Jonathan Gold, Beloved Los Angeles Times Food Critic, Dies at 57

Beloved Los Angeles Times restaurant critic Jonathan Gold has died.

The 57-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner succumbed to pancreatic cancer Saturday after being diagnosed just this month. 

The LA native made a career out of shining a light on his city's lesser known eateries, holes-in-the-wall, and street food purveyors. 

He's also the only food critic to ever be awarded a Pulitzer, which he won in 2007 while at LA Weekly. It was a first for the paper. 

"The way he put words together was pure poetry," Lina Lecaro wrote in the alt-weekly "He had a gift for descriptiveness, but he was never wordy. Every phrase, anecdote and analogy had value, and collectively his thoughts and perspectives on food (and music and culture) came to live up to his moniker. His take on eating in L.A. and, in general, was indeed the gold standard."

Already a revered figure in the LA and broader food worlds, Gold's renown reached new heights in 2016 with the acclaimed release of a documentary about his life, "City of Gold."

Gold left LA Weekly, where he'd worked off and on since starting as a proofreader in 1982, for the LA Times in 2012.

At the Times, Gold worked alongside his wife, fellow LA Weekly alum and current Times arts and entertainment editor Laurie Ochoa.

Ochoa confirmed her husband's death Saturday. The couple have two children, 23-year-old Isabel and 15-year-old Leon.

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