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When Jonathan Gold returns to the Los Angeles Times this month, he will be both food critic and columnist. The news of his hiring is old, but Times editor Davan Maharaj made the formal announcement today to the newsroom and on the paper's Readers' Representative Journal blog. Gold will make his first appearance in print in this weekend's debut edition of Saturday, the new section that replaces the Food, Health and Home sections. From Maharaj:
His love of all things gastronomical has taken him from the L.A. Weekly (where he started as proofreader in 1982), to the Los Angeles Times (1990-96, where he wrote his Counter Intelligence column), to Gourmet (where he was the magazine’s New York restaurant critic) and back to the L.A. Weekly (where he worked for more than a decade). If you follow the L.A. food scene, you know about Jonathan’s ability to find and savor Uzbek, Korean, Peruvian and Islamic Chinese cuisine....You’ve probably heard about crickets, fried grasshoppers and some animal parts that Jonathan has consumed in pursuit of outstanding food journalism. Five years ago, he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism — the first win for a food writer. He was a Pulitzer finalist last year as well. He has been honored twice as a National Magazine Award finalist in criticism by the American Society of Magazine Editors.
Trying to read the tea leaves, I'd say Maharaj makes a point of mentioning both restaurant critic S. Irene Virbila and food editor Russ Parsons in his announcement on Gold. Maharaj, who was born in Trinidad, also notes that Gold "discovered the only Trinidadian restaurant in Inglewood."
