City of Gold is a charming love letter to both the city of Los Angeles as well as Jonathan Gold, one of the most accomplished writers in the world of culinary writing. Known for weaving cultural stories around his food reviews, the documentary shows how Jonathan Gold’s writing has not only transformed food writing but also in many ways, the city of Los Angeles and it’s citizens. Watching the documentary, you realize that the democratic sense that Gold has in reviewing restaurants (treating food trucks with the same respect as high price restaurants) opened up the large and complicated city of Los Angeles to experience foods of all sorts. It’s hard to imagine a time when people didn’t go out of their way to eat some random taco at a dive bar, but that was pretty much the norm before this past decade. It would seem that Gold’s reviews had a huge influence on this movement.
As with any biographical documentary, the doc is only as interesting or charming as it’s protagonist and Jonathan Gold seems like a completely nice guy with an interesting and varied past (he also wrote about music for Rolling Stone before). In fact, the absence of any real conflict in his life actually provides a stark contrast to most documentaries. I’m not saying the film is lacking in drama, but with most doc’s, I kind of expect some sort of “AND THAT’S WHEN THE DRUG ADDICTION KICKED IN” part that never came.
The film features glorious shots of not only Los Angeles, but also, a lot of very tasty food being cooked. Be forewarned, that butter drenched popcorn you are holding while watching this will feel vastly inferior to what’s on the screen.
Overall, an enjoyable documentary that will make you rather hungry at the end.