnamese noodleshop in the San Gabriel Valley for a couple of generations now, a cramped, eternally crowded storefront where the pho, and especially the fried springrolls called cha gio, have always been worth the discomfort -- and the menus, worn to the softness of......
the invisible restaurant critic; Credit: Anne Fishbein

Where to Find Breakfast Tacos in L.A.?

Dear Mr. Gold: As a former resident of South Texas, I often miss the unique Texas-style breakfast tacos so ubiquitous there. (I like mine with machacado.) I'm sure you know that these are not the same as breakfast burritos, and are defined well in this article about how New York......
Steamed dumplings; Credit: PHOTO BY ANNE M. FISHBEIN

Jonathan Gold Reviews Shanghai No. 1 Seafood Village

Click here for Anne Fishbein's slide show. Let's get this out of the way: Shanghai No. 1 Seafood Village is the most ambitious Chinese restaurant to open in Los Angeles in a decade — maybe ever, if you don't count Hong Kong–style seafood palaces. Its walls are covered with crushed......
Burrito Express pork burrito; Credit: A. Scattergood

Where Does a Restaurant Critic Go When He's Not on the Clock?

I am often asked where I eat when I am not on the clock, when the agenda includes neither distant anticucherias nor Korean silkworm soup. And the answer I have not quite given, although I probably end up there once a week, is the Pasadena takeout stand Burrito Express, although......
Jonagold apples; Credit: F. Friesema

Rocio Camacho's Latest: Mole de los Dioses

Mole -- we've all had mole. Los Angeles may be the best place to eat mole outside Oaxaca and maybe the D.F., a bastion of both Oaxacan and Poblano styles of the ultracomplex sauce. If you can't find the famous seven moles of Oaxaca here, you're not looking. But ever......