Literary Los Angeles: Jonathan Gold and Culinary Citizenship

I was driving alone up Western Avenue in Los Angeles late at night.   I had been back from China for only a few weeks.   I was zoning out, letting my eyes slip into and out of focus across the befogged street lights, when I saw what I took at first to be a mirage: a Xinjiang barbecued meat stick vendor on the corner of Western and Melrose.   The vendor looked much as his compatriots had when I’d seen them last on the streets of Shanghai:   a wiry man with a soot-blackened face bent over a barbecue bolted to the frame of a wheeled cart, alternately fanning a row of lamb kebabs with a bamboo fan and seasoning them with a mixture of cumin, chile, and Sichuan pepper shaken out of what appeared to be a repurposed Kraft parmesan cheese canister.

My first thought was, someone should tell Jonathan Gold.

But then, I was pretty sure Jonathan Gold already knew.   In fact, Jonathan Gold—LA Weekly columnist, Los Angeles native, and the only food critic to have won a Pulitzer Prize—did know. Within a month of my sighting of the street vendor, Gold wrote a column in praise of Xinjiang barbecue, which he described as “one of the most compelling snacks in the world.”

Jonathan Gold is something of a local treasure.   In addition to his much-discussed LA Weekly column, Gold pops up regularly on KCRW, one of Los Angeles’ public radio stations.   His 2000 book, Counter Intelligence: Where to Eat in the Real Los Angeles, has replaced the Thomas Guide as the city’s most indispensable backseat guidebook.

Gold’s columns set L.A. food enthusiasts off on a sort of scavenger hunt, racing out on a Friday night for far-flung places like Tarzana and Norwalk.   Gold introduced me to some of my favorite local restaurants, including Renu Nakorn, Yai, Csardas, Guelaguetza, China Islamic, and Mama’s Hot Tamales; and introduced the rest of the world to others I had already cherished, like Zankou Chicken, Chabelita’s, and Senor Fish, making them all a little more crowded (thanks a lot, Mr. Gold).

He’s a first-class storyteller, a passionate advocate for no-holds-barred eating, and a thoughtful writer, even if his occasional forays into adventurous eating (live octopus, bull’s penis) toe the line between broad-minded fearlessness and macho showmanship.   But the real reason Jonathan Gold is so popular may be that he tells us something we want to hear: we can enjoy the best of what L.A. has to offer for only the price of a pupusa.

Like all Los Angeles true believers, Gold delights in the unexpected find; in his case, in the extravagantly wonderful meals to be found in strip malls and on push carts.   He uncovers an L.A. that’s been busily existing all along, alongside the celebrity chefs and $200 tasting menus, a city of self-sufficient ethnic enclaves whose culinary successes are not trumpeted in any Michelin guides.

Gold was the subject of a recent New Yorker magazine profile by Dana Goodyear (subscription required).   In the profile, Gold expounds on his theory about what makes L.A.’s traditional foods (he eschews the word “ethnic”) so great.   He calls our city — “the anti-melting pot” — the home of true, undiluted regional cookery.”

“Unlike in New York,” Goodyear states, “where immigrants quickly broaden and assimilate their cooking styles to reflect the city’s collective idea of “Chinese food,” the insular nature of Los Angeles allows imported regional cuisines to remain intact, traceable almost to the restaurant owners’ villages of origin.”

(In the same article Goodyear also mentions what Gold dubs the “triple carom”: the Cajun seafood restaurant that caters to Chinese customers and is run by Vietnamese from Texas.”)

Having lived in China for more than two years, I can say with some authority that a trip to the San Gabriel Valley is the next best thing to a ticket on Air China.   Every detail of the hundreds of Cantonese, Shanghainese, Sichuan, and Hunan restaurants clustered along Valley Boulevard feels like the real thing: the tablecloths, the menus, the shrines, and most importantly, the food.   We make frequent trips to the “other” Valley for Vietnamese broken rice, dim sum, and Hong Kong-style seafood, and many of our destinations were first introduced to the wider world by Gold himself.   (Including the restaurant 818 recommended in Gold’s article on Xinjiang barbecue, where our limited Chinese proved handy indeed.)

This is real, good, cheap food.   And what is being done for Chinese and Vietnamese food in the San Gabriel Valley is being done elsewhere in the city for the best of Iran, El Salvador, Georgia, Ethiopia, Armenia, Korea, and Nicaragua.

What Gold is offering is a way to participate in the real life of the city, in parts of town that never make it onto “Entourage.”   Most people in Los Angeles will never dine at Spago or Melisse, just as most of us will never stumble out of Chateau Marmont and into a sea of flashbulbs.   Most of us wouldn’t want to.   But for the price of an entree at CUT, you and your friends can eat all the Xinjiang barbecue sticks you can handle, with beers besides.   Have an adventure, bring the kids, make some friends, order the penis.