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Jonathan Gold is not your average restaurant critic. His LA Weekly column, Counter Intelligence, is testament to that fact, featuring reviews not only of five-star, obscenely expensive, impossible-to-get-into restaurants, but also of ethnic, hole-in-the-wall eateries: the push-cart vendors, the tiny taquerias, the street-side quesadilla stands. His latest accolade further separates him from the crowd: a Pulitzer Prize, the first for a restaurant critic in the award's 90-year history.
Gold, 46, began at LA Weekly in 1982 as a proofreader, but by the mid-'80s he was one of the alternative paper's most popular writers. In addition to reviewing restaurants, he also has served as music editor and edited several Best of LA issues.
He started Counter Intelligence in 1986. He then moved the column to the Los Angeles Times from 1990 to 1996 while also writing for California, Los Angeles, Spin, Rolling Stone and Details magazines. In 1999 he became Gourmet magazine's New York restaurant critic, where he was twice named a National Magazine Award finalist in criticism, another first for a food critic. In 2001, he moved back to Los Angeles, revived Counter Intelligence and continued to write for Gourmet.
The Pulitzer Board commended Gold for "his zestful, wide ranging restaurant reviews, expressing the delight of an erudite eater."
Q: What first drew you to restaurant criticism?
A: I'd always been obsessed with food, but, like any young writer, I'd written about a million things. I'd done a piece on health insurance that my editor had liked, and he asked me if I would be interested in working on the Restaurant Guide, and kind of got started from there.
Q: Your column, Counter Intelligence, includes an incredibly wide range off restaurants, from street vendors to fine French cuisine. How do you pick the places you review?
A: Largely, I drive around a lot....